Yesterday, after spending three days slogging through genuinely not very good writing, I did something I’ve never done before while writing a book: I gave myself permission to skip the hard part.
Mostly I don’t do that, because mostly if I skip a bit when I come back to that part I’ve forgotten that I /did/ skip something, and I’m really pissed off and it’s not any easier to write it than it would’ve been in the first place, but with added bonus of being pissed about the whole thing.
*Usually* what I have to do is go back and revise up to the point where it’s broken (ie, the hard part) and then go on from there. And I really, really *really* don’t want to do that this time; I want to just get the damned draft done, and then go back and fix things. That also usually wouldn’t work, because I often don’t know exactly what has to come of the borked scene(s), so I can’t actually go on and write what comes next without finding out what happens in that scene.
In this case, I /do/ know exactly what comes after the borked scene (which is screwed up is because I don’t have all the support structure earlier in the book to make it work, and so I’m finding myself unable to write _that scene_ correctly. I know how to fix it, but right now going back and fixing the lead-up doesn’t feel very damned efficient.). So I told myself I could skip it the hard part. I gave myself the rest of the afternoon off. I went grocery shopping and watched more of season 3 BSG with Ted.
And today I got up and have written 3700 words so far on the next scene, and am feeling reasonably confident about getting up to around 5K today. (I’d been planning to be Really Ambitious, and push through 140,667 words, which would officially make this the Longest Book I’ve Written, but that’s an additional 3K, and I don’t think I got up early enough to make this an 8K day. It’s 4pm. I don’t see getting through another 5300 words today, not realistically. So maybe tomorrow this will become the Longest Book.) After grinding through much smaller wordcounts at huge effort the last few days, this rate of writing feels really nice.
Arright. Another 1300 words will make a good solid writing day. Back on my head.