Process in Progress

Okay. Another learning experience.

I didn't post here early this morning. I thought I "knew" where the work would take me today.

I rearranged the order of one sentence, changed the punctuation of another and added exactly one word--all in the space of three hours.

Productivity, that is not.

So what happened?

Two things. Okay three.

(1) I was stymied by the time line.

I've never been good at time line in everyday life. Is it any surprise I don't work well with it in plotting? Now that I force myself to look back at the two previous books, I understand the the time line didn't solve itself until I was more than three quarters of the way through. I can't see how many weeks or days I have ahead of me. The only way I've ever been successful with time line was to go to the goal and stepwise work backwards.

In plotting terms, the only thing that's going to work well for me is to write the story and accept that the time line will need to be adjusted--maybe even invented--after the story is written. I'm hereby setting a rule. No worry about about time line until I've written "The end."

(2) I was floundering trying to figure out what Riley's "problem" is. Here's the right question, what problem does David need? I invented Riley in the first place because JJ needs him. For economy it would also be good if Davy can learn a lesson from him. Which leads me to the third way my thinking was un-useful.

(3) I know how I plot. I must go from emotional stage to emotional stage--I can't think of things to happen until I understand the emotional stage the thing will take the characters through.

I understand my end goal. Davy and JJ must go from the decision to get married--seeing marriage as a way to defend themselves from unchosen fate, move through all the stages of falling in love complicated by being forced to adjust to each other at the same time, and finally to commit to be married.

Unchosen fate. Davy and JJ enter into marriage as a way to sheild themselves from the pressures life is putting on them to change. But they have a deal. Living up to it institutes a series of changes and new experiences. The new experiences take them through the changes, some of which they choose, some they resist, until we get to the deepest part when they must make the deep choice to live or die.