Raven's View

The prompt for this week was to write about the cottage, and to take some inspiration from a random song - via this site. I got Margaritaville, by Jimmy buffet. He sings about Margarita's, of course, a tattoo of a Mexican cutie, boiled shrimp, and sad life, where nothing is really his fault. I did about 975 words. 

I'll quote all the lyrics here, as I like them:

I finished another editing pass on a novel; basically a review of the plot and characters. It's a good story, but what do I do next.? I wrote it in 2013, as my fourth NaNoWriMo and I have drafted three novels since then.  And I have also finished about 160 Flash Fiction stories.  So, I assume my style has improved, with all that.

I usually start NaNoWriMo after a top down design of story, the plot, the characters and their issues, the various arcs, and then a quick line or two on each scene. Then basically I write every day and fill in the blanks. 

I can see now some structural flaws in this novel, as well as scenes that are redundant, or misplaced, or just missing. Some are well-written, some not so much so. Characters need to be tweaked, or added, or deleted, also . I'm tempted to basically start again, working top-down, rather than try to re-write. Any suggestions?? 

Is this a good time to also try out yWriter? And some sort of MindMapping tool? 

This week's prompt came from a contest run over the weekend, by an Australian site. The initial challenge was 500 words in 55 hours for a $500 prize. We were given six pairs of adjectives to include. I added the option of 1000 words by Friday noonish, for no prize. I chose the latter, and did a detective story. My six pairs are in bold. 928 words.

The prompt this week was based on heat, as it's been pretty hot everywhere. Thanks to human assisted global warming - unless you are a US Republican or a Canadian Conservative. We also had to choose a random location and random thing form two lists. I initially got the same random picks as last time (because it is random) so threw the dice again, and got 'a parking garage' and 'onion rings'. I went more for mood than plot, and ended up with much less than 1000 words, only 650. But I like it.