Yesterday was crazy writing day. Interviews, blog posts, guest blog posts, research, and my story. Busy bee, you say? You know it.
I’ve said–or, as some of you might say, bemoaned–that at times being a writer can be a real chore. When you are a writer, you are always writing. That’s the job, honey bunny. You sit and put words to whatever medium you prefer. So whenever anything comes up, it’s always do 500 words on this, 300 words on this, maybe a 1000 on that. When it’s needed you go get your writing cap (or shawl, or slippers–I could use some writing slippers), slip it on, and get to work.
That was me starting 6:30 yesterday morning. I hit the ground running, with a break or two here and there. But I spent a good part of the day writing. If I wasn’t doing, you know, writing-writing, I was formatting something for a blog tour I’m on. Or putting a picture inside a blog post because I am just a cock-eyed wonder when it comes to these fancy computers.
The biggest thing, however, was I got into Part Eight of Diners at the Memory’s End, and I finished that sucker. Did it in two parts, because I was taking my time with the writing, doing about 1,100 words on one end, and finishing up, around 10:15 PM, with a final 360 words. So a little over 1,450 words, and Part Eight slips into history as the–so far–longest part of my current story.
The thing that really seemed to hold me up? The sex scene. I stopped the first time because my head was threatening to explode, and I needed a break. I knew I’d start getting into a bit of the sexy, as I like to say, and I didn’t want to try and write that while forcing myself to hold my head up.
But when I got back into it, all the stuff I envisioned about what was going to happen, all the language and the sensations and so forth . . . they didn’t feel right. Actually, they didn’t feel real. It felt a bit contrived, like I would have been writing a sex scene for the sake of writing a sex scene.
I remembered something I did in my NaNo Novel. During the final battle between my protagonist and antagonist, I had all these visions of it being huge and protracted. Then I thought about it: if you have two people with incredible powers squaring off, getting ready to kick each other’s ass with magic, how long would a battle like that really last? Generally speaking, you have a lot of defense, a few jabs to wear each other down–then, when you see a weakness, you clobber the other person.
In the mean time, however, you probably destroy everything around you, and have whatever passes for the magical cops on your ass.
I figured these two would likely go right at each other, flat out, trying to score the knock out pretty quick. One of the combatants wasn’t suppose to know magic real well, so taking her out right away seemed prudent. It didn’t work, and the other witch got her ass kicked in short order.
If less was more for a battle, then it’d work for sex. After all, I don’t have to show everything, or even much of anything. Just get the party started, and let people wonder was really happened in the cold, quiet, vacuum of space so far from anyone else.
So I went that route. I got it started, but everything after the initial contact became fantasy fodder for the reader. This isn’t erotica, it’s science fiction. That doesn’t mean I can’t go for the sex in the story, but describing the exact proportions of Meredith’s vagina, how it might appear as it glistened in the dim light of unblinking stars . . . yeah, didn’t need that level of detail.
It’s out of the way, and it was a long week dealing with a part that, for some reason, was totally holding me back. Now I’m beyond.
Time to break the heartbreak and resolution.
