I revised one chapter this morning, then read the next two to see what I had to do in order to get them up to spec so that my book could suddenly be THREE HUNDRED! AND TWENTY! PAGES! LONG!
With a growing sense of doom, I realized that what I had to do was throw them out and write new ones.
I *hate* that. I really, *really* like these chapters. I really, *really* want to keep them. But as they stand, they make Event A a relatively unimportant one, when it should be a watershed moment. They make barely a blip in Character A’s life, when they should be traumatizing and deeply affecting. They make my life much easier, which means they’re entirely the wrong thing to do.
Rewriting–well, it’s not even *re*writing, it’s just writing–seems quite overwhelming at the moment. Partly it’s because I was hoping for an easy forty pages, but it’s also that I’ve tied myself into a two-character POV in this trilogy and for this next section it’d help to have more than that. But it’s kind of cheating to introduce new PsOV halfway through the third book in a trilogy, and it’ll be more /interesting/ to not have the cheat. Still. Mnargh.
All right. 5K days are nice and all, but I think if I can get just one new chapter done today I’ll call it a win.
What about turning the two chapters into a stand-alone short story?
But it’s kind of cheating to introduce new PsOV halfway through the third book in a trilogy,
I’ve seen it done in standalones. If the character has played a large role up to that point, it’s valid. Even a small-but-pivotal role.
As long as those two chapters live in the archive file on your hard drive, they’re never gone.
Who knows? Some day, you might find a place for those thoughts in another work.
Good luck today!