WIP Wednesday: Fits and Starts

After our miserable sick week last week, I slipped back into writing like a swimmer slips into water on a hot day. Ahhhh....

But in my zest for life and the chocolaty feelings writing gives me, I went a little overboard. Instead of sticking to my 1,000 word-per-day limit, I wrote 3,000 words my first day back.

Then there was the weekend, in which I had to go through all my cupboards and decide what I was going to keep and what I was going to throw/give away. There were ten plus enormous bags of stuff to carry down the stairs to get rid of. There were crying children to console. Needless to say, the WIP didn't get any attention over the weekend. It's okay. Life happens. We're moving across the ocean in five weeks. I need to keep reminding myself of that.

On Monday I wrote my 1,000 words. Good job.

Yesterday, I started off in a funk, staring at the computer screen, wondering where on earth this novel was going. I was bored by the direction. I was bored by this particular scene. It's supposed to be the protagonist's DTR (Define The Relationship) talk with her best friend. Maybe I should've been excited about this part, but even I'm not sure how I feel about the two of them dating. Are they good for each other or not? I love them both, but isn't he a little controlling? Isn't she a little too emotionally needy to have a relationship right now? But do either of them agree with me? Of course not! They will probably want to go through with this. It's going to be a nightmare! Blaaagh!

(Okay, so that was a peek into my crazed YA-writing brain....)

I ended up doing something I shouldn't have done. I threw in a plot twist. An enormous one. One that's going to mean going back and inserting other scenes earlier in the book.

The scary thing is, I don't even know if I want this particular thing to happen.

My first book was literary, meaning it was much more character-driven than plot-driven. I didn't think I liked action-packed books very much. They set me too much on edge. I like delving into people's heads more ... But last night I sat and added a huge, adventure-packed twist. Today I'm wondering if I'm crazy.

I now have almost 40,000 words on my WIP. That's 10,000 shy of the minimum for a YA novel. I'm hoping to get to at least 55,000 before I wrap it up and go back for my first revision. That will give me some cutting space so that I don't have too short of a book at the end....

But I guess this book, the one that started off so smoothly, that seemed at first so easy to write, the one I actually sat down and planned out (for once!), is starting to get a little feisty.

Good thing feisty is fun!