March 18th – 241,355 words.

Marion woke up in the middle of the night with a bad headache, and twelve hours later, she’s still got it. As a result, I’ve had to keep quiet around the house, in an attempt to alleviate her symptoms. Some things I end up feeling helpless about, there’s nothing I can do other than make sure she takes the painkillers every four hours, and of course, stay quiet.

She feels sorry for me having to be quiet, and ignores me when I tell her I don’t mind – from my point-of-view it’s great writing time, so I’ve been busy. This work in progress requires a shift in style when I change point of view, and halfway through today’s stint I did so. My hero and heroine are still antagonist and protagonist at this stage and very real opposites. He is taciturn, controlled, controlling and seldom speaks, even in conversation he tends to the monosyllabic answers, rarely asks questions, and gathers information by observation. She is a vivacious young woman, bright, intelligent and by no means an air-head (I don’t write air-head main characters). So when I’m writing in his point of view, the manuscript is narrative and introspection heavy, he doesn’t do small talk. Whereas when I started the new chapter, in her point of view, it’s just about all dialogue.

The contrast is deliberate, the extremes planned, so those first few hundred words of the new chapter are difficult, changing voice from one end of the personality spectrum to the other is a challenge. As my son is fond of saying – challenge accepted!

All in all, it took longer than it has been doing, but today I stopped after 3,380 words, less than 9,000 words short of the quarter million word mark.