Writing: 1,371 words
Michael Everett seems to have a little bit of a talent for social engineering.
After spending much of yesterday ruminating on the problem of how exactly Michael was going to go about acquiring that last piece of information necessary to launch Operation Persephone, I decided to stop thinking so precisely on th'event and trust my own narrative instincts. So I sat down last night at a blank screen, and I just started writing the scene.
Strictly speaking, I probably wrote closer to 1,800 actual words in total, but I wound up deleting more than four-hundred of them as I groped my way blindly through the dark. I started the scene several times, becoming dissatisfied with its progression, deleting my work, starting again. The first hour-and-a-half last night was like scaling a flaking cliff-face on which half the handholds broke away, letting me fall halfway back down the mountain.
Eventually, though, I found a safe route to the summit. Once I - or, rather, Michael - struck upon his ruse, the rest of the scene unfolded easily enough. And because of that, I no longer believe in the concept of writer's block. Because last night, when I felt stymied in my writing, and didn't know how to get the story moving, I just kept writing.
I wrote words, and then deleted them. I made Michael walk out into the traffic of the Black Horse Pike and narrowly dodge a speeding Peterbilt 379, and then deleted the experience from his life. I wrote to keep in the habit of writing, until the rights words came out in the right order, and the story finally wrenched itself out of neutral.
I wound up writing 1,371 words in just one section, and was surprised that the segment ended up running as long as it did. That many words would ordinarily compose two sections, but Michael just refused to hang up the phone. And those words brought the total manuscript up to a wordcount of 92,746.
After spending much of yesterday ruminating on the problem of how exactly Michael was going to go about acquiring that last piece of information necessary to launch Operation Persephone, I decided to stop thinking so precisely on th'event and trust my own narrative instincts. So I sat down last night at a blank screen, and I just started writing the scene.
Strictly speaking, I probably wrote closer to 1,800 actual words in total, but I wound up deleting more than four-hundred of them as I groped my way blindly through the dark. I started the scene several times, becoming dissatisfied with its progression, deleting my work, starting again. The first hour-and-a-half last night was like scaling a flaking cliff-face on which half the handholds broke away, letting me fall halfway back down the mountain.
Eventually, though, I found a safe route to the summit. Once I - or, rather, Michael - struck upon his ruse, the rest of the scene unfolded easily enough. And because of that, I no longer believe in the concept of writer's block. Because last night, when I felt stymied in my writing, and didn't know how to get the story moving, I just kept writing.
I wrote words, and then deleted them. I made Michael walk out into the traffic of the Black Horse Pike and narrowly dodge a speeding Peterbilt 379, and then deleted the experience from his life. I wrote to keep in the habit of writing, until the rights words came out in the right order, and the story finally wrenched itself out of neutral.
I wound up writing 1,371 words in just one section, and was surprised that the segment ended up running as long as it did. That many words would ordinarily compose two sections, but Michael just refused to hang up the phone. And those words brought the total manuscript up to a wordcount of 92,746.