“When writing doesn't work, the writer is assumed to be the guilty party.”
Teresa Nielsen Hayden

author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

actually writing blog

Extra Goodness
Mon 2005-11-21 23:11:59 (in context)
  • 33,315 words (if poetry, lines) long

Chapter nineteen is halfway done. Mickey's first victim is in the hospital recovering from having been sucked into Brooke's plot. Brooke has just finished recapping how her date went up to that point, and exactly what happened when Mickey showed up. I think, plotwise, I'm in the first scene of Act Three.

I meant just to do about 2,000 words today, but the whole getting shot in Central Park thing was kind of exciting to write about, so I just kept going. Now, my calculator tells me, I've averaged about 1,586 words a day and will need to meet a daily quota of 1,854 words going forward. The numbers just get better and better!

Except, of course, having written to the end of my steam tonight, I'm not sure where I'm going tomorrow. I suppose something to do with Gwen's realization that even if she herself isn't involved with Brooke, someone will be, because that's how the plot goes, and Mickey will try to kill that someone, because that's how the plot goes. And that if he succeeds in killing someone from Real Life things will be Bad. And that the only way to solve things is to put everyone back in the book regardless of how unfair that is.

I want this book to address deep philosophical concerns, such as how Gwen has victimized her antagonist by making him too two-dimensional, and how characters can't be spared but they can be treated like real people rather than like constructs, and how writers maybe fall prey to the temptation to treat real life people as characters who can be manipulated for the author's convenience... but right now I'll be pleased just to get all the plot down.

Meh. Grandiose philosophical themes are a second draft matter. Time to inject lit crit goodness during the rewrite.

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