Season 2, Episode 39: Soldiering On
IN THIS EPISODE
Abby had some big questions this week, but her draft is ultimately looking good. Last week she'd planned on finishing chapter 4, but ended up writing an entirely new chapter 3 instead.
She'd seen someone on a message board ask the question, "How do you keep up your routine when you're out of town?" An excellent question, because Abby's been gone for 2/3 of the month of May, and she's still seeking the answer to that question.
She found that going back and working on edits for things she'd already written was an invaluable way to move forward without having the set routine with a quiet house and regular computer/keyboard. It was more manageable, and she didn't feel like she was moving backward. It helped to have a deadline, even though she didn't feel like meeting it sometimes, because it kept the fire at her feet and didn't let her forget to work.
“Sometimes we get ourselves really worked up and get stuck in this mindset of ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it’. I set a really small goal for myself—‘I’m going to take three pages of Kemlo’s edits, and I’m going to apply it’—and it worked. I felt like I moved forward, and I think that’s key.”
Kemlo and Abby talked about carving out space for writing during the day--especially important for parents or anyone in a time crunch or who has a lot of responsibilities. Abby's had to tell her kids that she's lucky and happy to be home with them during the summer, but that she needs time every day to write, too. A delineation of work/playtime and boundary setting is necessary sometimes to get things done!
Abby had some questions surrounding how magic works in her world - two worlds, in fact. She's got her protagonist in the regular world, and then the book world of her protagonist's father, and there's a tricky space of trying to show readers the magic without stopping the story to call attention to it, and not calling attention to it in an awkward way, either. Bernadette's grown up with this magic and doesn't see it as strange, but in the course of the book, she starts to realize it's not "normal". Abby wanted to draw some attention to the magic in a sensory way in this chapter. Still, things are a little shaky on the purpose and necessity of the scene. Is it really adding to the emotional thread?
“Just because she’s experiencing an emotion, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s meaningful. But so what? Why do we care that she’s angry? What does it have to do with what’s at stake in the story?”
The key thing for a story is that it needs to be particular to show us a unique point of view. What is happening for that character? What's it like to experience what they're going through?
Considering this, Abby's looking to add some magical oomph to a scene she's already written, and she and Kemlo brainstorm solutions while working consistently within the constraints of the magic. The things she changes here and decisions she makes about her world's "rules" will have an effect on the rest of her scenes, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - it just means more work, adding another layer to those scenes.
