While I was in VT, a fellow writer posted some in-depth thoughts re. The Putting On of Pants:

http://melissawyatt.livejournal.com/197995.html

I completely agree. One can Put On Pants in glorious and lyrical detail, but if the story itself doesn't require readers to absorb the full import of a pants-donning, then to me that space on the page is self-indulgent, even if it is pretty and well-written.

I always have wrongly-emphasized Putting-On-Pants moments in my writing*, but I try very hard to get rid of them before the book hits print. It's sometimes difficult, though, because, well, they are pretty. Very pretty. Right now I've got one I know I need to cut, but I keep leaving it in there because I haven't yet managed to force myself to get rid of it.

In other news (or not-news; what's the opposite of news?) I woke up understanding that there is indeed something wrong with the scene I wrote yesterday. I have no idea what. All I know is that it's not sitting right with me--I don't feel good and energized when I think about it; I feel very slightly uneasy. That doesn't mean the whole thing has to go (although it could mean that), but it almost certainly means that 1) I need to have a stronger grip on the characters as they head into this scene, 2) something about the scene is preventing the many threads of emotional and character arcs from falling nicely into place, or 3) both.**

There are a lot of threads that need to come together in that scene, and I already knew that, so I'm not alarmed. I'm glad I was able to get something out on paper so I can seriously start (slowly) figuring out the book's climax. I've wanted to write that scene for a long time, but the closest I could ever get was one time when I managed to half-describe the road they're standing on before I stalled out and sat there staring blankly at the screen. This part of the book wouldn't come at all before yesterday.

So anyway, back to work.



*The former GN is one big wrongly-emphasized Putting On of Pants.

** #3 is most likely. Usually somebody in the scene isn't doing what they really would do (like, if I wasn't around stage-managing the whole business), and that throws the whole book off.