I had to remove almost 6,000 words from my latest project. The last 6,000 words to be precise. I have literally spent a month stuck. Like, worse than writer’s block. STUCK. TRAPPED. DOOOOOOMED.
I had written myself into a corridor I didn’t like. It isn’t that there wasn’t a potential plot down that path, but it isn’t the path I wanted to go down. It isn’t where I wanted the character or the story to go.
That didn’t make the decision easier. It might be my own weakness, but it’s hard to give up on chapters of work and back myself out to get back to that turning point where I can adjust. Sometimes it’s too much. This was honestly not that bad. It wasn’t so far back that I couldn’t just remove a few thousand words.
With NaNoWriMo around the corner, I decided to take the bite. I’m hoping I can add my 50k word count to this particula novel. It’s book 2 (probably) with the current character I’m writing. I only had about 10,000 words, so 6k is really setting me back, but I really think it’s the right choice.
In case you can’t tell, I’m not my best editor. I’m a pantser in general, so I’ve written myself into a lot of corners over the years. My most common is “I decided I didn’t want that guy to be the villain halfway through and need a new villain and need that guy’s actions to have reasonable reasons behind them.” It’s a bad habit. My favorite villains are the ones with motives I understand – I want to write those villains.
This isn’t that scenario. The real problem was that I was trying to move the protagonist out of the place where she works. Once I started down that road, all kinds of problems and questions began to tumble out of the walls. And I really wasn’t liking the antagonist I was unintentionally setting up. I aslso, also wasn’t enjoying a sudden Mary-Sue-ish power jump I’d dumped in. I honestly didn’t mean to. But it made sense down that corridor.
Like I said, it isn’t like there weren’t options down that path. I didn’t like them.
So I’m backing out and going to go down a different path.
Dream by Day 