Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.
- Napoleon

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Missed it by That Much

Well, yesterday was a pretty productive day all things considered. But in the words of the immortal Maxwell Smart (the original one, not this new incarnation), "I missed it by that much". I'm 350 words short of being back on track again. *shrug*

Considering I got one scene out and at the end of the scene, my fingers left me a present I hadn't planned on, only missing the mark by 350 ain't bad. You see, I got to the end of a necessary scene and before I knew it one little sentence sent the plot zooming off in a different direction. I took my between-scene break and when I sat back down, I couldn't figure out how the hell I was going to resolve that one sentence with what I had planned for the rest of the book. Seriously, everything I plotted for the remainder of the book was toast. So, as much as I liked the sentence and as delicious as it was, I snipped it. Didn't even save it.

Unfortunately, it was probably the best sentence I wrote all day yesterday. Stephen King has a great quote that fits yesterday perfectly for me: "Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position." Except I really don't think I was doing the 'good work' part. I've got the 'shoveling shit from a sitting position' part down pat, though. I'm blaming that one sentence for derailing my train of thought.

Feh. I don't even remember what the sentence is any more.

So, here's hoping today is a better day. I can feel myself getting close to the end. Of course, I'm going to have a lot (A LOT) of editing to do once this is finished, but it's all good. I'm writing again. I'm getting words out.

And that's the most important thing. =o)

2 comments:

JenWriter said...

Like they say, you can't fix a blank page.

Funny thing for me is, what I'm writing for Sven is actually pretty good, but the part of the book I wrote before Sven needs a lot of editing. I don't understand how that works out.

Kristen Painter said...

I think you're doing great.