Today, I think I have officially wrung my brain dry. I made this plan to finish THE ARSONIST, my current work in progress, by writing 2,000 words a day. I've written about 20,000 words in two weeks, which is more than I've written in a long time. I've been motivated because I know MINNOW edits are coming soon and I don't want drop THE ARSONIST in the middle of an unfinished draft. The problem is, THE ARSONIST is a really, really difficult book to write. 1) It's a mystery, which brings with it a number of issues like when to reveal certain clues, pacing, making the clues cool, and making sure the ending is not a deus ex machina.
2) At the moment, there are three narrators (WHY?).
3) One of those narrators is historical, so there's lots of research involved, which is sooo sloooow oooh myyy Gooood.
4) There are about a billion secondary characters.
5) The male protagonist and female protagonist have always been meant to fall in love, and it feels like they want to, but they are so different and come from such different places, it's been difficult figuring out exactly how that should happen and I inevitably feel like this:
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| Never was there a more accurate picture of an author at work. |
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| A text I sent to my mom. Eating that scone was the only productive thing I did all day. |
I planned on taking a break from THE ARSONIST after I finished a complete draft, but maybe a complete draft is not in the cards right now. I might just put rows of X's where there are issues and deal with them after a week or two. Maybe the problems will magically fix themselves in that time!


2000 words a day is seriously impressive! That's inspiring. (I think yesterday I wrote, like, forty?) The book sounds pretty amazing, though, albeit complicated to write! I'm always interested in books with multiple narrators, and I'm interested to hear how that process goes!
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