Pulling Teeth (SIS 50k: Day 43)
Writing at the moment is like pulling teeth. Once I start, it's ok, but it's taking tremendous effort to push myself to actually get started. Still feeling totally uninspired. I think it would help if I actually planned my story, because then at least I could always skip to another scene when I run out of ideas. Argh. But after two days of hiding from writing, I did manage to struggle through a thousand words of Unreal City.
One of the current challenges for fictionland is "Light in the Dark", which sounds like it should be really evocative, but I still spent two days staring blankly at it before I managed to churn something out today. I borrowed my friend singing_nettle's characters and had them discuss the romance novel they're writing for the money (this, of course, has absolutely no relation to real life, because in real life, singing_nettle wrote the novel all by herself, and I'm only editing it).
Light in the Dark
"For him, her goodness was like a light in the darkness, a shining light in a world which had shown him only cruelty, only pain, and had taught him to be hard and ruthless."
Kate pulled a face. "That was terrible," she said.
"I know," Penny said. "Wasn't it?"
"Wrong on every level," Kate agreed. "Change 'cruelty' to 'heartache', or something."
"Heartache, right," Penny said, typing the replacement word in. "This is ridiculous, Kate. We can't do this."
"We have arts degrees," Kate pointed out, leaning back in her chair and resting an ankle on the opposite knee. "We HAVE to do this."
Penny sighed. "Maybe you're right," she said. "But I don't know how much more of Antonio I can handle."
"But offensively overpowering heroes are really fashionable at the moment!" Kate said, trying to sound encouraging. "Haven't you READ Twilight?"
"I would never admit to having done that, you know that."