Busy with school starting and family stuff going on. WIP will have to fall by the wayside while I bear down on family and writing-related obligations.

Right now, the WIP seems to really suck, anyway. I haven't read any of it for real (like, sat down and tried to read straight through as a reader instead of a writer) in a long time, so I don't know if it sucks in the real world or not. But in my head, it's like a blob of unflavored gelatin on the sidewalk. I look at it and I think: Bleh. Bleh, bleh, bleh.

So what I've been doing instead is trying to find the right place for the bad guy's winter camp/home. It's been gnawing at me that this isn't settled, because I can't properly write the scenes that take place there until I have a feel for it.

Also, I want to find the right place for the final confrontation.

I did flesh out some of a falling-apart-shoe related piece. I'm now thinking I need pieces like this in order to write a book that works, because they're simple and character-driven and there's no larger questions to consider about what the reader would be expecting or wondering about. If I write too many scenes where exciting stuff happens that moves the plot forward, I get bored, and eventually confused, uninterested, and disconnected. Like now. Pumped-up fictional life-or-death drama is just not real enough for me to stay related to, not when it's scene after scene after scene.

So I'm going to lay off the writing--unless I get a craving for it--and instead make sure that every day I focus on something about trying to get strongly connected to the ms again. Which means stuff like finding settings, thinking about how these people got here, and trying to understand what their daily routines and lives really look like, from inside their bodies and heads. Much of this type of thinking can be done behind the wheel of a car, so I don't know how often the actual file will get pulled up.