The Tag Effect is still, well, in effect.
I still live!
Barely.
Sometimes life conspires against writing and there is a delicate balancing act involved in deciding when you have to power on regardless and when it’s time to take a break and let life untangle itself for a day.
Between a truly horrendous outbreak of hives that has me looking like I have a horrible flesh eating disease on my legs, back and arm pits and a new kitten, Elliot, I’ve had three days since Saturday the 26th off. Three days in one week is basically borderline hospitalization for me-however as I have no choice but to take phenergan the writing would have suffered if I’d tried to do anything on those days.
Today and yesterday, however, I got good word counts and I’m on track to finish the first draft tomorrow! I hope. Maybe.
Elliot ‘helped’ on both days, but I have a good explanation for who Aratika’df58 is when my agent asks. Oh yes, you didn’t realize ‘I, Aratika’ was a novel about cloning, did you!? Well it is now.
On an unrelated note, I’ve discovered I write VERY SLOWLY when I have the plot worked out in bullet points. I had to do that for these last chapters as they have to fit into the work count appropriately and do and say certain things.
The whole rest of the novel was basically written with about three bullet points for the WHOLE of the novel. Almost everything, even the very critical elements of the plot, came together subconsciously and were spewed onto the page by my brain without me having ANY idea how things were going to turn out.
All I really knew when I began was that Aratika was going to run away from her first marriage and dress as a boy-initially I thought she would join a more mainstream type army and live on the frontlines of a war, but then it turned out it was an island and that never happened. I think I was just as surprised as the readers for most of the writing process.
However that’s one of the things that keeps me writing. I love finding out what happens next. I love seeing things come together in the story so perfectly without any conscious effort on my part. I think I struggled with Meka (a young adult I was working on) so much because every chapter was carefully plotted out and prepared in advance.
These are the things you learn about yourself. Grin.
Happy writing and reading everyone.