1,200 words on Harmony today, and two scenes from the old version reworked to fit. Yay!
The problem is I now want to do a rewrite. Or, more accurately, a reshuffle. I have five scenes, all occurring on the same day; four to do with the murder, one not. The one not is a seperate problem. I hate digressions in my own work - I'm not sure why, as I don't much mind them when I *read*, as long as they're good, but when I'm writing they fret the hell out of me. Possibly because I am not, at heart, a good plotter, and therefore regard anything that's not plot as suspicious and potentially self-gratifying rubbish.
The reshuffle, however, is the immediate trouble. I don't much like the order the scenes are currently in; it leaves certain stuff - namely the position of the spacers - until too late, and generally just doesn't fit. I'm not sure what to do about it, though. I shall jigsaw the pieces around for a while, I suppose, and see if I can't make them fit....
The good news is that this finishes off the first "part" of the book - the book now, in my mind, being divided into five distinct parts. This was the Intro section, where the problem was laid out, and various characters and plot elements introduced, and so on. It runs about 23K at the moment, which is about where it should be for the 100K I estimate the finished book will be (I'm assuming that the forth bit will be fairly short and the last bit quite short). Now I just have to figure out what happens in part 2, what I think of as the "Deterioration" segment.
I may post a bit on this later. At the moment I am too disconcerted. I had just happily finished the last bit of reworking on Harmony and was gradually returning to the real world, starting to notice my surroundings - hmm, Dido on the CD player, time's getting on, snake crossing the floor at my feet -
SNAKE?!?
His nose was actually about 2 inches from my foot, but when I screamed in an embarrassingly feminine way he apparently had a line of thought something like "Shit, you mean this thing is *alive*?" and hastily reversed himself. I got a good look at him - all five feet of him - before he disappeared into the hall closet.
Ack. Okay, I don't mind snakes really, but this was a bit much.
I went and fetched my brother, reasoning that if there was ever a male job this was it, but by the time he got there the snake had Abandoned Closet and was crawling through a hole in the side of our disused kitchen cabinets. The bro made an attempt at pinning his head with a forked stick, as he'd seen done on the telly, only to discover that pinning down what is essentially a five-foot long muscle is not as easy as it looks. The snake waffled around a bit, clearly made nervous by the stick, and then zipped off into the depths of the cabinet while my brother was still vanely trying to put enough pressure on the stick to hold him. He's still skulking back there somewhere, probably waiting for the mad people to go away so he can get on with his hunting.
Ah, well. At least that explains why my rat problem mysteriously solved itself. Shall be wearing shoes in the house from now on.
The problem is I now want to do a rewrite.
The reshuffle, however, is the immediate trouble. I don't much like the order the scenes are currently in; it leaves certain stuff - namely the position of the spacers - until too late, and generally just doesn't fit. I'm not sure what to do about it, though. I shall jigsaw the pieces around for a while, I suppose, and see if I can't make them fit....
The good news is that this finishes off the first "part" of the book - the book now, in my mind, being divided into five distinct parts. This was the Intro section, where the problem was laid out, and various characters and plot elements introduced, and so on. It runs about 23K at the moment, which is about where it should be for the 100K I estimate the finished book will be (I'm assuming that the forth bit will be fairly short and the last bit quite short). Now I just have to figure out what happens in part 2, what I think of as the "Deterioration" segment.
I may post a bit on this later. At the moment I am too disconcerted. I had just happily finished the last bit of reworking on Harmony and was gradually returning to the real world, starting to notice my surroundings - hmm, Dido on the CD player, time's getting on, snake crossing the floor at my feet -
SNAKE?!?
His nose was actually about 2 inches from my foot, but when I screamed in an embarrassingly feminine way he apparently had a line of thought something like "Shit, you mean this thing is *alive*?" and hastily reversed himself. I got a good look at him - all five feet of him - before he disappeared into the hall closet.
Ack. Okay, I don't mind snakes really, but this was a bit much.
I went and fetched my brother, reasoning that if there was ever a male job this was it, but by the time he got there the snake had Abandoned Closet and was crawling through a hole in the side of our disused kitchen cabinets. The bro made an attempt at pinning his head with a forked stick, as he'd seen done on the telly, only to discover that pinning down what is essentially a five-foot long muscle is not as easy as it looks. The snake waffled around a bit, clearly made nervous by the stick, and then zipped off into the depths of the cabinet while my brother was still vanely trying to put enough pressure on the stick to hold him. He's still skulking back there somewhere, probably waiting for the mad people to go away so he can get on with his hunting.
Ah, well. At least that explains why my rat problem mysteriously solved itself. Shall be wearing shoes in the house from now on.
posted at 04:25 PM on 08/15/03
by kat -
Category: Writing
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