February 03, 2011

Fumbling

1011 words tonight. So goal is met. This book is proving interesting so far. Usually I'm pretty clear on my first scene and write it quickly. But this book, well, I've had about four different starts now and keep having to pull back and change tack. I started with the hero, thought perhaps maybe it should be the heroine, changed my mind again and went back to the hero in two different situations. Nothing felt quite right but today I think I might have cracked it. We'll see. Of course, that probably means juggling around some of the words I've fought for so far and going backwards in word count at some point but we'll deal with that when it happens.

Two things helped.

One, this post by Jenny Crusie is brilliant and made me realise I was trying to smooth out my hero too much instead of letting him be his acid tongued messed up self.

Two, I realised I didn't really know what his initial goal was. Some poking and prodding at the muse with pointy sticks at lunch today gave me a glimmer of an idea on that one and so far it seems to be working. Now I just have to figure out the heroine. Oh and how to wrap up all the pesky plot threads I've set in motion in the last two books. Why did I think writing a trilogy would be a good idea again? If there was a magic potion I could take right now to turn me from pantser to plotter I'd be on that thing faster than Neo and his little red pill. But given I'm pretty much stuck with my own brain and my own crazy process, I guess I'm just going to have to screw up my gumption and remember that it will all come to me eventually if I just keep writing and letting the weird storyteller part of my brain do its thing.

In other words, I need to remember to look at this which I have perched on my noticeboard near my desk!



(Get your own here)

And now, time for enjoying the results of some other poor writer's self torture aka curling up with a good book before I go to sleep! Catch you tomorrow when maybe I'll go crazy and write more than 1000 words!

1 comment:

Keziah Hill said...

Very cute.