The End or A Train?

The light at the end of a tunnel near Milford Sound in Fjordland, New ZealandI’ve reached 37, 514 words now. Slow going this week. Very slow. It feels like I should be able to see that light at the end of the tunnel. I probably have 17 or 18 more pages to write and it’s like pulling teeth all over again. Today when I went to pick up the kids from school, I sat in the car with my clipboard and tried to write a bit more detailed notes for these remaining pages.

You guessed it. It feels more like I’ve run into that proverbial train. The pages I had the most problem describing what should be happening were the next 5 to be written. The heroine is at this masquerade ball and is supposed to be having a great time, really opening up and blooming. However, all she seems to want to be is coy. With ME! How rude. The hero’s not playing along very well either at the moment. Grumble.

Surprisingly enough, I didn’t have many issues with the last 11 pages. Can I just skip these six and get it over with?

No. I know if I don’t write them now, it won’t come out right or I’ll never go back to them and there the file will sit. I may have to go back and reread a couple of sections so I can echo them here in this part.

I’m also frustrated because I know I’m not going to get much time to work on this over the weekend. Tomorrow, the kids are going for their belt tests in martial arts and will hopefully both move up a rank. Then, we’re driving to LA to spend the night near friends so we can go to a game/party at their house in the afternoon and not have to drive 5+ hours all in one day. We need to be back at a reasonable hour Sunday night because of school on Monday. It’ll be fun and exciting, just tiring. I should have gone back to bed this morning too. With all the rain, I don’t see the lights getting put up or us going to pick out a Christmas tree this weekend either.

It’s amazing how much this story has changed since I first posted it up here. I was hoping that’d I’d be able to lift sections of the original and plop them down, but there’s no way now. The heroine grew her own backbone, no need for the hero to go plant the guy a facer. I think he’s a bit disappointed by that, but I think he likes a woman who will take charge in the heat of the moment. Lots of interesting little twists like that have cropped up. I can’t wait to finish this and go back to read the whole thing.

11 thoughts on “The End or A Train?

  1. Don’t you hate it when your characters argue with you!? I feel your pain. The absolute worst is when they won’t let you go to sleep and you have to fire the computer back up in the middle of the night because they won’t shut the heck up! 🙂

  2. I did manage to get another 500 or so words written this morning. The boy was home sick from school. AGAIN. I don’t know what I’m going to do with him. *sigh*

    I think I got over one of the rougher spots. It’ll just be finding time to sit down and focus on it now. I understand why some full time writers rent very small office space outside their home now (breaking pipes, unwanted phone calls, dryers breaking and needing repaired…)

    The good news was the characters weren’t so much arguing, but just sitting there refusing to move any which way or to say anything. Very frustrating. =) I was just waiting for one of them to start holding their breath or for them to start taunting each other.

    “No, I’m not.”

    “Yes, you are.”

    “Am not.”

    “Are too!”

    “Mom!!!”

    Oh wait.. wrong set of squabbling children?

  3. I’d say put it away for right now–not your wip, but that section and go back to start your rewrites. That way as you go through to fix things and tweak the structure, by the time you get to the part you’re missing, it’ll write itself, since it’ll logically flow out of the story and you’ll be immersed in the “whole” and not the “bits”.

    🙂

  4. I need to do a real post again to provide a real update. We did finally get our tree last night, no outdoor lights yet though. Having the boy home sick again for the last 3 days has been a real crimp in my style. Not to mention RD being largely unavailable. =(

    Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah.

    Jodi, I’d considered doing that, but I think that I really need to finish these last 14 pages. Yup, I’ve been whittling away at it in between interruptions. I know it doesn’t have to be perfect (it won’t be), but I need a solid sense of accomplishment and I’ve been using it as an excuse to put off seeing how bad the rest is (LOL) and having to rewrite it all from scratch.

    I think my next little act of procrastination after typing “THE END” will be to go re-outline the story I’d been working on before this one. It’ll be interesting putting the hero back down in his role of 2ndary character again. I really like the safety net (for flow/pacing/etc) feeling that the spreadsheet gave me and I really liked your comments about the progressively bigger knots along the string(s).

    Back to work for a bit longer until the boy starts begging for food.

  5. That 37,514 was since Nov 1st. I’m currently up to 39,145 on that WIP. Slowly chipping away at it about one NaNo day’s worth. DS has been home all week — shipping him back to school tomorrow and hoping I don’t get a call to come get him because he’s been sick. Joy. I spent the day catnapping myself, hoping to stave off the inevitable.

    One of the things I’ve found that really helps my productivity is setting a timer for 20-30 minutes and just going. It also helps me to do this in a chat room with other people working against the same clock.

    I also started out writing a journal entry every day this summer. I started with 15 minutes. I had to write for the entire time. It started out with a lot of gibberish and whining about how hard it was to get the words out on the page. I’m now up to a half hour blurt that runs around 1100 words. It still contains a lot of whining, but it helps get my brain in the pattern of when I sit down and open up a blank document, I don’t sit there and stare dumbly at it waiting, praying for inspiration to strike.

    I’ve also been stuffing my internal editor in a box, lately. Otherwise, I’d still be reworking the first 10 pages.

    Good luck, jMo! I’ve come to appreciate that not everyone works the same and progress is progress! You can’t fix what’s not on the page.

  6. that’s true. If you need to get those fourteen pages down–it’s something that has to happen.

    (chats don’t work for me. I guess I have this internal critic that says “people?” and I go all weird, lol)

    Getting a tree is good. I really need to unbox mine. 🙂

  7. Jodi,

    I find the chats work best for me when there are only a few other people there. DH and I had a rule in college when I was trying to get my thesis done (yes, we had one as undergrads): if one of us had to work, the other did too. I think it just goes back to that mindset. I know when we were working for the same company but had adjacent offices, I wasn’t as productive as when we shared one. I spent more time wondering if he was working than when we were in the same room when he might only be focused on web surfing — it FELT like he was working, so I felt like I had to be working too.

    I’m down to 7 pages! I’m right around 39,500.

    Almost there. Almost there!
    Stay on target…

    Guess we should like decorate the tree and the house next?

  8. I’m with you Kaige. I like when the chat has just so many people in it… it’s easy to get distracted BUT certain people really know how to motivate me. When they’re there, I do better. Why is that???

    Congrats on the word count. You’re doing great.
    have a great christmas holiday…I’m not sure if I’ll see you before then.
    Morgan

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