Man, today was one of those days that makes me love being a writer. I was really feeling stuck yesterday on what to do with the next scene. I knew that I was going to have to rewrite it pretty completely, and it's a scene that is pretty emotionally loaded, so I was really concerned about doing it right. Well, today I spent a good amount of time after work just thinking about what I could do with that scene. My wife went to a movie with some of her friends, so this was an ideal time for me to just try and figure this out.
It took about two hours of driving, running on the elliptical trainer (nothing like endorphins to help the writing process), and zoning out looking at the rain -- but I finally figured it out. The scene had been awkward before partly because of its content, partly because of its brevity, and partly because of how it touched on important issues without really explaining them properly (because there were certain things I didn't want to give away yet). Well, I figured out how to fix all that, and I did it without giving away more than I wanted to at this stage of the novel.
Additionally, it actually gave a whole new level to one of my long-planned sub-plots, so that was an even bigger bonus. The ultimate result was some new content that I'm really proud of, five solid pages for my daily total, as well as a finished chapter four. All right!
Of course, tomorrow I'm going to have to do it all over again, because I have another emotionally-charged scene that I have to write, and which I haven't fully thought through just yet. So we'll see how that goes, but I'm hopeful. It will be a good test of the speed at which I'll be able to work once my current revision/expansion phase is finished with this book.
The stats as of today:
-32,000 estimated words.
-36,814 actual words.
-Four fully-revised-and-expanded chapters (61 pages total).
-Ten-and-a-portion completed chapters in all (128 pages).
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