Morning Star Rising


A slower day today, with me stressing over pretty minor plot points and finally I had to stop because I felt I was losing a grip on what I was trying to do. I've been attempting to tone down the romance element that comes in at the end of the novel because I let the muse spew giddiness and giggles all over the manuscript in the first draft and I think the sheer magnitude of it all will have many male readers rolling their eyes and saying, "Okay, get on with it already!" Plus I changed some back-story elements for the object of my protag's desires because the way I had it, the protag's uncle was just getting too creepy and "ewwww!!!!" for my comfort level. What I changed it to is, I think, a little more believable and gives my protag some interesting new emotional nuances to deal with.

I'm also a bit distracted because I'm wondering if I sent something that's content-inappropriate for the PG-13 rating of IGMS when I sent them "The Jade Bones" and I'm wondering if I should withdraw it before they have a chance to read it and clunk me on the head and tell me, "Stupid! Don't ever send us anything with any sexual content in it!" The scene isn't graphic and isn't even talked about it in actual sexual terms, but I think it's quite obvious what's going on. So would that qualify as "detailed"? Using a movie-based rating system for writing is, I think, inexact and sometimes confusing, and I find it hard to discern what the line between R and PG-13 is in written fiction, so naturally I'm stressed and wondering what to do. Though after seeing Kathy Wentworth's post about no-nos for entries to WotF, which lists sex scenes as number one, it's obvious now why both "The Jade Bones" and "Morning Star Falling" didn't score better than quarter finalists (or honorable mentions, as they're called now) and I won't send them anymore stories like that. This is all just giving me a big headache.