three cheers for literacy

I skipped a log because I only had a couple of sentences jotted down, then things got busy and I missed another ones, and now I have many disconnected sentences and this is too long!! Haha.

General status:

I'm still drafting the Fantasy Bodyguard OT3. Here's my thoughts/status as of this morning:

I'm about halfway in terms of scene count. Just one more scene to complete Arc 1, so I'll be looking at fleshing out Arc 2 before going further and that might result in more scenes. However, I'm thinking of removing Arc 3 which could balance that (or heavily shortening it, looking at the scenes there again... It's mostly about travelling from A to B, but some of the shenanigans on the way are very much wider-plot relevant. Gah).

In general, after the early high, I'm entering a "down" phase mood-wise. The prose feels very poor. I know beautiful prose isn't the goal of a first draft, but it's still hard not to take notice. It seems like I'm only writing dialogue, and all of my others sentences either start with He/She/They or someone's name. Removing the last arc would give me more space to improve this arc which is "THEY BECOME FRIENDS AND THEN ATTRACTED TO EACH OTHER." I feel confident that I can improve on that during edits because that was what a lot of the Soul Thief structural edits turned out to be, for the first half. And it was easier to do once I had the real big picture from the finished draft because I could see exactly what relevant sub-plot to add to make it happen. So I'm trying not to be worried that it doesn't seem to be working so well right now. (And I'm still too close to the story to judge anything anyway.)

Writing feels more difficult in general, even though I'm writing feet-kicking stuff (loyalty/protecc moments, trusting another with your secrets, etc). I think it's a combination of growing more aware of all that will need to be edited or changed (truly, there isn't nearly enough going on around all the dialogue), and I'm feeling self-conscious about how indulgent many of the scenes I'm writing are. At a rational level, I don't think this is a bad thing, especially in a first draft. But emotionally/psychologically, it's a different game. For now, I'm white-knuckling it and defiantly glaring at the self-consciousness while typing even more furiously, haha. ("Oh yeah? You think that was too self-indulgent, brain? YOU'VE SEEN NOTHING" *writes more bantery banter*)

But because of those feelings and all the second-guessing going on, I think compressing that final act and whatever else I can do to finish this draft earlier would be a good idea, so I don't lose steam or despair and give up.

( Other scattered thoughts from the last couple of weeks )

Project:

• Only the fantasy bodyguard OT3!! Making good progress on the first draft.