Yesterday’s goal: met. It wasn’t all that ambitious, after all. But I’m back to a positive word count.
However, I ran into problems almost immediately. One beat–just one beat written–and I have already veered off track. Not in a way that makes me want to get back on track, but in a way that makes me realize that the track was wrong.
Any time multiple characters are involved in a scene (which is most scenes, of course), they all have to act and react as their individual selves. In this case, my beats tracked Akira, who is my POV character. They described mostly what she was doing, how she was reacting. It was a nice little story. But as I finished writing the first beat, Zane–who’s also in the scene–put his foot down. Akira’s reaction worked for her, but he wanted nothing to do with it. She’s a problem-avoider and he’s a problem-solver. He had no intention of simply sitting still, hoping the issue would go away. So that’s good–I prefer the story with him behaving like himself, not being passive–but the changes flow through the whole story.
Today’s goal: to keep writing. Get 1000 words down. Then look at my beats again and see how and what needs to be changed.
Also to work on the balance in the words between angst, tension, and humor. It’s early to tell, but I feel like I’m getting a little more angsty in this one than I intended. It’s meant to be a fun break, not a deep reflection on marriage. It’s certainly starting to look a lot longer than the short story I had in mind, though. I guess I’ll see how it goes!
I feel a book forming in me that makes me want to leave the one behind that I haven’t worked on in over a year. Maybe later for that one.
The new one feels good but – not easy. Why can they never be easy?
There’s nothing wrong with leaving a book behind. My first book is stored on a USB drive somewhere, along with the beginnings of the outline for my second. My only regret about that is that the break between giving up those books and starting to write again lasted ten years. I wish I could have remembered how fun writing is sometime during that decade and done it just for the pure enjoyment of it. I should write that in big letters on my wall as a reminder–if it’s not fun, make it fun!