I’ve been in Kansas City the last several days visiting one of my BFF’s and my honorary niece and new nephew. It’s an annual trip that I always thoroughly enjoy, not only getting to see them, but also doing some shopping and generally getting totally out of my usual milieu. I’m away from work, haven’t had to do much with class, and away from my spouse and dogs (all of whom I’ve missed terribly and am looking forward to seeing tomorrow).
I’ve written nearly a thousand words while I’ve been here, which I was pretty pleased with given that I’ve been getting my dote on and spending most of my time with the kids and my buddy. But that’s not the most valuable part of the trip (writing-wise). Before I left, I’d spent four whole days struggling with the last scene in Chapter 10 of the novella. It was falling flat, didn’t have a lot happening in it, and was erring way too far on the side of emo without actually going anywhere. I knew it was crap and would need to be rewritten during revisions, but I pushed on through the suck so that I could move on. The exciting part is that while I was here, I figured out the big, glaring, and very obvious solution to fixing the scene. One that was so logical, I felt like a total idiot for not seeing it before. I haven’t written it yet, but I’ll get to it this week. The other big DUH moment I had was in trying to figure out how to finish up the scene I wrote while I was here. The heroine’s been shot. She’s bleeding out and the hero has dragged her to cover. They’re having one of those “Save yourself!” “Don’t you dare die on me!” kind of conversations. And I realized that as I had it written there is absolutely nobody fending off the bad guys while they’re talking. Um. Yeah. That’s not gonna work.
I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to notice these really obvious problems/solutions if I’d been at home stuck in my usual routine. While I do prefer to get more written and have a more regular routine than I’ve had here, I think being OUT of the normal routine (in a very non-stressful way) has been good for my thought process. I think it’s proof that it’s good to have some time out of the ordinary to help change your perspective and see outside the box.
I’ll be interested to see what the drive home tomorrow brings.