I’ve cleared 10K tonight on SanClare Scarlet, take 2.03. I’d write more but I have company coming tomorrow, and I’m already up two hours later than I’d planned. 

This is good. I think this is good. I think I’ve found the threads that will weave this story together at last. I hate feeling like I’ve said that over and over, but I’ve been here before, slashing through the underbrush with my dull machete. Eventually I find the trail.

I’ve been blogging away on non-writing things over at BlogNoir, but poor little Complete Fabrications has been neglected for almost two months!  I haven’t had too much to report. Transitions do really cause me lots of problems no matter how well I plot out things in advance or outline.  I get down to the big change from one part of the story to the next, and I always have to work my way through it carefully, trying on and tossing out various approaches. 

I made good progress this weekend, pushing through the point in the story where I need to shift from how things start to how they will no continue.  I like it.  I’m happy.  The characters are all miserable, but my three main POVers are all together in the same room at last and the part where I reunite two of the characters (a reunion that’s been giving me fits because it is very delicate and important for the rest of the book) fell into place at last, and it hits exactly the notes I need and want it to hit.

And so, chapter four ends with the word “treason.”

Chapter four was being so difficult, I skipped ahead to what would happen immediately after I got through the hospital bit.  Oddly enough, considering I only vaguely knew where I was going after the hospital bit, it worked.  Now I’m back to chapter four and filling in the transition.  It reminds me of that scene in Dead Poets’ Society (won’t quote since I only ever saw the movie in the theater)–in essence, stand on the desk to get a different view of the same old scene.  Change your perspective, and suddenly, it’s all much clearer.  I don’t know why, but it works.

First readers still approve!  I’m into chapter four now after some minor, improving edits suggested by said first readers and just wrestled through another of those transition scenes that always bog me down.  When I was first writing, I had the habit of just ending scenes abruptly and moving to the next important moment or scene, skipping over the Very Irksome Transitions.  Of course, this made things very choppy, so I cannot recommend it.  These days, I prefer to deal with the VITs as I go rather than doing a full “smooth crappy transitions” revision run-through later.

 But yay.

Also, Nano looks like a go, so I need to review my notes for La Cause and make sure I’m read to Do This Thing!  I tried in 2005 and didn’t have a good enough grasp of my idea so gave up.  I used 2006’s Nano month to work on major revisions to SanClare Black (didn’t quite make my personal target but came very close; didn’t count for “real” Nano in any case), but this year, I’m going to try to do it correctly and stick to it.  Just ’cause I think it might be a fun and liberating way to get a really bloody awful first draft of La Cause done.  I’m already telling myself to just write whatever including “this part sucks; fix later” and then DO the VITs and move on, always aiming for the final 50k target.

That’s my idea, at least.  We shall see.

I just finished chapter three of SanClare Scarlet (2.0), and I still really like the new direction, but it’s off to the first readers again for a gut-check.  As I said when I started this draft, I give up on word counters, but I’m just shy of 12K which, considering SanClare Black clocks in at about 125K, puts me at about 10%.  So.  That’s good.

Nanowrimo starts in a couple of weeks, and I think I’ll put making major progress on the book my Nano project.  Either that, or I’ll do La Cause as my Nano project–and idea I like rather better since it needs the jump-start more.  Hrm… Well, we’ll see how I feel closer to time.

Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ll be out of town the first few days of November at World Fantasy about which I am EXTREMELY excited.  But I’ve never been before, so–any advice anyone?  Stuff I should know? Stuff I should do? Stuff I should pack?

In very early drafts, SanClare Black was third-person omniscient.  This was entirely an accident because I didn’t have a firm grasp on my POV options at the time and hadn’t thought about what would work best for the story.  That all got sorted in subsequent drafts and it ended up very firmly third-person limited with only two POV characters.

And that was the initial plan for SanClare Scarlet, too, but after abortive first draft, I’ve realized I need more voices in this book. So it’ll still be 3rd/limited but there will be more characters doing the looking.  So far, I’ve written three.  I have at least two more in mind.  The main character will still carry the bulk of the POV as he did in SanClare Black.

Anyway, it’s fun to sort these things out in advance this time around.

Two of the things I didn’t do in first draft which I knew immediately upon realizing I’d written myself toward a cliff and therefore had to do in second draft have now been done.  I had avoided doing these obvious, character-true things for purely superficial reasons.  I didn’t want to be rid of these trappings, but the character did and to not have him take advantage of the very first opportunity to make these changes to his own life skewed everything that I’d written after.

Which gets us back to “murdering darlings.”  No matter how much I may love certain scenes or moments or trappings or notes in a story, if they overstay their welcome, even if they are small things, they can sour things.  Because then I have to rationalize why they’re still there and put those thoughts and words into the characters’ mouths, trying to explain away why the issue hasn’t been dealt with or why the thing hasn’t been discarded or why the argument hasn’t been fought.

And that’s the most useful thing I’ve found to do when plotting or writing: Just ask why.  Why is he doing that?  Why isn’t he doing that?  Why would she say that?  Why wouldn’t she just do this obvious thing?  These two little things the main character didn’t deal with in first draft turned into major roadblocks and all because I hadn’t pinned myself to the wall and demanded honest answers to “why doesn’t he do this now?” 

The answer turned out to be, “well, he does after all.”  And now the whole story is different.  And, I think, much better.

I give up on word counters.  After a good amount of progress, I had First Reader review, and I reviewed, and via her notes and my own sinking feelings, I realized the story had gone off the rails and was heading for a ditch.  Not a total loss — lots of good bits and pieces I can salvage — but the framework was just wrong, a relic of a prior draft of the story that didn’t reflect enough of the changes made in part one.  I’ve restarted and have New Chapter One almost done, and it’s very different and that sort of zingy, tingly right you get when you sing the perfect note.   It, too, will be revised and reviewed and tweaked and judged, but I know I’m on the right path now and, though that kills prior word-count, I also don’t care. 

‘Cause now I’m really excited about where this is going.

And we’re back to the word-counting!  Tweakage took longer than planned.  Also, I blame Inda by Sherwood Smith.  Damn wonderful, completely engrossing, life-taking-over book.

Doing a bit of tweaking before moving on with SanClare Scarlet.  Once the tweaks are done, I’m thinking I’ll go back to La Cause and focus on getting some serious wordage done on it “for reals.”  In the meantime, I think the weather’s getting to me — I like it cool but it keeps vacillating between autumnal and dog-day and it’s wearing me down.