Breather

I actually had an evening of my own last night. I was feeling a little scattered and not sure what to do with myself, but I decided to try to get some writing done. I've got a story (possibly a novella -- I haven't done a word count yet) for which I really like the concept, and the plot only needs a little tweaks here and there to tighten it up, but there's this exposition section right at the beginning where I have to let the reader know what's different between our world and the story world, so they can go into the story with that in mind.

It's necessary, especially since this is a short piece and not a novel, where things could unfold more slowly. But that exposition, as it stands, is really, really horrible. It's boring. And it feels contrived. And worse than that, it feels oddly patronizing.

But about a week ago, I had a flash on how I could fix it. Yay! Except it means completely rewriting the whole scene. Boo... But in doing that, I could also fix a couple of other minor points that the story has (like needing to give some more background on one character, explaining some societal differences that come about as a result of the core concept in the world, sketching in some early hints of one of the plot points. Like that. So yay!

So I took a stab at that. I'd started this a couple of days ago, got a few paragraphs in, and found myself painted into a corner. So I erased it and started over again. I started writing a little before 9. I took a short break around 10, when Matt moved his DVD from his laptop to the TV (the DVD player in his laptop is getting aged and pissy) so that I could move upstairs.

At about 11, I was pretty much done with the section. Or at least a draft of it -- I still need to read back through at some point and make sure I at least touched on all the salient points. I'm pretty sure there's one thing that needs to be explained in more detail. But I'd gotten the skeleton of it out there, at least, and most of the meat.

Just out of curiosity, I checked the word count. I'd written over 1800 words.

That's more than I've written in a single session since before Penny was born. I'd just about resigned myself to having lost the ability to write more than a thousand words in a sitting. Looking at that wordcount, I nearly cried.

This morning, I'm back to work and back on the treadmill. I've got a software delivery today, this proposal still breathing down my neck (one more week...) and a half-dozen other little tasks that need to be done. Plus I really, really need to get to the gym today. So it's back to Crazytown for me.

But last night was a much needed, much appreciated breather.