Paksworld

This week wasn’t as productive as the week before, due to Things.    However, other than two of the Things (neither of which produced any balancing good result), Things got done that needed doing.  (Not all, by any means.)

10,020 words for the five-day work week despite one day of <300 words.   22,054 for the month of August up to this moment.   Need another 20,000 by the end of the month (before Dragon*Con, that is.)

What parts of the storyline have advanced most this week?   Two POVs in particular:  Arvid’s and Arcolin’s.   Arcolin is faced with a big new problem in which loyalties will be stretched.   Arvid…there are too many people who want Arvid dead, not all for the same reasons.  Other growth points have moved as well, but not as far.    The story is advancing on a broad front, like the tide–slower here, faster there, depending on the conformation of the shore.

At times it feels like someone took the lid off  huge bucket of red herrings and tossed them out…they’re wiggling in all directions, and they’re not ALL red herrings.  Which ones must be written???  The trouble with really easy-to-write characters, like Arvid, is that they aren’t main-line most of the time…so although they’re fun to write, they’re not “on task” in terms of advancing the long-arc plot except here and there, which is, really, the only times these secondary and tertiary characters should have lines at center stage (have  POV.)    Does it matter that someone Arvid talked to the day before yesterday was found dead under Drunkard’s Bridge in Valdaire?   It can matter to  Arvid without mattering to the long plot arc (just as, if someone dropped dead on your doorstep, it would matter a lot to you, but quite likely not much if anything in a later history the first two decades of the 21st century.)  Out of all the incidents in Arvid’s life-in-book-time, I need to spend my writing time on those of plot significance.

And yes, I know some of you would happily read about Arvid doing grocery shopping or blacking his boots or correcting the manners of a snotty-nosed apprentice thief, but…no.  Not when I have a book to finish in time to get it out a year from the previous one.    He must speak his lines featly and then exit L or R and let the play go on.