January 29, 2006

The trickle and the flow

So last night I took my own advice and cranked up the soundtrack for one of the books, curled up in my chair in a completely non-ergonomically friendly way and wrote a scene that had been kicking around in my head for awhile now. 8 pages in less than three hours. The most I'd done in one stretch for a few weeks now.

This book is a tough one, something very different for me and it's kind of like putting a jigsaw together in the dark. I've got all sorts of scraps and half scenes and bits and pieces. And no idea what happens.

I'm a pantser on the whole and for this book, I'm a definite pantser. I'm not setting myself any deadlines for the first draft to be finished, I'm just writing what comes. Which is fun but scary and a tad frustrating.

Plus the soundtrack picked by the girls is full of heartbreaking songs that make me all teary and wistful-ish.

I need to write something funny for relief. Luckily that's the other two wips. Well, one of them at least. The other one is something else again but with some lighter moments.

Of course, the flow stopped when I got near the end of the scene and realised that the scene occurs later in the book than I thought it did and it still had to create some problems at the end rather than completely easing things up. At which point we returned to trickle mode.

Today I've done scraps on three different books. No flow in sight. But I have written and that's the main thing.

So I totally deserve to go out for dinner in an attempt to stay in denial that the end of my four day weekend is nigh.

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