It’s funny how not-strategic this novel has been, after all my big talk and weeks spent working out plot outlines and summaries, character sketches, my insistence on the importance of strategy in the work world… I haven’t checked my plot in, what, months?
I did stop and sketch out content for the next few chapters a few chapters ago, which worked well, and I seem to be more or less heading in the same direction as the original plot, although the characters keep developing beyond my intent…
When I step away from the work, I worry endlessly about it’s tone, pacing, characterization, comparing it unfavourably against everything I read, but as soon as I dive back in, it feels like there’s no choice but to continue what I have begun in the same vein. Maybe rewrites will alter this significantly.
I have this idea that, if I could just pick the best strategy and follow it, I’d be assured of success (sales! fame! more book deals! never going back to the office!), but once I get in the midst of the story, all of that fades away, and I start to wonder: what if this story, told this way, from this perspective, emo, personal, internal before action, what if that’s just what I do, the only thing I can do, the only way I can connect?
Or rather, the only way that this story is meant to be?
I’d like to get to tandem projects, to see if it’s more about the way that I communicate, or the way this story wants to be told. Maybe Cole just took over and all of her suppressed feeling and emotion and goopy emo teen-ness is just seeping out. She certainly seems to insist on her first person present voice, despite all my qualms about it.
I mean, really. Who does that? Not to mention, switching tenses every chapter in order to give everyone their own voice and place is looking like less and less of an intelligent choice all the time.
However, it totally doesn’t feel like a choice at all, so there’s that…
Thursday
Start time: 12:15 pm
Location: couch/living room