ksmith | And she'll have fun, fun, fun...

...'til her doctor takes her keyboard away-yay-yay-yay.

Did I mention deadline panic a few weeks ago? Did I mention that it might set in about, say, now?

Saturday was spent working on the ending of the chapter that I thought I had wrapped up on Friday. I realized that morning that the final sequence ended too abruptly, and that there was no way that I could have Jani, Lucien, and a bed in the same room without something being attempted. Which it was. Not telling. Read the book.

I then combined the next three chapters into one big chapter that I hoped to whittle down into two tighter chapters. Wanted to finish that on Sunday, but weren't to be. The good news is that I kicked out what I think is a really good Niall rant. The bad news is that we're dealing with wings-of-a-butterfly plotting in that small changes I made when I rewrote the beginning have led to plot tsunamis here in the messy middle. The new character really changed things. Tightening the front and having Jani witness something that she heard second-hand in the first draft really changed things. I think the new things are better, but dammit, it means more stone cold rewriting than I thought I'd need to do. Can you say "I'd like December back, please?"

I woke up at 3am with a tight gut that eventually segued to a mild anxiety attack. I thought about getting up and writing, but decided to just lie there and rework the plot in my head. Didn't know why everyone else didn't just toss Jani in a cellar for the good of the Commonwealth. Didn't know how I was going to up the stakes and show more of the consequences of Jani's actions rather than just telling. The good news was that I had at least some framework. Certain things needed to happen. I just needed to get there another way.

I think I have something. I'm going to plunk Jani on a Service carrier instead of a Neoclona ship as she makes her way to Shera. I need to add a fistfight and a lecture. I hope I can do this in the existing page space, which means that I should still wind up cutting pages.

I don't think I'll be posting much over the next couple of weeks.