I looked at the parts I was worried about, and my initial impression is that yes, I was being unhelpfully neurotic, and that they're okay for now.

Now I hate to do it, but I'm going to cut some pages that I like, because I need to get to the point and keep the story moving. Sometimes you read over a ms and there's a point where it seems to loosen up suddenly. It's like the storyline took a Valium and you can put your finger on the place where it kicks in.

Was thinking last night that some problems to keep in mind are the huge differences between the first part of the ms, the second part, and the third part. I was going to say the difference is in tone, but I think it's more than that. The voice, the rhythm, the style, and the themes seem different, too. Somehow I'll have to think how to pull them all together. One thing is make sure the theme of the first part continues all through the book. I need to focus on the choices the MC has and doesn't have. I need to not let the story turn into a list of things that happen to her that she can't do anything about.

Need to work out how to move from general narration to specific scenes. It's weird in this WIP, because each page is an entity to itself, so the flow is completely different from a normal book. There aren't many (if any) transitions; the general narration, which is mostly telling about the culture, the relationships, and the world of the book, leads straight into specific scenes. So over and over I have something like "They do things a certain way because blah blah blah. And so one night the MC is doing things that certain way, when....". It feels wrong, it feels splotchy and disconnected.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just being neurotic about it. Well, I know I'm being neurotic about it, but maybe this time it's in a non-constructive way.

No writing today. However, I did get some work done last night. Mainly I moved pieces around on the former GN, trying to sort them out so they make sense in a bigger picture and build a story. This is work as usual for me, it's how I've written novels from day one--I get chunks of story, but then have to figure out how to line them up thematically and plot-wise. I don't know why this is more comfortable for me--and less mind-numbingly boring--than just sitting down and writing a story straight through.

Anyway, I think perhaps it's best to try and think about all this without fretting over the framework needed to hold it together (framework in this case meaning out-of-pov pieces that provide foreboding and context). It occurred to me last night that I don't have to have framework between every section. What I could do is have long "chapters" composed of related sections, and just have framework between the "chapters." But I may need to get the story into place and get a grip on the bigger picture before I can see how the framework needs to function, exactly--how often it needs to be there, for one thing.

No writing. Medium-sized crises that hopefully don't escalate to major ones. I'd like to try to write tonight, but we'll see.

Yesterday, after half a day of "have-to" type stuff, I pulled up the former GN and got more of it into shape. Then today I was able to work on it nearly all day, cutting around 50 pages and one character. I'm going to bring another character back, one I'd decided to cut earlier and who's already mostly gone from the ms.*

Now it all makes sense, mostly. I see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel--not that the ms is anywhere near being finished, but there's a possibility that this time, finally, I may be getting it right. Fingers crossed--and if this particular train of thought doesn't work out, well, what else is new?



*Thinking about it, the character I'd tried to keep but ended up cutting today was there for plot. There are only one or things about his sections that I enjoyed, and I can use them elsewhere for other people. As of today, he's entirely lopped out.

But I never quite managed to entirely get rid of the character I tried to cut before. Her personality and the things she said were just too good, and too fun. I wanted to cut her because she didn't do anything for story. But now I see that she can take over some of the duties of the newly cut character as well as getting a bunch of other tasks done--all arising naturally from her personality and situation. There's nothing about her that's a chore to get in, while most of the other character's scenes tended to turn ponderous and the story couldn't hold my interest while I was writing them.

With all the cutting today, I may bring the baby back, too. There may be room for it now. We'll see.

No writing. Swimming upstream through real life stuff.

Yesterday I worked on the w-f-h sample and had great fun with it. Then I switched to the former GN and had a good time with that, too.

Then today I pulled up the w-f-h sample and tried to continue, but what was fun yesterday seemed silly today. I think it'll be okay, though--I probably just need to be in the proper frame of mind to work on it. Maybe a day off, a day on.

The former GN--I dunno. I worked on that all today. I think I need to wrap my mind around the whole ms as a unit so I can knit all the parts together and keep them heading toward one goal. And I'm thinking the theme is what I need, in order to do the knitting.

I have a lot of things on my mind while writing this, and they shift around. But some of them are: choices, risk, cost, fate. For example, when is it worth the risk to make a try for happiness? I think the answer may seem different depending on whether you're looking ahead to make the choice, or looking back after you know what the fallout was.

Is it worth it to take action in pursuit of freedom, if your own life is at stake? What about other people's lives? What if their lives are only risked by the choices they make as a result of your action?

Who is the better person, the one who accepts an unpleasant destiny and makes no fuss? The one who maintains hope that destiny can be changed? The one who fights fate, even knowing fully that failure lies in the end?

All of the above is way too much for me to hold in my head. I'd need to work it down to one strong idea, to be able to use it as a tool to knit my book together. And I don't know yet if this general train of thought is the proper thematic glue, or if it's just the usual dips and dabs of stuff I like to think about and explore in writing a book.