Slog, slog — writing as a form of self-dentistry without anesthesia

By Holly Lisle

Some days it definitely goes better than others. Today I got about a thousand words. I’m still significantly ahead of schedule, so it isn’t time to break out the chains to chain myself to the writing treadmill but …. ugh. This morning, I might as well have been digging around in my mouth with a pair of pliers, looking for teeth to yank.

I like what I eventually got — though I already know it’s going to need work — but just finding the hook to let me get into it took forever. I wrote. I deleted. I wrote again. I’ve switched from the scene in Molly’s point of view to the one in Baanraak’s, and I want the flow of the story to be smoothly linear. No backtracking, no larding in backstory. Yet this scene is Baanraak’s first appearance in this book, and since not everyone is going to have read the first two, some mention needs to be made, not only of what he appears to be when the scene opens, but also of what he is.

In fact, that might be what I’m missing — the conflict may not entirely be between his perception of himself and being forced to confront how that perception differs from reality, but a much more physical conflict — maintaining the illusion he is projecting versus failing to hold it and revealing himself for what he really is. If I do that — and if he fails — then first-time readers will get to see both the false Baanraak and the real Baanraak without me having to explain anything.

And, boy, will Molly be pissed.

Hmmm. That could actually give me road into tomorrow’s pages. That works — I think that’s what I’ll do. Guess I should have done this little ramble through my writing issues while I could still get some writing done, instead of waiting until everything got busy. I might have made my two thousand today. Bet I can get them tomorrow.

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