I think the chapter I wrote over the last couple of days is, um, not good. But I posted it to fictionpress anyway, so that I could let go of it and move on. I do keep trying to remind myself that first drafts are allowed to be terrible, that it’s okay to be struggling in the early days while I try to figure out what’s necessary and what’s not, where the story is going and who these people are.

But I overwrote somehow the only paragraph I really liked and it seriously vexes me. It’s the fiction of thinking that the work that’s gone is better than the work that remains, but even knowing that it’s probably not true doesn’t make me feel better. I’m quite sure that paragraph was somehow perfect. The rest of it? Dry. Tasteless. Like the turkey from Thanksgiving dinner, only without the cranberry sauce and gravy to hide its flaws.

I think I have to get rid of the parts about Sylvie running. That was to set something else up, later, and maybe I just need to either not foreshadow that run and/or not have that run. Oh, well, either way, I can think about that when I’m revising. For now, it’s time to move on and let Sylvie and Lucas meet up again, yay. Or no, actually it’s time to write a 20-page paper. But after that, time for my characters to meet!