one more draft…

okay, so it’s actually been a bit more than a few days since i last posted progress on “Running on Empty”.* i have not been idle, however. while it’s true that the aforementioned query work essentially consumed the last few days, i was actually quite productive prior to that, though i had let the blogging slide.

today, with the queries out and the college on spring break, i was able to get back to RoE, starting with a couple strong pages after my morning run, followed by a few more pages later on.

unfortunately, the last couple pages are filled with more cross-outs and scribbles than actual writing.** i was against a wall. the end is mere pages away and yet i couldn’t seem to get the words out. over and over i tried to approach the scene, but over and over i ground to a halt because i was forcing the characters or getting lost on tangents or some such other problem.

why? because i didn’t plan the ending. my outline reached all the way up to, but did not include, the final scene. i knew essentially what had to happen and who would be involved, but i hadn’t been able to identify the particulars despite all my outlining. finally, i just started writing and decided to take the risk.

well, here i was, 241 pages and 77 writing days later, and i still hadn’t figured it out.

i’d managed to pick up a number of pieces along the way, most of which i could not have planned if i wanted to. still, the whole was incomplete. after wrestling with it for probably too long, i realized that it came down to the fact that i was stuck between two possibilities:

• ending the story where it was, where i had initially thought it was going to end, though i was still unsatisfied with the anti-climactic-feeling scene that currently existed, in hopes that i would discover what was not quite right about it during revision, or
• letting the story run along one of the unexpected tangents i’d started, which opened the door on a further series of events that held the promise of a more exciting ending

try as i might, i truly couldn’t figure out which was the better course.

when my wife came home, i was still no better off and i harangued her, as usual, with my plight. she listened patiently until i had spun myself out, then proposed a distraction.

i tell it to my students all the time: when you’re stuck, walk away, get some exercise, work in the garden***, whatever, just do something else entirely and let your subconscious do the heavy lifting for a while.

it is quite humbling to be reminded to take one’s own advice, and the more valuable for it.

because after i finally stopped looking or the answer, i found it. what’s more, my instincts had been right; i had reached the end and the tangent was a mirage, nothing more. there are a couple of key changes to make, of course, but i had been looking so hard for what was wrong, that i wasn’t seeing what was right.

* 10, to be exact

** okay, yes, my so-called ‘actual writing’ is not terribly distinguishable from scribbling, but that’s not the point.

*** i love winter, but it’s spring, right? somewhere?

i haven’t blogged in a few days, and i’m about 5 pages behind in Running on Empty, which is rather hard to take because i’m right at the end, now, but i made a decision to take care of something that was cluttering my mind to a distracting degree.

specifically: query letters.

*gasp* horror!

and yet, i’m getting better at them. at least from a subjective point of view. i haven’t actually had any responses from agents or publishers that would validate this*, but i’m feeling like the stress is less in the writing of the query letter itself than in the dogged search for the proper audience.**

ah, well. complaining won’t solve anything.

doing will, though.

back to RoE!

* and their absence seems to actively invalidate this, but i’m not going to dwell on that.

** that said, i cannot but thank my wife yet again for her tireless assistance in this endeavor, as in all other things.

i know, i know, it’s really hard to move forward with a story when i move backward in time, but this one works. not only did it flow naturally (and entirely unexpectedly) from the scene as i wrote, but it also brought up a motif i’ve been hoping to weave back in, though i haven’t seen a good way to do so.

until this evening.

which, by the way, i had no high hopes for. after a full day at school, i wasn’t feeling the mojo really. however, after dinner, sweeping out the water in the basement (ah, winter rain), stoking the fire (supposed to be colder than cold overnight) and sending some more query-and-related emails (no responses means no rejections, right?), i decided to have a go, anyway.

can there be too much said for persistence? probably, but it’s a hard sell, especially after a great night like this: 5 pages, good backstory to enhance story depth, and ending with another kick to the seat of the pants!

. . . is that there are so many of them.

as i caught up from yesterday’s deficit, it occurred to me that the buzzing in my head was the sound of several possible outcomes of the scene i’ve been working on, all competing for existence because i hadn’t chosen one. as such, i waffled back and forth between the options, trying to get the best parts of all of them.

and not really succeeding.

not surprising, of course. that’s going to be a tough revision section.

still, lesson learned.* i got through it today and am making definite headway toward the climactic scene, which is shaping up to be both very big and very small, if i can pull it off.

* probably a new rule in there somewhere.