January 13, 2021
Day 100, Week 14
- Words: 49,991
- Chapters: 25! (But I did rewrite a few & so it has moved since last week)
- Point in Book (Save the Cat!): Bad Guys Closing In
- Ego Size: Sesame Seeds
- Emotional State: Meh
Today I’m back to Meh. How did I get from super inspired and excited about how to fix the book and make Act 3 better to Meh? Simple. I wrote what I thought were amazing chapters and I was so pleased with how they ended. And then my editor took a look. Yeah. Not amazing.
My ego size is sesame seeds. It was almost flax seeds, but then I thought it wasn’t that tiny, it wasn’t that crushed (in the image I have for flax seeds, they look a bit crushed). It’s just not feeling robust about the book.
And then I started thinking about my title – Two-Souled Justice. It sounds…too hardboiled to be my book. It’s not like the film noir of The Maltese Falcon. And that’s what the title sounds like to me. Hard. Rigid. Grimy. Dark. And then I thought, well, how can I determine a title if I don’t even know what the book is about? But I do. I do know what its about and yet somewhere along the line I lost the plot. As in, I literally can’t see my plot in my head. Is my book so boring that I forgot it already? I have a very very short memory (ask my husband, it’s his greatest frustration with me – I always forget the really important (to him) conversations within days of having them). If a book doesn’t set my soul on fire, if I don’t want to re-read it and bathe in the glory of the words, I don’t remember it. I don’t remember the plot, I may remember the vague ideas presented, but nothing else.
Is that my book for me or is this just me slogging through way too many words and realizing: a) my book is too long; b) I’m in the messy middle and it feels like quicksand; c) I have a lot of other writing I’m editing right now and maybe my brain is compartmentalizing it all.
On that quicksand feeling. When I think of my book, that’s what I think. I’m buried in it, can move a bit, but the sand has muffled my hearing and if I open my mouth, I may, just may, swallow some of the sand. When did I get to this place, this place of numbness, of meh, of I know what the next scene is and I’ll just slog through it? And how did I get here from the exciting bouncing on my chair feeling of last week when I had a brilliant idea?
I still think my idea is brilliant. I really really like it – and it adds some science to my book. Really good stuff. I’m so excited about it! And I’m having so much fun working out the nitty gritty details of my world.
After a particularly wine heavy date night, my husband and I (well, really him) came up with a novel (ha!) and unique and very cool idea of how shapeshifting works and how magic works and how the diversity of both exists and why. But you won’t see it in my book. Because that is all background…and maybe that’s the problem. I’m writing a modern book with very little actual fantasy while my world-building is rich and fantastic and fun.
I just need my book to be fun. And engaging and layer in some of that fantastic world-building. Is that what happens in revisions? Because if it is, I can get onboard with that.
I think I’m lost in the fog of the messy middle. The air will clear. It has to.