Started trimming and fixing the second-person interlude-that-may-not-end-up-in-the-book. While doing so, I realized that part of it actually fits the end, because it says what needs to be said--what my MC needs to hear--as things are building/winding up.

So I moved a wee crucial piece of that second-person stuff to right before the MC makes his climatic decision. I will figure out exactly what to do with it later; probably it will turn into dialog.

Now that it's in place, though, the ending scenes are starting to feel less blobby in my head. Now the plot-story ending-sequence of scenes and the internal-story ending-sequence are starting to be the same thing. It's a very nebulous and sketchy same thing, but the point is that scenes are lining up less blobbily and I can now see that both types of story will be happening in each one.

I have no idea how this came about, but there it is. I believe I now have the nebulous and sketchy building blocks to make the book work.

As a writer friend likes to say: Trust the process.

Have been jumping around forcing myself to write the actual story parts of the book. It's tough going because my mind doesn't want to stay with this type of work and I keep suddenly getting up and going to do something else.*

This has made me realize that I've gotten to a point where I need to work out a good map for the story world. I've been sticking to vague general layouts in my head, but I need to pull them together on paper and get them nailed down--including distances and direction--because I can't get this thing grounded properly until I do. I also need to get specific sites in my head for some of these scenes I'm adding, for the same reason: proper grounding.

Today I made myself start filling out the big conversation between the MC and the main secondary character, the one that's the "reveal" for the book. As I did so, I had to go back to side documents where I'd moved freewriting and background work, and had to copy and paste bits over into the main document. As I did that, I admitted to myself that the reveal seems stupid and gimmicky and hokey, and I noticed that the side pieces give the "reveal" heft (in my mind, anyway) that makes it not seem quite so stupid.

I also see no way to work those side pieces into the ms** without doing what's been in the back of my mind all along, which is suddenly cutting, after 20 or whatever chapters, to another POV character. And not only that, but doing it in second person.***

I have avoided committing to anything about this part of the book because it's an extremely terrible idea to suddenly snap into another POV and voice, especially so late, after the reader's quite firmly entrenched in the MC's POV and voice. And it's most especially a terrible idea to do it using second person, which requires an even greater leap from the reader--a leap which quite a few readers are never able to make. But this growing feeling that my crucial plot information is stupid and hokey has driven me to go ahead and let this one breakout chapter go the way it wants to go, against all sane self-advice. If nothing else, it'll eventually help me see what absolutely has to be there, that might be worked in in other ways. And maybe if the book gets published I can put the chapter online, if it's totally messing up the book's flow.



*On the bright side, my teeth have never been so well flossed.

**Because there's no way my characters would discuss all this in any depth, much less the depth that would make the reveal seem less gimicky.

***The reason it's in second person is because that's the way it came out and that's the way it wants to be. Later, another option might be to try putting into first person and letting it be an extended monologue disguised as dialogue. However, it has resisted going this direction so far--hence, the side document storage rather than placement in the full ms.

Still developing and fleshing out the pieces that were supposed to make up chapter 11 & 12. I'm taking a small, confined mess and--far from shaping or sculpting it--I'm creating an even bigger, more sprawling mess. I feel that I'm close to losing my grip on the material entirely. But I also know that if I push any of this to fit a certain preconceived story structure, I'll smush all the life out of it (having made that mistake before, I knows it when I sees it).

It occurs to me that now might be a good time to do some more side thingees from my main secondary character's POV, because in some of these dialogs I'm writing, he's beginning to spout information while I don't have a clue how he's feeling toward the people he's talking to, or in the scene in general.

OTOH, it also occurs to me that side thingees from a secondary character are even farther from the story and book than the current sprawling mess I've enmeshed myself in. I could end up miles away from my story and utterly lost.

Well, I think I will try a thingee or two and see what happens. Lord help me.

Today's mantra: Trust the process. Trust the process. Trust the process. Trust the process.

I printed out the first 107 pages to read over tomorrow. It's a scary little stack of paper, lying there on my desk saying, "I may suck, and if I do that means you haven't moved forward even one single solitary inch in six months of writing."

I know I've actually done a lot in six months, and I know that six months is an arbitrary number anyway because I have no clue where I stood with this half a year ago. But still, that's what it's saying to me. It's saying, "Be afraid. Be very afraid." And I am. I don't want to have to trash fifty pages of writing and start them over from scratch. I want to be able to move into the next fifty pages and start pulling those pieces together.

It was a good writing day, though. One especially nice part was when I went through a scene more carefully to figure out where everybody really was and why, and it turned out that one of the characters went and had a conversation offstage with another character. I pulled up a side file and wrote that out, and it was surprising and enlightening. Now my MC gets to find out that they were talking, and he will be disturbed and confused by the knowledge. Heh heh.

I'll try to think about that instead of what might happen tomorrow.

Very productive writing day--2000 words, all freewriting from pov of secondary character on whom the book hinges. I never lost interest, for nearly 10 hours of writing. It starts in scene near the beginning of the book and goes through deeply and inch-by-inch via SC's pov, using second person present.

I really don't want to write the whole d@mn book out twice if I can avoid it*, so I hope I can get going enough to eventually start skipping around and just figuring out this guy during certain key points in the story. Not sure which points, just so long as I don't have to, like I said, write inch by deep inch through the whole novel twice (or g*d forbid, three times, for the sake of that third character who's so important, the antagonist).

I figure the type of freewriting I did today is interesting enough that if the book gets published, I can publish these pieces on a website as a supplement to the novel. It really is fascinating (to me, anyway) to get the same info from this other guy's view, with access to his secrets and his extremely unusual way of seeing the world.



*And I hope I didn't just jinx myself by saying that out loud.

I suddenly realized I'd better make sure I've got something with me for the reading I'm supposed to do in VT. I don't have anything halfway cohesive* that will also fit in the designated time slot, so I decided I'm just going to e-mail myself some freewriting from the dystopian and read that. It's a bunch of rough and nearly unintelligible pieces, but hey, that's where I'm at in my writing right now. A book does not spring forth fully formed from the mind of its author. Life behind the curtain is messy and sometimes downright ugly.

As I starting pulling out pieces and putting them into one document, I saw that I'd better explain to the audience what I'm using them for, as far as helping me to get the book written. Otherwise, my reading is going to sound like random selections from the backs of different cereal boxes.

The last piece I'll probably read is one that will end up as an actual scene near the climax of the book. Right now there's not much to it, and there's also a gap where the character epiphany takes place; the MC makes his choice and acts on it in this scene, but he currently has no reason for doing so. I just know that he does, I know it for sure, and so I know there's a line or two missing that shows the exact moment where the previous 2oo or however many pages of the book add up to make him decide: I will now do ____.

In short, one of the huge epiphanies that helps form the core of the book is missing.

But here's what happened: I wrote out a brief explanation of the scene for the reading. Then I moved on and tried to succinctly explain the gap.** And as I was trying to explain about the gap, I suddenly noticed that, back when I'd explained the scene, I'd also unknowingly written out what drove the MC to make his choice. It's pretty funny, really. In struggling over how to word the fact that I didn't have a clue what I was doing, I accidentally wrote down exactly what I was doing.

They say God looks after fools.

So anyway, it feels good to have this pinned down as I move forward with the ms. Having a grip on that one wee but crucial spot will help me carve the whole thing into shape.


*I'm not flying 1500+ miles to bore myself to tears by reading from one of my already-carved-in-stone books. The only thing that's interesting to me about doing a reading is if I'm reading something I'm still trying to figure out. Because then I can hear how it sounds and catch pacing problems I wouldn't normally see just from looking at it on a computer screen or on paper.

**Because VT College is, after all, a writing school. If I know there's a gap in my ms, I don't want anybody to think it's okay. I want them to understand that a gap is there and needs to be fixed.

Worked on writing-related stuff, then sat down to swordfighting WIP. I'm basically just spewing out backstory and going into detail whenever I feel like it, and it's all floating explanation and description with no scenes grounded enough to be truly set. It's almost freewriting. The funny thing is, I'll bet I could go on for a long time just getting all the backstory put down on paper, especially since I'm probably going to go ahead and write out the backstory for at least three characters, and maybe four characters and part of a fifth. Yow. We're talking a loooooong time.

I suppose I'll go ahead and admit to myself that the reason I don't mind doing this is that if I really end up trying to write a (short) series with a clear and finite arc (a la some manga series), I guess I'd better have a grip on the whole entire arc from every POV before I get started. Sad but true. I hope that bus doesn't come along and hit me anytime within the next decade, because I've got a lot to get done.

Spoke to a writer friend and will meet over breakfast to discuss the Vermont lecture and handout I'm preparing. I thought about printing out part of the former GN to show, but quickly nixed that idea because WF has already seen the first 30 or whatever pages a million times, and the rest is in humongous chunks. What I need help with is the very, very big picture, getting the humongous chunks mortared together. I decided to go ahead and print out what I have (the chunks, not the parts I'm messed up about), and maybe take it to breakfast, but mainly I printed it out to keep on hand for when I have time and am in the mood to attempt to see the very, very big picture myself.

Pages 1-68 are one humongous chunk. Then pages 95-176 are one humongous chunk. If you look at either of those, there's something to work with as far as critique. But the inbetween is a mess, and the afterwards is still in early stages and probably doesn't have enough grit for a reader to get much footing on what I'm trying to do with it.

I suspect that if I look back to a year or six months ago I'd see that I had the first 30-40 pages mostly together, and little more than that. So I may be making progress. But I'm not going to go look because who cares what I was doing a year or six months ago? I'd rather be trying to figure out what I need to do next. I guess it's nice to know I have made forward progress, but it would definitely feel better to actually be in the middle of forward progress than thinking about past forward progress.

No writing--or not much, anyway. When I've done any, it's been thingees for the swordfighting ms. My present approach seems to be writing down anything I feel like writing, no matter who it's about or when it takes place. If this continues, at some point I'll have about ten million words worth of cr*p to weed through and pull together. At the moment I don't really care, though. I'm just writing whatever feels fun or good. It's like a stress reliever.

Days feel very scattered right now, and my thoughts do, too. Today was my last day of enforced writing time at the library for this semester, two hours worth. To me, two hours isn't enough time to get into a solid and productive writing groove. If I know I've only got two hours, I'd usually rather pick something to play around with than something that requires a sweeping train of thought. Today I'd planned to do some more playing with the swordfighting thingee. However, after I pulled it up, I just sat and stared at it, and then suddenly decided I felt like playing around with a sliver of the middle part of the former GN instead. I'm relieved to know the former GN is still alive and kicking, in the back of my head if nowhere else.

So today I worked on a few hundred words at most of the former GN, but it's new stuff, a part I haven't ventured into before, so hooray. No idea what I'll do with it, but it was a part that had to be done, only it was so emotionally heavy I'd been reluctant to turn my thoughts in that direction. I guess there can be a good side to having scattered days, because you can dig into slightly unpleasant pieces of writing, then when writing time's up, the unpleasant stuff goes away immediately because there are so many other real life tasks and issues that push it out of your brain.

Random stuff:

1. Yesterday I worked on the w-f-h proposal, and also watched a TV show about the same subject. It's not something I know a lot about, so I'm trying to get a feel for a real-life situation that would work. I'm also trying to use this proposal as an opportunity to think deeply about how I can pull plot and character together in ways that work for me--and I noticed yesterday that the real-life situation doesn't quite match the tone the publisher wants. Somehow I have to try to navigate between subtle psychological evolution and splashy eye-catching hooks.

2. While I was waiting for new tires (to replace the ones that I suddenly realized were on the verge of blowing out), I started reading a current book by an extremely popular author, the rare kind of author who is actually growing rich from writing books. I was reading along being pulled in and caring about the characters--and growing impressed by being made to feel that way--when suddenly the story went off on a weird preconceived plot-driven tangent that was titillating, provocative, and kind of insane, if you ask me. If I was fourteen, I bet I'd eat it up. But holy cr*p, it was waaaay off target writing-wise. I was thinking, okay, this is what I need to keep in mind as I work through the proposal. My target audience is a fourteen year old who wants to be shocked and titillated, the way the fourteen-year-old me wanted to read V.C. Andrews and The Exorcist. But I also have to write something I can stand to work on for months at a time. Therein lies my dilemma.

3. Today I worked some more on my thingee* for the swordfighting ms. I noticed that at the end of two days' worth of work, I had a complete scene and knew what the point of it was. It already has a clear arc (character-wise, of course) that could be part of a story line. If I was working my normal way, I'd do this again and again and then figure out how the scenes fit together to make a plot to go with the character arc. Unfortunately, this scene takes place about eight years before the events of the book, and this character isn't currently the main one.

4. What I need to think about: Is there a way to combine my natural way of working and a preconceived plot? Or, if I go with the flow and write whatever feels like it needs to be written without thinking about plot at all, will the ms eventually disclose the shape it wants to take? I guess the question is, how much do I have to push, and when and where, to get a workable end result?

5. I think it was the last post where I mentioned Murphy's Law. But Murphy's Law is something like "Anything that can go wrong, will." I think the one I meant was the Peter Principle. And it's a sign of my state of mind lately that a few weeks ago I was having small writing epiphanies in the wee hours around dawn, but now this is the kind of suck-@ss epiphany I get. "Wait! That's not Murphy's Law! You called it the wrong thing!" I suppose one should be grateful for any kind of epiphany, though.

*I call it a thingee when you write stuff on the side to work out a character. Usually it's just the character's thoughts or feelings about something, but it could be the character's own words, or a journal entry, or a scene unrelated to the story, or anything. In this case it started as me writing down why the character was a certain way, and it turned into a scene from his childhood.

Did family and house stuff all weekend. Today I wrote in-scene backstory about one of the characters in the swordfighting ms. I'm wondering what will happen if I keep going in this direction--will I get loads of backstory written about everybody, then have a bazillion pages I still don't know what to do with? How is doing this going to help me figure out how to structure the story?

It feels like I'm at a plateau--like when you're trying to lose weight, or trying to exercise at a certain level, and you hit a place where your results don't change anymore, and it feels like that's where you're going to stay. It feels like I'm at a place where my reach is permanently doomed to exceed my grasp. Now, you could say it's Murphy's Law--people rise to the level of their own incompetence--or you could say it's a plateau and you can break through it if you keep trying, keep switching things up, keep trying to think outside the box you've put yourself in. I'm going to go easy on myself and say it's a plateau that can be broken out of, and not my own particular level of incompetence.

And I'm going to keep on just doing what I'm doing, writing out pieces I like while waiting for lightning to strike. I'm going to the Vermont College residency in January, so I'm hoping to see and hear things that I can use to shake my brain up and maybe kick my abilities up a notch.*

I wonder how Megan Whalen Turner thinks. I'll bet she thinks like one of my writer friends, who writes in a straight line, and whose brain has a natural ability to combine character and plot at the same time. I can't do that. I don't know if it can be learned--but if it can't, there surely is some way for a confirmed non-plotter to achieve the same results while coming at it from a different--and perhaps more labor-intensive--direction.


*Not that the book that might come out of all this angst would be great literature or anything. It's not about writing a master work, it's about being able to do something I'm unable to do right now:

"I would rather have the two hundred fifty-six imperfect books that mark the vectors of my journey through my art form than to have one perfect book that marks nothing but its own perfect self."--Barry Moser

Yesterday I had other things going on, but I decided to write a little anyway. Unfortunately it looks like I'm switching things up again because I pulled out the swordfighting ms and did a wee bit of work on that. I would much rather have worked on the former GN--and I did think about it some--but everything I need to do on it right now involves thinking in a creatively organizational way, and that part of my brain ain't working at the moment. That part is just flatlining, for some reason.

By creative organization, I mean pulling the story parts together in a way that rises and builds. I mean looking at the pieces I have and being able to see ways to link them into one big, connected picture. I can't see squat at the moment, as far as that's concerned. Dunno why, but it's probably to do with the multiple other things going on in writing and real life. Sometimes a creative part of your brain just gets drained, and all you can do is wait for it to fill back up.

I wrote a new beginning for the swordfighting ms, pulled together from old beginnings and one made-up new part. I backed up and started in the middle of action again, and at the moment I have three POV characters, third person past limited for each. I did this because I know I want to play around with structure and timeframe to see if I can get something about this story to work. However, with the creative organizational part of my brain on vacation, I can't move any farther than that on the ms. So today I'll probably write a "thingee," backstory or whatever I feel like writing from the pov of one of the three characters. He could end up being a POV character. Or not. But today will probably be freewriting along those lines.

It did occur to me yesterday that if I had a lot more skill than I do now, I could probably pull this ms into something really cool, like some of Louis Sachar's work that I admire for his plotting and POV changes. I love the way Holes' plot fits together, but my favorites of his books are Sixth Grade Secrets and Boy In the Girl's Bathroom. Oh, and the Face one--Boy Who Lost His Face? Is that the title? Anyway, I wish I had Sixth Grade Secrets, but I lent my copy to one of the neighbor kids who never brought it back. But I remember while I was reading it that I thought it was cool the way Sachar kept changing POVs yet never lost me. I'm a very easy reader to lose, so the fact that he didn't says something.

The fact is that I've got this swordfighting story down. I just don't know how to tell it. If I start with the exciting part, the emotional arc is dead. If I go chronologically, it's boring and overstuffed (to me it is, anyway). So: how do I make it work on all fronts at the same time? I do not know.

Side note: I don't think I mentioned I heard that a fellow writer who has been reworking the same ms for maybe a decade finally figured it out. Thus raising (if rumor is true) what was a perfectly good publishable ms to a great one that achieves the potential the author has been holding out for all along. This is awe-inspiring, but it also makes me wonder if I have this kind of intestinal fortitude. I'm thinking I may not. I'd like to hope I do, but I'm not sure I have the strong sense of writing self it would require to look at a good, publishable ms, and say, "No, not yet--I can do better." I mean, I know I kind of do this a little bit already, but not anywhere near the degree we seem to be talking about here. Maybe. Will have to read the book when it comes out.

Very tired. I knew I was going to have to sit in a waiting room for two hours today (as usual for Tues. and Thurs.), and suddenly could not bear the thought of another two potential writing hours frittered away while I tried to find something, anything, to do--including finishing that book I was reading. I know I can't do any real writing in a waiting room, but it hit me that I could work on my thingee, and that would be two hours of thingee-time freed up somewhere down the line for real writing. So I asked son #1 if I could borrow his laptop instead. He said yes (thank g*d) so I worked on the thingee. Laptops s*ck. They don't seem to really be made for laps, or at least not for my lap. My back is all knotted up. But I worked out some more background, stuff I didn't know, so that was good.

It's sobering to realize that in order to really do this properly, I probably ought to do a lot more pre-writing work. The way I envision this is as at least three books, each with a different MC. The thingee I'm working on now is for the character who would be the MC in book three. So every bit of work I'm doing now is necessary and will be used in full. It's not overdoing, and it's not just messing around.

However, the thought of having to do this--the background for three books at once, when I don't even have the proper feel for the first one--is overwhelming. I don't want to do all that right now. I want to write one book at a time, not spend four years or whatever putzing over the background for books that won't even start to exist unless I can sell the first one. I mean, anything could happen in the time it's going to take me to do this. I could get hit by a bus, or be forced to quit writing, or my house could burn down or my computer could explode.

I hate patience. I never wanted it. I don't even think it's a virtue. I think it's something other people tell you to have when they want you to behave in a way that's more convenient for them. But by g*d, if you want to be a writer, patience is forced upon you against your will. You have no choice. You'll be slowly covered in patience till you're smothered by it.

So. What must be done, must be done. To work. Sigh.

Wrote a little on the thingee, then transferred what I've figured out to the first scene where that character appears. Works like a charm; now the guy is talking and interacting and saying things to indicate his state of mind, where before he was silent, unknowable, and generally fuzzy and difficult for the reader to pin down.

Now all the chapter breaks are shifting and scenes are changing focus and length and will have to be cut differently. Everything will have to be repaced to fit this new angle of approach. This is clearly going to be a major, major overhaul. Not quite from the ground up yet, but it's close, and it will definitely be from the ground up by the time I get to the middle third. Boy, I'm dreading that! I wish that by some miracle I could have some clue what I'm doing by then, but honestly, I don't see it happening.

Well, best not to think about that right now.

Did a page or so of thingee*. Then was thinking, while I mowed the back yard, about this book I was trying to read in a waiting room today. It's hard for me to finish reading published novels because writing has ruined me for reading. I'm pretty sure I won't be finishing this one, either. However, I was thinking, while mowing, about the thingee I started, and about how there's a page of it and almost all of that is internal blah blah about how the character feels. I had intended to sit down and actually set the scene and write it in scene. But no, it came out all feelings. Then (while mowing) I realized that the book I'd been trying to get through in the waiting room had almost no feelings in it. It's very internal--yet I read maybe half the book and I still have no clue how anybody felt. That's not necessarily a handicap for a book (especially if the book is plot-driven; this one wasn't), but it's generally not on my top ten list of things I enjoy reading. Or writing.

So I was thinking, maybe I need to go through my ms and consider in more detail how the two non-POV MCs (don't know what else to call them; they're not the MCs, but they're not minor characters) feel as the story unfolds. I hate to think the whole stinkin' book out step by step for two different characters (besides the one I've already done it for, the main MC), but maybe I should at least try. Sometimes I do think out scenes from non-POV characters' POV, but usually only for key scenes or to figure out what to do with bare-bones first draft dialog that I have to flesh out into a full scene. But with this book, since I'm working to stretch into a more plot-driven type of writing, maybe I'll have to go the extra mile. Otherwise, the story may not be "alive" like it should be.

Usually--maybe(?)--I start with feelings and work to let the story fall into place around them. With this ms, I'm trying to learn to start with story. I probably have to learn how to do feelings when they are set off or driven by what happens in the plot. I'm not at all sure how to approach this, or if I'm even on the right track. Will keep thinking.

No more writing today, though. Out of time.


*(my def. of "thingee"--pre-writing from any character's pov; usually helps flesh out and deepen ms; not often used in actual book although sometimes it can be cannibalized and pieces of it stuck in here and there)

Busy day; won't get much writing time in at all. I think I'll try sketching out a thingee for the MC's best friend. I'm foggy on him most of the time, so maybe this will help. I guess I'll start by sketching out the story from his POV, starting before he actually enters the ms. We'll see how far I get before I have to quit and do more house/family stuff.

desperation

What a crappy writing day. I don't even know what I wrote; I think I just moved a bunch of stuff around. Blech, blah, argh. I have no clue what I'm doing.

But I know what I'm going to do now. I'm going to abandon this stinking computer and get my nice spiral hardback journal that a writer friend gave me, and a pen I have with an actual nib (although unfortunately the ink is purple) and I'm going to just write stuff, little thingees and snippets from my MC's pov. Just. For. Me. This computer has too much writerly pressure hanging over it, like a big old cloud of Write For Publication Doom.

Hmm, well. A couple of issues present themselves. One, is this going to skew too far into adult territory? Methinks I'll eventually have to keep an eye on the violence and death bits, the way I usually do for sex scenes. There is no room for gratuitous sex in YA, not like in adult lit where you just stick some titillating stuff in because it's, well, titillating. Every word must have a job to do in a YA sex scene, or out it must go. I will have to keep the same mindset for violence, probably.

This MC is so unreliable, I'm tossing around the idea of multiple narrators. Usually when I toss this multiple-narrator idea around, it ends up being dead ends, thingees, and prewriting, all of which eventually fold back into the original single narrator I started with. But we'll see.

This is why it takes so freakin' long to write a book.

But I sort of feel that if there were multiple narrators, the other two would be third person past. While the MC is first person present. The only book that comes directly to mind that has done something similar is--or are--Tales of the Otori. Huh, let me check. Lian Hearn used first person past for Takeo and third person past for everything else, mostly Kaede, I think. Maybe all Kaede. I remember the first time I read Across the Nightingale Floor, I had to stop each time the voice changed, and reorient myself. That's not good--but it was well worth it, in Lian Hearn's case. However, I am no Lian Hearn.

I also want to take another look at Silence of the Lambs. I know it switched to the killer's pov at some point, but I don't know how far in. And now that I think about it, how did Thomas Harris keep my interest up till then? It's been so long since I've read it, I can't remember.

I also had the terrible thought today that I might have to have a plot in this book. I'm looking at the pieces I have, and thinking that yes, an actual plot may be what is needed to pull it together. The only problem being that I still don't know how to plot. I am making baby steps into figuring it out, but only baby steps, and not very good baby steps at that.

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.