Thursday, February 26, 2009

Return to the fold

Well, that break lasted a lot longer than planned.

Last week was supposed to be a week off and of doing some research. Instead it became a week of finishing a chapter on Monday, then playing GTA 4 and watching films.
I went out to see Slumdog Millionaire, which is a wonderful film and I've had the soundtrack (an Oscar winner dontchaknow) on almost constant spin.
But halfway through last week, I realised I dodn't know how to proceed from the point I had stopped. Couldn't think of which character to follow and focus on. My main idea, it turned out, I had already done properly and in full in an earlier chapter. So that was out.

And so, until today, I've been stumped. But then, as so often happens, I made myself sit down and begin to write. Just follow the protagonist for a bit, put the words down and let it come. As it nearly always does, this sparked off ideas and now the chapter is on the move.
Part of the problem is that I'm now racing headlong into the climax and I'm worried about word count. A stupid thing to get hung up on I know, but I'm tempted to try some padding, but also think that if I crack on with plot the words and situations are there to reach the goal of 60k.

Meh, I at least have got some traction back now. But I'm disappointed because if I'd kept up the pace of early January, this novel would be maybe a thousand words away from completion now. Instead it's half done with about a sixth of the words being the first 4 chapters which I haven't written yet. They'll probably be the last things I do actually write.

Words Today: 752
Total Words: 31424

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