The reasons for this blog: 1. To provide basic author information for students, teachers, librarians, etc. (Please see sidebar) 2. I think out loud a lot as I work through writing projects, and I'm trying to dump most of those thoughts here rather than on my friends.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Yesterday I spent a disproportionate amount of time on my ms, and need to try to make up for that today by not looking at it. If I don't keep things balanced, I'm going to get myself in a tight spot come the end of this month.

Basically what I did yesterday was open the floodgates for this one scene. I let every bit of story and backstory and setting and action and dialog that came into my head spew forth onto the page. That's the kind of writing where I usually don't feel like I've accomplished anything after I've done it, because now there's a big unsorted mess on the page. It'll take a lot of trimming, moving, smoothing, and shaping, to get it to amount to anything.

I have to admit I'm also a little concerned about the way plot stuff keeps happening. I don't have any context for how plot-driven pacing is supposed to feel while I'm in the middle of my spaghetti bowl of a ms, drowning in strands of story and character.

However (I remind myself), that's one of the points of writing this ms. I'm going to bloody well get a feel for it, even if I have to open my skull and rewire the same part of my brain every day for 20 years.