I’ve decided to continue whatever thoughts I had earlier in a separate thing.
Today has been an interesting one. I’ve spent the whole week in this state, and I’m having to cling onto that Steinbeck statement of “twenty hours of preparation for three hours of writing” because, Jesus.
I’ve spent the whole week trying to get Scene Block 33 (that’s what we’re calling it these days) into some presentable shape or form. I wrote the original idea for this section in 2020, and now I’m having to live with the awful consequences of my awful actions. Hartree is staring at me typing again, and I’ve decided to try and win the contest by looking straight back at her and going, “What?”.
She always hates being asked that question.
Scene Block 33 is an absolute disaster. That’s the real, First World source of my problems. It’s basically, Character goes from A to B, over several miles and two countries.
I’ve had to change the original thing from being too linear – it doesn’t seem to work well that way, and I’ve just done a whole swathe of a section of the main group of people where it’s been told in a way that’s “A then B then C”. The thing is screaming for some sort of change, so I had a little introduction sentence or two and then basically went “well, she’s already on her way to B, fuck you”.
Maybe this is something I come back to edit later on. I don’t like the idea of her scenes interleaving every other scene with the main storyline when, really, it’s not that significant. I sort of want to be done with it in one, two, or three blocks that are spaced sparingly.
This is my problem with the “just write” brigade. Sometimes it’s a significant structural problem, even when you’ve worked on it for so long, and what’s really needed is to sit for a week and think the whole thing through.