Melani Blazer

Well, soon as I wrote the title I was reminded the F18 fly-by for our Fourth of July parade was truly one of the highlights of the weekend. It was a good one, by all regards, even the near misses and inability to sleep due to 96 hrs of nonstop fireworks. Even I bought a zillion bottle rockets, but 4am? Please.

For the third time, I wrote a scene into a corner from which there was no escape. At 2/3rd into a story, you cannot make resolution even more impossible (okay, you can, but in this case, it’d take another 40K to resolve it, unless you want something completely contrite and will make even ME wanna throw it against the wall.). Anyhoot, I wrote, I deleted, I backed up, wrote, deleted and last night I finally didn’t even reread what I’d written, just scrapped it all (still on paper) and started from a different point.

Guess what? My characters didn’t have a blow out and say irreparable things to one another but I still managed to have a both say things they didn’t want to. Oh, they meant them, but it was neither the time or place.

I picked up a newspaper on Sunday at my mother in laws and on the back, it had one of those “Dear ___” columns. The letter was admonishing this advice columnist for encouraging confrontations. The columnist replied very aptly, stating that confrontation was often the word other people suggested, and she would use conversation, discussion and confrontation interchangeably. Arguably, there’s a difference, but I realized I was being too harsh in my writing. I didn’t need them to be cruel to one another to say what they felt, they could do it more subtly, and in the end, realized it made a big difference and hopefully hit a more emotional tone.

Now…to get them OVER this–compounded by all the other things preventing that lovely little HEA, and things will be good. But I thought 14 handwritten pages for one night was really rocking. YAY!

Can I shoot off one bottle rocket to celebrate?