Yesterday I somehow ended up working on a part I didn't really want to work on. I don't know what happened; I was skimming along trying to figure out where I wanted to start work, and got sucked into changing and rewording and it snowballed from there. It didn't hurt anything, but I was hoping for a more productive use of my time.

Now today once again I'm edging into the middle and I can see what a big mess of trouble it's going to be. Too many tones (close third person literary, familiar third person conversational, removed third person historical, snarky third person me), and the "pacing" is going to be splotches of story that happened to fall onto the page with no rhyme or reason to them. I don't know what to do. Maybe the thing to do is quit trying to make sense of the whole and write out some of the individual pieces that I know have to be there, and see what happens. Just focus on definite, small, chewable bits.

I am ignoring a certain thread toward the beginning that I keep almost taking out because it seems like it's too much and too complicated at that point in the story, but then I also keep seeing that it moves the tone away from the misleading chipper midgrade voice of the story beginning, and also it adds tension and adheres to the main idea that drives the story for me. And it's pretty well woven in right now; it's going to be a pain to un-weave. So for now I'm making myself leave it and not think about it.