Always a work in progress...

Seems like I might have covered this subject in an earlier post, but I think it bears covering again as it seems to be a predominant presence in most writing, (At least it is for me). There are times when you're zinging along at light speed with writing. Sometimes you can't hit the keys fast enough and making mistakes is like repeatedly falling down and having to go to all the trouble of getting back up. But then there are the times when you're struggling through a scene or section of a chapter or whatever, where you're practically begging to put some kind of words down. You know where you want to go and what it will take to get it there, but you can't seem to create the "devil in the details" into order to move the plot along. After a couple of exhausting weeks of slogging to create a couple of pages, you look back at what you've struggled with and think, "This is utter crap!! Hit the delete button and start over!!" Then you leave it and come back the next day and actually read through it and all of a sudden, it all fits together and feels warm and smooth and even after a couple of tweaks, it comes out golden. How does that even work?!

I'm glad it works, but I don't understand any of those dynamics. Have I ever hit the restart button? Yes, a couple of times. Twice in "Thulsa's Gate" and once in "Starbird I". I've saved those scenes, just in case, but on the rare occasion that I do reread them again, I look at the entire work and think, "I'm glad I wrote this because it makes me happy with what I replaced it with." On a bit of a side note, I often wonder what my characters think when I'm modifying, adjusting or changing a scene and more specifically, their dialog. Because I write as if I'm watching or creating a movie, I picture the characters working with the scene and the dialog and we're having to go over it again and again. Sometimes there might be an argument about how it should go, but ultimately, the completed scene is liked by writer and characters alike.

Something else I worry about as a writer. One of the comments that came back from the Beta readers for "Starbird I", was; "Don't these characters ever get a chance to rest?" Even after the disclaimer in the foreword and the preface, telling everyone who ventured into the pages, "This is a chaser book. There will be none-stop action all the way to the end." One Beta indicated they wished one of the characters would just die rather than keep going through the mess they were in. Would you want someone you loved to just stop because they had gone through so much? Isn't this one of the reasons we read adventure books for in the first place? To gain strength through someone else? In Starbird II, the characters do get a chance to rest a bit and develop a lot more. You get to get inside their heads and learn much more about them, and that's what worries me. Is this in-depth development not moving the story along fast enough for an action adventure Science fiction story? With the amount of romantic content inclusive to the story, should it even be called an action adventure Science Fiction novel? I don't know where the threshold is at and I worry about that.

Something else that has me a bit troubled. I believe as the reader, you crave to be a bit uncomfortable with where you are in a story. You want to feel something that a character feels, but not necessarily actually experience what that character is going through. I understand that quite often, a reader will identify with a character because they have experienced exactly what the character is going through or feeling. Creating some of these situations that are believable can be problematic. For example; sexual tension between two characters who aren't going to be falling in love with each other, but the tension would be there just as it would be in real life for someone who walks in the wrong dressing room or there is a clothing malfunction of some kind. I'm not sure why I'm struggling with creating such situations. I can't think of anything in my past that would suggest that I have issues. Maybe it's just one of those things that every writer struggles with in one form or another for different subjects. Some have a real problem with a death scene, or a detailed fight scene or describing what a particular environment looks like. I guess I've found something that I need to work on. The business of life is to move forward and we should learn at least one thing new every day.