Monday 12 August 2013

August 12th – 674,920

Today has been hectic, to say the least. I could definitely get very political about some of the events, but I’m going to hold back on that, and rein the rant in. Suffice to say, I’m not on the very best terms with officialdom and bureaucracy right now.

Still, I did manage to get some writing time in and around my on-going battles with them, and let me just say it’s not the people who without exception have been pleasant, polite and helpful, just bound up by rules and labels, targets and tick sheets. Those writing stints added up to 3,181 words taking me achingly close to the 675k which will now be passed and left behind, eating dust, tomorrow.

At least the ‘glasses crisis’ didn’t happen today, I’m not sure I could have dealt with everything if I hadn’t been able to see properly.

The work in progress is developing well, too, the big scene that forms the core of the middle of the book is behind me, and I’m well advanced into what is effectively a linking scene between that and the next major action point. I hate linking scenes, both as a writer and a reader and I try to avoid them if possible. But, in this case I need to get from a scene where the two lead characters have a major bust up, and the ‘date’ scene where things, although not exactly sweetness and light, are a whole lot calmer. I only know two ways to do that, through a suspension of disbelief fail for the readers by jumping straight from one to the other, or by writing a linking scene where the two of them talk, and effectively ‘kiss and make up’. That scene can be in person, or it can be on the phone, but I feel that showing the reader the dialogue works best in either case. Here, they're thrown together as the guy is giving the girl a lift home from the film set, so the conversation is in the car as he weaves through the traffic. Perfect, especially when she criticises his driving. I just love tension. (I know some of you will think sexist cliché here, but she's quite young and is only just learning to drive, and it's her youth that drives the story, so it's a natural progression of the story, not a sexist statement - okay?)

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