Back Up and Try Again

Interesting Saturday. I don't write as much on the weekends, partly because I "work" on the weekends, I have the copy editing shifts for the Source Saturday and Sunday evenings, and also becase the family is home and there are different things to do, family things.

But I did get a chance to write for a little while and it was interesting. I got a head of steam going and had almost 600 words written when I got up for a few minutes. It was during that time I realized I had made a wrong turn – literally, because the characters are slogging across an island in the dark, in the rain, trying to avoid pursuers. I literally had taken the wrong turn, they weren't ready to go down the ravine yet, there was something else that needed to happen first.

So I sat down and backed up. Literally. Chopped about 200 words. Didn't "delete" them, because they weren't bad and they might work a little later. But they had to go, because something else needs to happen to the kids first. Depending on how they react to it, the bit with the ravine might work. If not, something else will.

But sometimes you just have to back up and try again. Which is what I did. 159 words later I was back on course.

For the day I got 551 words, not bad for a Saturday, I guess, and even better if you count (and I don't) the roughly 200 words I chopped out. Story now stands at 32,341.