A quick description of me struggling to meet my deadlines a la the movie “Oscar”. (You should watch it if you haven’t. Awesome stuff.)
I went away for a couple of days to get away from interwebs and focus on writing. It sort of worked. Sort of. Two longer chapters written to the tune of around 8,000 words in 2 days. Not bad if I do say myself. Of course, I had probably written about another 4,000 words on top of that, but it just wasn’t working, so I had to throw all that out.
Sometimes writing is like that it seems.
But every time I turn around and think “Ah hah! Now I have you and I can wrap this up!” A loose end or ragged concept raises its meek little finger and says “What about me? I need resolution”
Hence the above clip. Seriously, go watch “Oscar”. It’s well worth the laughs. Great cast.
I managed to write myself into a corner because I’ve been pantsing again. I pants a lot. I need new writing britches I think because of it. Thankfully the solution was provided by science. Yes! I threw science at the wall and some of it stuck. I fretted it was too Deus ex Machina, or in this case Deus ex Meteorology and Cartography, but the more I thought about it, it flows perfectly with the set up and is a logical and plausible solution. As you can suspect I worry about coming off with pat silly or contrived solutions. I really try not to invent them, but I’m learning this is also part of being a writer. You are the sole filter in which the reader experiences the world. So work on internal consistency of logic and causation, and it will be all right. It’s when you do something that people go “Oh come ON! Really? How stupid do you think we are?”
…and suddenly the book the achieves sufficient velocity to land in the trashcan.
I worry about these things. So I think very hard, even when pantsing about what I wrote and whether or not it is internally consistent, whether it needs something written before to set it up so it’s not an out of the blue “surprise! contrived solution here!”. I’m rambling.
Long story long, I thought I’d be closer to done than this. arr rarr rarr. I’m not, but I set up key parts I needed to in order to throw the switch on the big finale conflict…. annnnnd I just had an epiphany. No seriously. Right here thinking about the final act as I considered my whole “All is lost” moment from which triumph is snatched from the jaws of defeat.
Oh this is good. Straw is flammable, right? Right!
I’m indecently pleased with this solution and I’ve already set it up! Ohhh I am now just beside myself with squee, but I have two scenes I have to write. Well maybe three… sigh… probably three knowing me, in which to throw the switch, but that might be able to be compressed into one chapter.
Okay, so that’s stuff I have yet to do and hope to have it done by Monday. Boy howdy, this is down to the wire of my grace period. (Labor Day) And of course Monday I’m not going to get much done because it’s my fantasy football league draft and I’m seeing my good friend and his thundering herd of kidlets. Le Sigh. Better buy an energy shot or something.
There is some positive news too. I finished polishing 2 chapters early in the book, and am considering releasing chapter two as another teaser once I’m one scrubbing it up for y’all.
For those of you enjoying my timeline, I have those posts ready to go for two of the biggest events in the timeline. Den Lange Vinteren (The Long Winter) and the Aettirkrigen (The War of the Clans… thanks for the linguistic save, Torfinn!) So those are coming probably Monday and maybe Thursday? Haven’t decided yet, but expect one Monday as usual.
Okay, rambling done. Off to bed in a little then work, then maybe sneak some more editing in.
Hasta la byebye!
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