Sometimes what feels like a really good week is followed by a bad one.
For example, this week, in which I've only written 329 words.
It's frustrating. Just when I felt like I was getting back in the groove of jogging, writing, and work, two things brought progress to a shuddering halt: I got injured, and I switched from editing back to writing new scenes.
The injury was relatively minor. I had a planter's wart on the underside of my big toe that my dermatologist finally had enough of and burned off. Worth it, for sure, but that put a crimp in my jogging schedule.
And the new scenes are...maybe a mistake. There's a sequence towards the end of the book where the POV character travels from one of the station to the other, witnessing the disaster that's just befallen it.
She's mostly on her own, in the original sequence, which made it easier to write, but didn't feel as realistic to me. I mean, the chance she's going to go from one end to the other without seeing anyone are small.
Plus, I think it drains the whole stretch of a bit of tension. If most of the danger has passed, including the danger of discovery, then what's going to pull the reader through the passage?
So I'm trying out a version where she does get discovered, and has to talk (or trick) her way out of it.
I think it'll be better, but it means I've got to invent three new characters, their personalities, and enough of their backstories to make them believable. Oh, and also make up what they were doing when they discovered the POV character, and how they go about it.
Not to mention getting the POV character to tell me how she escapes from the mess she's now in.
I'm telling myself that it'll all be worth it once I've got the new version done...But until then, it's slow progress each day, as I spend more time outlining now than setting words on the page.
