Day 198

Spoiler Alert! May contain planning-stage plot/character details or other spoilers!

13 May 2017

It’s terrible for measurable progress and productivity, but the best thing I’ve found to do while working on plot and creative changes to the book map, themes, character arcs etc. is to… not work. It’s a very delicate balance, though. Too much time away from it, and I make no forward momentum. But stepping away for five minutes, or twenty, to watch a movie or take a bath or read a book, or even just sit down and sketch seems to give my brain the breathing room it needs to solve seemingly impossible problems.

The downside being that I keep coming up with more stuff to weave in which may or may not actually get me closer to being done and having a cohesive, appealing finished product. And also it keeps taking me longer to do things than I think. But in case anyone wondered, that’s why I can’t do much freelancing or work a traditional job or even hang out with people or pursue hobbies and write on the side; the creative problem solving doesn’t have enough space to work.

Thinking of tilting the direction for Cole (again…) Even though the ‘romance quotient’ seems to grow with each draft, it’s never felt like the central element to me (despite the demands of genre conventions…) So, although Cole explores what she thinks and wants out of a relationship with Ravel, with Itri, to a certain extent even with Cass, it’s never that important or central to her. What is core is her relationship with Cadence, which major spoiler of course, is her. So it’s really all identity, knowing and reconciling with oneself… but then they’re very different characters in the first book especially, so it comes off more as a sister or friend story of trust and rivalry. But I kind of like the girls’ relationship being the key element of the story, rather than the guy stuff. Even though dark fantasy and coming of age both dictate romance.

So that’ll be something to explore. But I keep coming up with cool ideas and then struggling to weave them in… and I still don’t really get how to do character development with only one POV, so there’s that… and apparently subtlety just ended up making everything confusing for readers, but it’s not good to explain too much, and also Cole needs to be more of a proactive character with more challenges to struggle against in order to move the plot forward. So basically can there be more action, less reflecting and a shorter word count? Man, if it weren’t a sure ticket to poverty, I really ought to have gone into literary fiction…

Saturday

Start Time: 2 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; chair

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