Day 1 post-op.

Well today's word count was 1115, which considering all the structuring I did in addition, is pretty great.

I'm employing a strategy that's somewhat new to me, in an attempt to promote flow - I'm stopping my writing for the day in the middle of a scene, when the rest of that scene is fully formed in my mind. This is in opposition to my previous habit of just writing until I felt a natural stopping point. I've always found that I have trouble digging back into a chapter that I've stopped at a natural stopping point. So we'll see if this serves me any better.

Tonight's work was the very very beginning of chapter 1, and is intended to give reasonable introductions to Jul (the heroine), Simon (her father), and Bea (her grandmother). I've already learned important, character-shaping things about all three of them in those two pages that I had not heretofore thought of. So even though I technically only got half of my "daily quest" done, I consider today to be a big success.

It's definitely true that thinking about a character will only take you so far. While I am supremely confident in my character creation abilities (characters are my very best thing), perhaps this hubris limits me more than I know. The act of writing the character in a scene, of letting them really breathe and run around and punch people and laugh and be embarrassed that they hate meat, inevitably shows me that my invention-by-thought is only half of the process. I can only think through the base of the character. All the rest, the character tells me. Writing a scene is a dual act for me - at one time, yes, I am writing a scene. At the same time, I am having a dialogue with the character who quite suddenly knows much better than I do.

Damn.

Let's see if I can do better tomorrow.

Listening to: Radiohead - 2+2=5 (The Lukewarm) (Hail to the Thief)