I haven't posted a thing about my ongoing struggle to write Dead Bad Things for a few weeks now, mostly because I've been stuck. Yes, that's right, things have got a bit sticky. The words just wouldn't come. The story was all there - in my head - but I couldn't seem to get it down on the page. Well, most of the story was there...at least the main parts.
So this week I tried an old trick.
I re-read, from a hard copy, the fifty-odd thousand words I'd already written and red-lined them with a few first-pass edits. Then, feeling pretty good about what I'd just read, I went through and amended the file to include those edits.
Thankfully the trick worked and I kept on after those edits were done, finishing another couple of chapters on momentum alone. A few things I wasn't sure about in the plot resolved themselves, and I discovered the identity of an important character in the story. This last thing was terrifying me without me really being aware of the fact: it was a major plot point and I had no idea who this person was. Luckily, the character stepped forward and revealed that it was they who I was looking for.
I'm feeling a lot more positive now, with two months to go before my deadline. The main thing is that I liked what I read - I liked it a lot. I believe that my narrative risks have paid off and my characters have taken on a life of their own. And thank fuck for that.
Word count: 60,000 words
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