An Uninspired Writing Session

They can't all be winners. Yesterday I spent my entire short writing session working on one scene, and I'm unhappy with the results.

My main character is taking her volunteer record producer to the airport, and naturally they need to exchange some words before he boards the plane. The history between the two is not good. Yes, he discovered her singing in a small town bar and offered her a record deal on the spot, but once she signed her contract he sent her out on pointless endeavors, the last of which was so bad it caused her to quit. At their last meeting before MC left Nashville, he was brutally harsh. She stood up to him, to a point, but they ended their professional relationship on an angry note.

He only stepped back into the picture via a phone call. He'd quit the label and seemingly felt guilty over an underhanded move the company had made. Now was the time to let her in on it. Somehow this conversation led him to volunteer to produce her local band's independent album. (He was sitting at home with nothing to do anyway.) 

Thus, he flew into town and they proceeded to work together for a couple of weeks. Their frostiness eventually melted away, though the two didn't exactly become buddies. 

Since the airport scene is likely the last time his character will appear in the story, it seemed like the time to convey something meaningful. I've written before about how much I struggle with this type of scenario. It needs to have impact, and none of my choices feel quite right. 

The scene starts off appropriately light. MC's cousin's foreign friend has been staying with him, and the guy took it upon himself to slap together a traditional Russian dessert for everyone, which for some reason required him stretching out the dough on a wooden clothes drying rack. (Okay, it's goofy, but a little lightheartedness can be a good thing.) The friend had slipped one of the pastries to the producer on his way out the door, and now he was trying it, exclaiming how delicious it is. Then comes time for MC to thank the producer for taking the band on, and she remarks that she doesn't understand why he volunteered to do it. 

He talks a bit about his tenure at the record label and how it had dragged him away from his first love, music, instead turning him into strictly a numbers guy. Then he confesses that he really has no idea why he became involved with her band, and announces that she's "frustrating". 

MC was expecting words praising her talent, so she quickly changes the subject and asks about his production process once he gets home. He, though, goes on to clarify what he meant, and somewhere in the middle of his exposition, he refers to her as "Layah", the name he'd given her when she signed with the label. She gently corrects him ("It's Leah") and he jumps on that as her reason for torpedoing her career. It's not ~ well, maybe it's a very small factor that ties into bigger factors.

Here is where I went wrong. She starts explaining how she got into music to begin with, and then it turns into basically a rehash of everything that happened throughout the story. Really dumb on my part. Do (hypothetical) readers really need to be reminded of things they've already read? 

The soliloquy was meant to reveal something important about MC's psyche ~ why she ran out on the label and hid away, incommunicado ~ I suppose, in a nutshell, imposter syndrome ~ but the way I wrote it just didn't work. Once I reached the end of it, the message was clear, but the whole thing was poorly executed.

Thus, I didn't even get through one entire scene, and what I did manage to write was unsatisfying.

I'm sure outliners don't have problems like this, but my writing method is "write on the fly". It generally works, but sometimes it doesn't. At least I have the skeleton; now I have to try on some different skin.

Every session can't be a winner. This one was, in the producer's words, frustrating.