progress....

The Body Swap story still continues to be written -- I had a slowdown in the past two weeks, as I hit a part of the plot that I hadn't worked out in enough detail in advance, so there was some floundering around. However, once I put my thinking cap on in a non-stressful weekend afternoon, I finally got it straightened out enough to my satisfaction.

I just started page 191, which is terrifying enough by itself, but I'd bet I have easily another 50-60 pages to go. I'm terrible at estimating these things, because scenes that I think would reasonably (there's that word again) take two or three pages often end up running 10 or 15. Even though I'm getting much better about skipping over boring parts, like say, actually booking a suspect or two, and just getting on with the interesting bits.

(Page 191 is at double-spaced Courier font, with proper margins and all. I've spent so much time writing in professional format that I just fall into it... and to tell you the truth, there's a reason that it's an industry standard, because it makes it a hell of a lot easier if you copy-edit by hand, there's enough space for all the marks, plus all the phrases that I scribble in during second-drafting. So 191 pages = 37K by the Word counting algorithm -- and growing.)

I'm finding that I may have made another step forward with the writing of this -- for the first time, I'm actually fairly comfortable about cutting out a section that I've written with the plot going one way, and rewriting the story from that point, having worked out how the characters will actually react. I used to have an extreme amount of trouble totally redrafting a story section, because it felt like I was rewriting history. Now... I just looked at what I'd done, and realized that the characters would be in better shape if they actually follow the spirit of the law rather than the letter.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about doing the redrafting, because it does line up future plot points much more effectively. And yeah, it only amounted to two pages, but this is stronger. Of late, I've been writing four or five page false starts for ds_flashfiction stories that on the second time round end up getting some enthusiastic feedback, so perhaps I've progressed some as a writer after all.

Oh, before I forget yet again, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, reginagiraffe AND shayheyred!!!