The Perfect Ending--I hope.

This is the closest I've been to a deadline without having a complete first draft done, and I'm not liking it. I've come to discover I don't work very well when there's a loud clock ticking in my head, but I really hate to ask for more time. It makes me feel like I'm failing. Professionals don't ask for more time. And, I already received an extension because I was struggling a bit with editing one book, writing another one, and trying to market...and the marketing has really gone downhill as there just wasn't enough time to get it all done. The first book in the Merry and Bright Handcrafted Mystery Series (series title changed from Twas the Murder Before Christmas), was originally scheduled for March and we moved it to January. At that time, I had everything under control and then my well-laid plans changed. The biggest being I knew that I needed to start over with book 2 as there were unresolved life (not mystery) issues from the first book readers needed answers to. So, I started a new book 2.

And now, the endings--yes I have written more than one--just haven't been right. The first ending had a darker tone than the rest of the book. It didn't fit. I went back to the beginning, made some changes to the first half of the story, and saw where the ending needed to go. Or so I thought. Again, didn't work. Merry's personality seemed to change. She sounded too much like another character of mine and not Merry. Once again, I scraped the ending, returned to the beginning, smoothed out the plot and transitions in the other chapters.

Onto another ending...and the book stalled. I have finally caught onto the fact that when I stall it's because something isn't working in a previous chapter. I went back to the beginning and edited again. That's when I discovered that I loved the first 80% of the book, but the story once again took on a slightly different tone when one of the secondary characters was on screen. Toward the end of the book, whenever this one character interacted with the heroine it threw off the story so I had to downplay this character.

I'm now on my fourth, fifth, possibly sixth ending as I've lost count and hope this one sticks. I have kept the other endings...they might work in another book.