So, I am getting the feeling as I'm writing today that I'm not going to quite recapture the magic of the past few times I've sat down to write Tales of MU... i.e., I'm not going to end up with two chapters worth of good text. I have a good start in terms of momentum and I can build on that and I could probably finish the day with about 7-8 thousand words, but.... that wouldn't give me two
good chapters.
Looking at the 1,300 words I have so far, it's obvious to me that for the rest of my workday I'm going to need to take a more reflective, more considered approach to the material. I'm going to be need to be shaping as much as I'm producing. One really good chapter is within my reach, if I give up the goal of writing two chapters.
So my bold plan to be done writing Tales of MU for the week today will probably not come to pass. But here's where things work out nicely: this leaves me to find one day in the next three to write the next chapter with the same care, if it needs that care. And if it doesn't, I'll finish off the week with a head start on next week again. If it does, I'll be writing Monday's chapter on Monday. Not like I haven't done that before.
I'm not actually modifying my overall plans. I'm not giving up on the idea that days will come... and come with reliable frequency... where I can sit down and write two good-sized chapters' worth of good story at a good clip. But the thing is I need to let them happen, to be ready for them to happen, to make room in my life and my mind for them to happen, and to be ready for when they don't.
Like when I'm writing my Fantasy in Miniature stories... I'm no longer counting on the idea that I'll be able to write one every day. I'm giving one day a week to write as many as will come. So far (that is,
twice) it's been more than a week's worth each time, but I'm not counting on that. I'm counting on the times when it is to make up for the times that it's not. If every time I sit down to write Fantasy in Miniature, I sit down and write as many of them as I can instead of aiming for a quota, I'll never suffer for having an off day/week.
Same thing with MU. I have faith that the good days will get me through the decent and even bad days. This isn't a bad day. It could turn into one if I tried to force it to be a good one when it's got the makings of a decent day.
When I look at what I've written already, if I were to think, "Maaaaaaaan, I need to write another 5,000-6,000 on top of this in the next six hours", I'd be... well, either disheartened or frantic. Looking at it and thinking, "I have 6 hours to build on this and polish it and turn it into a finished chapter.", I can see I'm standing on much firmer ground.
The key is that I'm not stressed by this. I'm not anxious. I'm not bothered by it. In the past week and change, I've been coupling my prep periods with exercises in slow, deep, abdominal breathing (thank you, Cracked.com, for letting me know I was doing that wrong) and the results have been phenomenal in helping my control my anxiety, focus better, and exercise self-control in general. It turns everything I do into a much more deliberate act. I don't remember to do it all the time outside of work, but during my writing workdays it's now part of my routine.
I think a good metaphor here for why this is going to be a decent day rather than a good one is that you have to go slow around curves to avoid crashing. The first three chapters were a very straight line progression. Now I'm writing a transitional chapter, Sunday into Monday. Weekend into week. Summer break (for those who had one) into class sessions. At the same time I'm trying to reintroduce old faces and introduce new concepts. It's a very windy road, compared to the past three chapters, and it requires more care to navigate.
The chapters that follow are going to be going back to a linear progression. Class, class, class. New concepts will be introduced (New classes! It's going to be fun.), but I'm going to have the room I need to do it in.
And to close up this ramble: I've just realized that I am mentally doing one suboptimal thing here, and that is that when I adjusted my goal to be to get a really good chapter for Wednesday I did set a quota to hit. My mind put a firm, bright line over starting Friday's chapter. That's the equivalent of saying I'll write five flash stories in my weekly flash writing day because I only need five stories a week. It's entirely possible I'll finish up the day with a head start on Friday's chapter. That's not the goal but it's easily possible, and I'm going to leave myself open to the possibility.
Edit/Update:I wrote this post in the midst of my second reflectioningary period of the day. I'm now in my third and I've just made the decision to take the part about
( the thing that's mildly spoilery ) and cut it out, to hold it back for later on. I think this chapter will be better and the chapter that eventually happens in will be better for it, even though the events I'm cutting only arose in the first place because I was thinking back to the parallel scene from last year and trying to make a comparison. Even though the real-world reason I added that bit won't apply any more, it still will make good story when it happens.
Basically, there's more than enough looking backwards in the first half of this chapter. By the time we get to Monday morning, it needs to be looking ahead. This is the sort of thing that taking a more reflective approach to shaping a chapter and working on the story as more than a single unit at a time allows me to do.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}