Progress Report No. 6

Progress Report = indulgent post, feel free to skip. 

I figured it's been a month since my last progress report, so I'd better record how I'm doing now.

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Finished writing Chapter 5, aka the scene where Charlotte interviews Leo. I moved things around quite a bit so Leo is the first interview rather than Rhys. It occurred to me when I was restructuring the plot that Rhys would never agree to interview first. Plus, it builds up the tension more this way. Rhys is more like the final boss type, no?

Chapter 6 is a flashback chapter, and I haven't decided if the pacing works better if I stick in one of Charlotte's childhood flashbacks or Rory's, but for the sake of continuity I decided to jump ahead to Chapter 7, which is roughly the one where Rhys sees the Phantom for the first time. I HAVE BEEN STUCK ON THIS CHAPTER FOR ALMOST TWO WEEKS. The initial problem, I think, is that the first scene of that chapter involves Nicolette and Cassie, whom I came to realize that I didn't get their motivations at all. If they dislike Charlotte so much, why would they keep someone like her around? Eventually I came up with an answer, but it means I'll have to do a massive rewrite of Chapter 2. Which will have to happen later, since I made a new rule to myself that I can't go back and rewrite chapters until I finish writing the entire first draft from beginning to end.

It was rather disorienting for me to put myself in their shoes to figure things out though. I'd been contemplating just how much of a wimp Charlotte should be at the beginning (is she weak enough?), but when I tried reading 7 Seeds last week, the heroine was so infuriatingly spineless that I just wanted to smack her silly. Did I want to write Charlotte into someone I would constantly be pissed at? To be honest, not really.

Here's another problem. I've been reading Love in the Time of Cholera, and though I'm not particularly into the story or the characters, I find myself enthralled with the writing constantly. Which I think has indirectly been feeding into my massive fear of a blank page. Garcia Marquez writes so gorgeously AND ALL I CAN PRODUCE IS CRAP!!!

Anyways. I even outlined the entire chapter in hopes that it'd trigger some flow in the writing, but that hasn't happened yet. I suppose I will keep clunking on stubbornly until something starts working.