Further thoughts re. Heian diaries and former GN...

I was thinking about all the things the diaries don't mention--like names, and sometimes big chunks of the authors' lives, like, er, their own families. Many times the things the books don't mention are the very things that defined the roles and borders of the authors' lives in the real world, in their society and culture. That's one reason so many of the books have such an ethereal feel to them.

In the former GN, I've got a similar situation, where the MC is completely defined by other people and by her role in her culture/society. I've been trying to create her story...when it's not there. What I need to do--what I've actually already semi-done without noticing--is to create the stuff that's going on around her, and let the blank spaces that are left over define who she is. That's what the book is supposed to be, I think.

I'd already figured out that this is what's going on format-wise--white space helps define the character and tell the story. But I haven't carried that over to the actual choices I'm making about the written part. The written part needs to be like--well, okay, it's like the MC is an empty outline, but the reader won't be able to see that outline until I've filled in everything around her, by telling what's going on with all the other characters. She's a peripheral character in her own story, and the point is that we don't get her for herself. That was truly the point all along, and I've always known it was--I just never thought of being able to come at the writing part in that way.

In fact, I actually have been doing this all along in the writing, only I've been fighting it. All along the ms has kept going off to include everybody else's POV, while I never could quite nail the MC herself. I have continually assumed that this was a failure on my part. Creating sympathetic female characters has never been one of my strong points, so I've been pushing and pushing myself to overcome my weakness, to get this story down in a typical way, to figure out the MC's POV even though she doesn't really want anything because she's never had a chance to understand that it's okay to want something. I think I've been so busy reminding myself what I can't do well that I haven't noticed what the story's been trying to tell me.

I'm even thinking that all the saggy parts may fall out if I can handle this correctly, because I know what everybody else is doing during those times and what they want and need, and how it affects the MC.

It's going to be tough to write, but I've got 200+ pages to go over and "unforce"--to convert to however it's really wanted to be all along--and as I do so maybe I can see how it fits together to make a book. It's all in third person, and some of the formating choices are clear already, but the switches in time and POV will need some serious consideration. It'll be interesting to see how this develops. Essentially I need to try to write a book where the main character is continually a secondary character in her own story, but somehow it works anyway. Yeah, interesting challenge.

I was reading a blog post decrying the lack of strong female MCs, and I realized that I've got to try to cover some more bases here. I know I have zero hope of getting some people to see the things I'm trying to explore, but I do have to be as clear as possible in order to maybe catch a few of them and maybe even get the ms published. Then I'll just have to sit still for abuse from the ones who don't get it, ugh. So be it.

Specifically, I have to spell out: This is what the MC's world is like. This is what she has to deal with. Like the majority of women throughout history, her choices are so limited as to be nil. She has no power whatsoever. Like the majority of women throughout history, she lives in a world controlled by men. The men are not all bad--it's the world view that's bad. The world view warps the men just as much as it stunts the women. Swords would not help this. There are too many swords already, and they're doing what swords are meant to do: butcher enemies and control the balance of power.

So that's the kind of thing I was tweaking today: clarifying the world view, driving home the lack of choices and power.

I really don't know how to keep the reader from expecting some kind of big confrontation or battle at the end. No idea how to keep this turned inward. And really no idea how to make the fact that the solution is brought by a knight on a white horse palatable to a reader. However, that's what happens. No getting around it.

When I think of some of the other writing-related stuff I'm having to consider right now--market-directed writing-related stuff--I'm pretty sure this ms is doomed, doomed, doomed. I'm willing to live with that. I don't like it--but I'll live with it if I have to. No regrets.

No writing on Thursday due to family stuff, but lots of writing on Fri. and Sat. So much that I lost focus and eventually derailed myself, heading off in unhelpful directions. I think it won't be a big deal to get back into gear, though. Some of what I did is okay; I just need to backtrack and figure out what the story was doing on its own before I made it trail off into weird detours of thought.

In discussion of another book, a writer friend was saying something that touched on a point that's already been nagging me in the back of my mind. WF says, basically, that book characters are sometimes tagged as being worth caring about because they have some kind of artistic sensitivity (my words, not WF's). I agree with this. (think Girl with a Pearl Earring, A Northern Light, and a million other books that aren't popping to mind right now.) Also agree that often in YAs and midgrades, the artistically sensitive MC is stuck or trapped somewhere, and the unspoken implication is that everybody else who's stuck or trapped with him/her, but who doesn't have this sensitivity or gift, is basically cannon fodder. We're rooting for the MC get free from his/her present situation because clearly this person is one step above and deserves better.

So what I'm thinking is that this gifted MC who's stuck or trapped is a shorthand tag writers sometimes use to make the stuck/trapped situation more touching. And it's used so much, and it's so accepted, that the reader's probably going to wonder why an average MC who doesn't have any special "gift" deserves to be freed or rescued. This speaks directly to the former GN ms. The MC isn't super smart and has no particular talent. Also, since she's a girl and I'm the one who wrote her, she's probably not very likable, either. What I'd like to do is focus on the situation being wrong, for everyone--not make somebody the star who deserves to be free. Everyone in the story deserves better.

Thinking about it, what the shorthand does is work backwards. It invests you in this clearly very special character so that you then start considering the actual situation more deeply. But I don't like that. It's a tool a writer can use to good effect--but I don't like what it implies.

As I see it now, the only choice is to get raked over the coals for having a MC that isn't special or outstanding enough and therefore I didn't give the reader a reason to care. However, you can do a lot by stating things straight out in the ms. I may be able to find ways to get the reader to focus on the system, the situation. Will see. I'm a little leery because that's what got me off track yesterday, was letting my thoughts overwhelm the story.

Printed out the first 65 pages, but didn't read past the first page because the first page sucks. Really bad. The first page is the prologue/frame before the real story starts. It needs to be right, or it needs to be gone.

So I sat down to rewrite it, thinking, "Okay, what is the point here?"

Basically, I decided, the point of this page is to lay out the reason for the book. As I tried to fix it, I reminded myself that the end frame needs to come back around to this same point. I also realized that I need to come back to it in the middle, too--that I went off course while dabbling around in the middle because I didn't have this point in mind.

I also get off course in this particular middle spot because if I focus on theme, I lose story, and on top of that I already don't have a good grasp of characterization here because the MC's experiences are so far from my own. I'm wondering if maybe I just need to get the basic skeleton of theme down, and worry about the rest later. Getting it right may take help from outside readers who can tell me what they're missing or what they don't understand or what they don't find believable.

Anyway, so I worked this morning and fixed the first page (for today, anyway) and then moved to page 60 and started reworking from there. When I get tired of that, I can start reading the printout if I want to.

Today has been busy, but I worked a little on the former GN, digging very slightly into the missing middle. I have only a general idea of some of the plot points that must be covered, but that's all. Today I was trying to think, "What do I need, in order to decide how to approach this section?" I decided that I need to zero in on the MC's character arc/emotional realizations. If I can get that in mind, it ought to help me understand some of the specific scenes that would arise, and ways to shape them.

The problem, of course, is that the MC is a girl, and I have trouble with girl characters. I know this character arc, but I guess it's so internalized that I'm going to have to work hard to recognize it in a concrete, hands-on way, and then to verbalize it.

Good luck to me, because I'm going to need it.

I wonder if girl characters tend to be less developed than boy characters in YA--if they tend to be more broadly painted? Because it sure seems like they're not allowed to have the same failings as boy characters. If they're allowed fewer or more minor flaws, doesn't that mean they're necessarily less developed?

Examples: Are girl characters allowed to lose their tempers in the same ways and to the same degree as boy characters? Are they allowed to be as close-minded? As negative? As insensitive? As horny? As judgmental? As violent?

Printed out first 40 or so pages and started going over them. (Yes, again.)


Concerns:

Do I find myself skimming as I read because it's not grabby enough--or because I've read it three million times already?

Is it too fairy-tale-ish in tone?

Does it get too glib in Chapter 3? (I already know the answer to this one: Yes.)



Non-concerns:

It flows okay.

Most of the backstory could possibly be in the right place for now.

Most of the description isn't tripping me up.



Things to think about:

That girl character needs to be a human being, not a piece of cardboard.

Maybe look at fairy-tale-overtone words (princess, palace) and consider whether any other terms will do.


Hmm. I think developing the girl character (even though she's a hundred yards away and doesn't say anything) will also do away with of much of the glibness, and maybe even some of the fairy-tale overtones. Not sure what to do exactly, though. Must think.

When I get around to working on my own stuff, it will be the swordfighting ms. However, it wasn't the swordfighting ms I was thinking about today while Tyson and I were walking; it was the former GN. Technically that's closer to being finished than the swordfighting ms is. Most of it seems to be in place. The story is all laid out, I've got a goodly portion of the actual writing done, and when I do sit down to work, the GN ms tends to go faster than the swordfighting ms just because the writing itself is so streamlined.

The problem, I decided today, is that I don't have a character arc. Without a character arc, the ms is just a bunch of words set down in order. I have the story arc, and if you asked me I could probably tell you what and how the character feels and changes. But I don't have a grip on it scene by scene.*

I had a lot of thoughts about this (I think T. and I walked about three miles), but some are fading and they were scattered to begin with. Some of them had to do with girl characters, about the goals that girls have in real life vs. the goals they have in books. Historically, a girl's goal was to marry well. Period. But that's not the kind of goal that makes you want to read a book. Some other thoughts were about how a lot of the time people (esp. kids and teens) simply don't have one strong goal they struggle to attain, the way book characters generally do. There are more Bella Swans in real life than there are Harry Potters. And still other thoughts were about the same old problem that keeps rearing its head, the problem of a negative character goal.** Do you have to reframe a character's negative goal as a positive goal in order for a story to work? Even if you don't, does it have to happen subconsciously--I mean, would a new, unbiased reader see a positive goal for your character, even though you were never really thinking about it or writing in that direction? Or are there things to keep in mind if you want a story to work with a negative character goal? Or is it a matter of the reader's goal for the character being different from the character's goal for his/herself?

The main thought that stuck with me from today, though, is that it'd be best to set the former GN aside until I know what my character wants. Or rather, until I feel what she wants. I can talk about what she wants all day, but if I'm not feeling it, it'll never get on the paper.




*It could be that I should feel discouraged by not having a grip on the heart of the story. But it could equally be that I should feel good to be struggling with the same basic problem in both my current WIPs. Both have an already-laid-out plot; I'm not just throwing character-driven scenes against the wall and seeing which ones stick. In both of my WIPs, I have to figure out how to have character-driven stakes in every scene and how to raise them in every scene--even though the stakes have already been decided for me in advance. So maybe I should feel good because it seems my writing mind is determined to force me to crack this problem, even though my two current mss are nothing alike and shouldn't have the same issues at all.


**Like, the character doesn't want something, s/he wants something not to happen.

Was thinking about the fact that nothing happens in this ms. That sounds like a bad thing, but maybe it's a key to pulling this together. Sometimes the entire point is that nothing happens. Sometimes in life we want something to happen, and when it doesn't we get frustrated and disappointed.

What does my character want? That's the tricky thing; she doesn't know what she wants. In fact, she's been taught all her life not to want. Her duty is to serve and support others. So maybe I need to think about that, about what the character arc is in terms of inner goals. It's already tough to work with a character who has negative goals--who wants something not to happen (this has been a subject of discussion many, many times over the years among writers I know, and I don't think we've ever completely come to grips with how to handle it). But I don't think I've ever had a character with no goals. Maybe part of the story is allowing herself to want something? Not sure. I think it's an important idea, because it speaks directly to what interests me about this ms--females and powerlessness in relationships.

I think maybe the thing to do for now is get the ms into basic shape, then set it aside and let the goal/character/theme stuff jell in the back of my mind. That's the only thing that will pull this ms from "nothing happening" to having something to say and giving the reader something to think about.

I cut a character out today. I hated to lose some of the bits she was in, but in the big picture she wasn't doing much--and I've already got so many characters to juggle anyway. We'll see if the story progresses okay without her. I suspect it will. I'm sorry about those lost bits, though, and am thinking about handing them to somebody else, albeit with trimming and other changes. Probably I'm just slowly talking myself into cutting even those last vestiges altogether. Somehow it's easier to swallow losing stuff I like if it vanishes little by little rather than all at one whack.

Was thinking about how people sometimes gripe about dead or missing parents in YA. Yeah, you try working in a couple of extra characters who not only don't do anything for the story, but actively undermine it because their function (by definition of "parent") is to ease the way for the MC and help solve his/her problems. I'm telling you, my MCs are lucky to ever have any parents at all.

I saw today that Kazuya Minekura has a series out called Wild Adapter, which I may try to get hold of. Apparently it's way upper teen, to the point where it's shrinkwrapped so the kiddies can't get hold of it. Today I was looking at son #2's D. Gray-man, and was really struck by the way it's almost all fighting by books 7 & 8. It's like, introduce a character and everybody fights. Then they fight some more. Then they get wounded, heal, get new powers, fight again. This is really the same for most of the manga I read, but what makes me like manga is character development. I like the backstories and flashbacks and gradual revelations about what drove somebody to be the way they are. Some of the manga just don't have that--and some have to it to start with, but as the series goes on and on all the depth is lost and the whole thing is just a series of fights.

Am still thinking about how to do these cut-to-flashback things in a novel. There doesn't have to be a rhyme or reason to it in manga because the visuals give the clues and set up the change for the reader, but in prose it's bound to be very confusing. The ones I have in my WIP probably aren't working because they're too far apart, so the reader won't understand why the voice and style are suddenly different. It seems like there might have to be some kind of regular pattern to them. Or, I suppose, the design for those pages could just be different. Still, if they only happens once in a blue moon throughout the book, it's going to be confusing.

This also led me to thinking about my other WIP, the swordfighting one on the back burner. I thought, if I was doing it right, it would be more effortless, right? Maybe I just haven't found the way the story needs to be told. I thought about alternating viewpoints again--with much dread, because that's a hugely time-consuming dead end if it's not the right thing to do. And if I think about individual scenes, I just don't see there being enough for each character to chew on for a whole chapter at a time. I don't know. It's a project I still have to grow into, I guess.

I think writers who have families and/or jobs have to be able to shift gears pretty quickly if they want to write regularly. But sometimes if there's one shift too many I can't adjust quickly and I get this weird Twilight Zone feeling. Like, the past few days I've been working on a couple of w-f-h sample reading passages for first graders, so my head is totally in that place, but as of this morning I'm trying to turn it off and turn on the upper YA WIP part of my brain. In the middle of all this, family and jobhunting stuff keep popping in. Besides that, I've been maintaining a very low-level inner freakout over a rash of internet blather that's gotten into my head, where other writers are pontificating about the state of YA and the purpose of YA like it's not opinion but fact--FACT, I say!--and carved in stone, and which is threatening to make me feel like a Lose. Er.

And then in the middle of all this my paperbacks of Repossessed got delivered to my front porch today, and I had forgotten they get to have a silver medal printed on them.

I think my life is way ahead of the silver medals. The silver medals don't know that my fifteen minutes was over a little while ago and that this season's fifteen-minuters are about to take the stage. I've got a mortgage payment and Christmas coming up, a WIP that is a big f*cking mess--no, wait, two WIPs that are a big f*cking mess--and I have been a wreck for two days because it's very important that I nail 200 words of first-grade nonfiction, and I'm not sure how to do that.

Maybe I should have spent more time basking in the glow of silver medaldom. Maybe I should have milked my moment in the sun and done my share of pontificating and tried to store up some writerly ego for later. Oh well--too late now.

Anyhoo, I did dig into the WIP today--between all the other sh*t that keeps heading my way--and I am about to dig in again, and so far I'm feeling pretty darn good about it. For no discernible reason I started trying to flesh out some of the girls, and I like where it's taking me. It's not taking me farther, but it is taking me deeper. And now I see some places where I was skimming along, and I see that I need to go back and put myself in scene in a concrete way instead of coasting on generalities.

But enough of this. Back to the WIP.

Good writing day, and I'm not even finished yet.

Talked to a writer friend--will meet this weekend to discuss our WIPs and whatnot. There is nothing like digging into a good writing discussion with a kindred spirit.

As I was working through these scenes today, I began to step outside myself and see how it might look to an unsuspecting reader--and I felt little bubbles of semi-hysterical laughter rising inside. The poor reader is going to be reading along, and here's this midgrade historical young girl who just wants to have the same freedom the boys do. She's tired of being confined and suppressed, and she watches longingly as they practice with sword and spear, wishing she could try that in lieu of the incessant drudgery of spinning and weaving. And then this sweet old man appears, surprising her mid-wish...so what follows naturally is that he sees her potential and becomes her mentor and secretly teaches her the way of the warrior, and in the end she shows her skill and saves the day and is accepted by all as an empowered role model.

Except in my ms, the old man molests her and she learns her lesson: this is what happens if you step outside your place in a male-dominated society that regards females as property.

I swear, I've put a good bit of sex and violence up front to warn people. But I'm not sure it's enough. I really think I need a title that warns people, too. I don't like to blindside readers. I want them to be aware of what they might be getting into. I'm not trying to trick anybody.

Kind of busy today. Did a little bit of writing, worked into chapter two and went off on a small tangent--not a big one, and hopefully I can pull myself back into line tomorrow. I'm playing with a little bit of dialog, seeing what I can do to show more about the characters without getting stupid or losing track of who they are--always a danger for me, with a girl character.

In bigger news, I saw that the movie Troy was on, and ran to see the beginning fight scene, which I love, with Achilles' leopard-like grace and athletic economy. I love it when fight scenes are choreographed to character. Love the way this scene contrasts with the later one where Achilles tries to pull the same movement on Hector, poor good ol' Hector.

But it brought to mind my GN, and I was hit with a vague idea of what I need to do to get the story started off. Right now it starts with setting and world-building, and is very dull. But now I have an idea--not an exact one, but I think I'll be able to come up with something that will work. Whenever I get around to working on the GN.

So maybe the girl's arc looks like this: she starts out from a constricted life in which she has to be careful, fearful, and controlled--which naturally makes her resentful and perhaps a bit snappish (here comes the unlikeable character again, sigh). The events of the story must move her forward, point by point, to where by the end she is stepping into her own power; she's on the verge of exploring her abilities, limits, etc.

I think when the story starts, she lives a life under the control of others. During the course of story, she's...hmm...she's under a different kind of control until about a third of the way through. Then she's on her own, and must make her own choices, do her own thinking for the first time. So what about the last 2/3 of the story? What's her arc about then?

Must think some more.

I need to think about my girl character, because I strongly feel there was a turning point in her life, years before the story starts, that will help me define her. I know when the turning point was, and what caused it, but I don't know exactly what the point itself was--that is to say, how things changed for her.

This is the kind of thing I can sometimes figure out (if I'm lucky) while walking the dogs or mowing or driving kids to school (depending on how far, and how traffic is). But it's too stinkin' hot to walk dogs (over a hundred degrees every day, for a couple of weeks now), and it's too hot to mow long enough to really think that deeply, and school's out. I don't know how to think about stuff like this while I'm sitting still. I may try to, anyway--but it's like one of those cheap crackerjack-prize-type games where you have a little maze with a tiny ball in it, and the object is to tilt and maneuver to get the wee little ball to sit in a cutout hole. My brain is the tiny little ball, and I can't get it into the hole. It rolls everywhere all over the place and still won't land in the hole. It's frustrating.

Another thing is that, to me, there's a dichotomy between history and literature, when it comes to girl characters. In history, women are largely silent and we mostly hear about their lives through the writings of men. Women--and girls--from families of means and power (this is what's relevant in my WIP) had few options. It seems like MG and YA these days tend to give girl characters empowerment based on what we consider empowerment; they are role models for today's girls because they're spunky and sassy and--I cannot describe how this makes me cringe--they all learn to use a g.d. sword. * Swords which I'm thinking they seldom actually kill anybody with--but maybe they do, who knows. But I say, if that's the answer to female empowerment, just give 'em a gun and be done with it! Let's not wimp out; let's take the empowerment to its logical conclusion and show the girl blowing somebody's brains out.

Sword, schmord.**

But anyway, I'm more interested in the hard choices girls and women have had to make to survive or (occasionally) to prosper. I know the issue has to be simplified sometimes, to provide role models etc., but role models aren't my thing. Honestly, to me it looks like one of the primary means of control women had over their lives in the past was sex, by which they could sometimes manage men, to gain some measure of control, influence, or even power. G*d knows you can't put that in a MG or probably most YAs, and I don't really want to, at this point (in my GN, I definitely want to explore this in more depth--but that's on the back burner for now). At any rate, it seems to me that women usually only gained power if the men allowed them to have it, or if there was some kind of vacuum where a guy didn't step up to the plate and the girl stepped boldly in. Females had to take advantage of men's failings, to come into their own potential. And even then they were likely to be excoriated for it, either when other men came in to take over again, or by popular opinion, or by the tales passed down about them.

So it feels horrendously wrong for me to deliberately try to do the spunky-sassy thing. If it happens to come off that way, fine, but if I catch myself doing it, it will bring me to an utter, self-loathing halt. On the other hand, I don't think there's much tension or interest in a character who only has tiny changes in her arc because her life is so constricted.

Don't know. Must think. Hope I come up with something, although my own writing history says the outlook for doing so is dim.


* Must note inconsistency: some of my favorite, best-loved books have girls using swords, like Sherwood Smith's Duel books and Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint. I have no idea why I adore certain books and it doesn't bother me that the girls use swords in them. Maybe if I think about it, I could figure it out, but I really need to be digging in on my WIP today, getting my hands dirty, not cheerily skipping through my writing day forming theories about something somebody else has already written.

**Another inconsistency: I fully intend to give my girl MC a sword and let her learn to use it, in book 2, if that ever comes to pass.

(Consistency is for the timid, IMO. Embrace your inconsistency, flaunt it, I say!)

Very tired again. There's not really any time for writing today, but still I'm cramming in just a little before I have to turn to other things. It's like chipping away at a boulder, but at least I can say I chipped.

I'm greatly concerned about the girl character, whom I will have to figure out at some point, and probably soon. I can't do girl characters. I don't know why. They just turn out "unlikeable" to people who, er have money to buy mss with. It's very puzzling, because I swear I turned in one ms where the male character was a lying, cheating, stealing, swearing bully. So who was unlikeable? The girl character, because she was "prissy." I know some of the problem has to be my writing and the way I presented her, but I also think the world is really a screwed up place where prissy is a cardinal sin compared to being downright mean and criminal. And I can't help but think that the world has a screwed up view of women, too--that a female must have certain personality traits to be acceptable. Boys can steal and hit and lie, but g*d forbid a girl should want things clean or tidy. Because, you know, females never do that in real life.

What's really weird--and I may ask some writer friends for opinions on this--is that in my second book, Damage, I had alternating viewpoints during one stage in the process. One viewpoint was Austin, the eventual sole POV character. The other was Heather, his girlfriend. Heather was criticized as being unlikeable. Which she is, because she's selfish and conceited. But here's the thing: when I took her parts out and recast them through Austin's POV, she became bearable. Not any more likable, but not such a turnoff that it ruined the book. Okay--but why????? She was doing the exact same things she was doing from her own POV. She was thinking the same things, had the same motivation. So why was she acceptable from the guy's POV, but not on her own?

H*ll if I know.

So I've got this girl character now, in this WIP, who has the same problems as all my girl characters. She's unlikeable. People (who have money to buy mss) don't want to read about her. When I take out the stuff that pins her down and makes her real, she becomes a cipher. But the stuff that makes her real is the stuff nobody likes. I dunno.

This is going to have to be sorted out. There's just no way around it. But I'll be d*mned if I'm going to write a girl character that is conventionally "acceptable," with conventional flaws, just so that I can sell this ms. I might do it for w-f-h, but not for this. I'll spend the rest of my life sweeping the floors at Taco Bell with my head held high, and take the unfinished ms with me to my grave.

Not a bad writing day, post-hamburger. I thought about viewpoints and decided to try one of the newer characters, one of the ones I added most recently. It felt good, so that's something. We'll see how it feels tomorrow when I open the file.

This swordfighting WIP has had ongoing problems with the girl character (all my mss have problems with the girl characters). In this ms, the main girl is fuzzy and I can't wrap my mind around her, and even if I ever do on occasion manage to wrap my mind around her I can't keep it there. This is a major reason for all my trouble spots, because even if I know generally what happens in a scene, it can't happen realistically and in an interesting, story-forwarding way if the characters aren't driving the action. Without a nailed-down character, the story is a partial skeleton with no flesh or guts.

A writer friend points out a minuscule trouble spot very early on that, if nailed down, would set the tone for the girl character's entire arc. In this spot, I fuzz out and give the reader zero indication of who this girl is. Writer Friend suggests writing it out from the girl's POV. Excellent idea, Writer Friend!

It scares me though, a little. Thinking about it, I'm worried about getting off on some weird course. I have so many things in my head about this ms that take over whenever I try to start figuring out a character I'm weak on. I start pushing the characters around. What I need them to do seems carved in stone, when I'm really supposed to be letting them decide what to do. So...I think what I'll do is write a scene (or whatever I feel like writing) that's not going to be in this book, a scene that takes place afterwards, after everything in this story has been resolved. I think I'll see where she stands then. I won't be able to use any of this in the ms, of course. But jeezus, I hope it helps. I'm sick of not being able to get this right. It's like I'm trying to walk across a room and somebody keeps sticking a foot out to trip me. All I want to do is walk across the room! How freakin' hard can it be?

Maybe, after this thingee (my word for working-out-character bits that don't go in the ms), I should also write a thingee that takes place before this story. Don't know if I'll have time today, though.

So to write.