Novel’s crossed 54,000 words!
I’m back to writing it in a scatter-shot way. Skipping up and down a chapter, scribbling down dialog or blocking or scene descriptions as they come to me.
The current chapter's proving particularly difficult to write in anything like a linear fashion. There's just so much for me to cover, to bridge the time between one lengthy flashback and the next. I've got to deepen the two main character's relationship, continue to express one character's coming to terms with their recent debilitating injuries, and set things up for the next bridge after the second flashback.
It's a lot, and as a result, the draft of this chapter is a jumbled mess. I've got dialog for one line of conversation scattered across three different scenes, and none of it ties together. Yet.
I keep telling myself the first draft is supposed to be messy, but this is just...the most confused thing I've ever written, so far. How am I going to pull together a coherent chapter from this?
Speaking of coherence, I'm also trying to edit the short story I drafted last month. And at some point I do need to start in on a third draft of the novel I was working on most of last year. I've not yet gotten a novel through enough drafts to be ready to send it out to agents, and it's high time I finally did.
But time...time is the problem. If I'm working on the new novel, I'm not editing the short story. If I'm editing the short story, I'm not editing the novel. And if I'm editing the previous novel, I'm not making progress on the current one.
How can I square this circle? How can I find the time to not just work on, but finish, all these projects?
