You Know What I Mean, Right?

Most of the time when I'm writing I don't have good ideas at my fingertips. As a discovery writer, when I hit a "dead" patch, I force myself to write through it, which generally works. Outliners won't understand this, but fun for me as a writer are the plot turns that appear out of nowhere. Thus, even if I'm feeling uninspired on a particular day, rather than delete what I think is drivel, I just keep going. If it all goes to hell, well, that's what editing is for.

Then there are the rare times when I spark on a really good idea ahead of time. It's exciting! I rush headlong into it, only to realize later that I've completely shortchanged that wonderful turning point. That's what I did yesterday.

I knew what I meant to convey, but as far as I know, no one can read my mind, which will pose a problem for anyone who deigns to pick up my novel. Rather than hammer that plot twist home, I quickly moved on...to the main character's friend relating an anecdote from his past. Not a particularly interesting anecdote, mind you. It wasn't until later, when I was trying to fall asleep, that I realized I'd left a huge hole smack dab in the middle of my plot. It's fixable, of course. (I hate fixing.)

The main character's started drinking. She'd sworn off drinking two years before when she realized that her life was spiraling. That was when she broke up the band and moved to Wyoming. Now, though it's not blatantly stated, she's been triggered by a painful event and she plunges into despair once again. I did a really good job writing the scene in which she shows up for the band's gig ~ drunk and very late. (Not sure why, but I'm good at drunk scenes.) At first, when she enters the bar, she's surprised by the number of people there at such an early hour, and the song playing on the jukebox is way too loud. Finally she focuses enough to realize it's not the jukebox, but her band. She goes from being disoriented to angry; angry that they had the nerve to start without her. Nevertheless, she climbs up to the stage and grabs her guitar, still fuming; especially so when she notices the guys all staring at her. The guitarist is singing his lead, and she steps up to add her usual harmony, but her cousin gently bumps her away from the mic and takes over. She jabs him in the spine with the neck of her guitar, then plops down atop the bass amp to wait the song out before she gives him a piece of her mind. She doesn't get the chance, because before she knows it, he's grabbing her by the arm and practically dragging her off to the storage room, where he lays into her. That, in a nutshell, is the scene. Sure, there's the Uber ride to the bar, during which she mistakes the driver's stares in the rearview mirror as him "recognizing her" for the (faux) star that she is. She cheerily admits that yes, she's really her, and asks him if he liked her debut single. "Oh, are you a singer?" he asks. And when she clumsily attempts to exit the car once it stops and he asks her if she'd maybe rather go back home and "take a nap".

Nice depiction, right? Except that all I managed to detail regarding her "drinking problem" was one day in her life. The next day on the phone, she admits to her friend, "I've started drinking". When? For one day? See, in my mind, it had been going on for a while. Except I forgot to show that.

Now I've got to wedge it in. I'm going to need to invent new scenarios showing her gradual decline leading up to that night at the bar. And they'll need to be relatively subtle. It can't be one big lost weekend, or week. She'll need to start sinking slowly.

And that anecdote I abruptly switched to? Cheesy. It was meant to drive a point home, one that the MC would relate to, but it was dumbly written. More fixing forthcoming.

I have come to believe that long writing sessions do me no favors. Yesterday marks the third time I've buried good ideas under a big pile of crap. This time, though, I wasn't so much zig-zagging as skipping. 

Editing this novel is going to be a bitch. It'll be like sorting through my closet, trying to decide what's worth keeping, then realizing that I hate everything inside it. If I keep the good parts of this story, I'll be left with one shoe and a tee shirt.

I guess progress is what you make of it. Better to have one shoe than none.