This week's writing progress has been somewhat less than spectastic: only eight pages in the past three days. I put this down to a combination of burnout from last week's NaNo pace, the new additions to the family, and the fact that I'm writing the pivotal chapter in the story: the Black Moment.
My normally dictatorial characters, who regularly push me around and tell me what they will and won't do or say, have suddenly become very taciturn and unhelpful, perhaps because they think I am cruel to to torture them with this black moment in the first place. "Just skip right through to our HEA," they demand.
But, of course, I can't do that. The Black Moment, when the reader wonders how the hero and heroine will ever surmount the obstacles that divide them and live happily ever after, is as essential to a romance novel as a murder is to a murder mystery. Without a Black Moment, a romance novel would be little more than a voyeuristic foray into someone's nice life. And aside from being weird, it would just be boring.
And so, I have to put my characters through theirs, kicking and screaming. No one ever said this would be easy!
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9 comments:
Ah, but they are a spectacularly fantastic 8 pages!
And I love the comment "Aside from being weird..." LOL
I say you're probably right. I know my characters are pulling their (my?) hair out over their BMs, too. Hey! We're right about the same place in our novels. Very cool.
Ok, back to NoNo...I mean NaNo. We're at the halfway point, people!
Well, thanks for saying they are spectacularly fantastic. You and Darcy have been unfailingly positive in your responses to my excerpts, which has been a great help motivationally. Unfortunately, as I said, my characters are not too pleased with me at the moment and I think it's affecting my confidence *g!
I'm missing NaNo this year. . . I signed up for it, missed the first week, and then decided to just keep plugging away on my WIP. THEN IT happened, another story that just won't go away until I get it all down on paper. So, I put one on the back burner and wrote the other one.
I wrote it long hand so now I'm busy typing it in and editing as I go.
Heck, I might have even made the Nano word count if I'd been trying.
Oh, well. Good luck to you. . . black moment be darned!
Hi Pam!
I'm not actually doing NaNo, although I did sign up. But since I was determined to finish the novel I'm working on before I started anything new, I couldn't really play.
That said, Lacey, Darcy and I have been challenging ourselves all month to try to keep up a NaNo pace, even if we aren't actively entered in the contest.
Interesting that you mention writing longhand--that's the method Lacey's been using for her second book and it's been going fantatically well for her judging from the excerpts I've been treated to. I could NEVER write more than a page or two a day longhand--cramps would get to me even if the logjam of words in my head that I couldn't get out onto paper fast enough wouldn't! But if it's working for you, awesome!
I wanted to add that I read the premise for The Jade Skull on your blog a while back and think it sounds like a fascinating story. So I hope you will finish it as well as the new one.
Yeah, Pam--just to clarify, technically I'm not playing NaNo either and for the same reason you said and Jacq touched on. I was already mid-way into this book and I wrote the whole darn thing longhand, so there's nothing to word count and it's not new anyway. But I'm still keeping the spirit by refusing to allow myself to edit as I go (only a smidgy bit before I send it to Jacq and Darcy, I swear!) and also pressing on the pace. God, I just can't bear to be left out of the fun!
And I was reading your post on my blog about your books and I must have missed that before. Your books sound incredibly deep! Holy Romance Writing. I'm impressed.
And your confidence should have no where to go but up. You're almost done. DONE!Done!
On that note, my captcha has the word "nag" in it. Has Google started reading our comments as well as our mail?
Er, that last bit was for Jacqueline. But Pam, yeah, you too! Go, girls!
Instead of feeling like I'm almost done, I feel more like something you put in the oven thinking it would take an hour to cook and then discovering two hours later that it's still not done. I feel like a custard pie that won't set in the middle, but turning up the oven would only burn me around the edges!
Hmmmm, must be getting close to Thanksgiving. It's at my house every year and that means I have a buttload of work to do besides writing. Ack!
I can't handle long hand either. My hand hurts within the first few words. Now if only I could lug my desktop around...
Alice
OMG Barbara, I LOVE that description about finishing. You ARE the queen of metaphors!!!
Darcy
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