NaNoWriMo, Day 17: Chaos Now, Order Later.

I can start to feel the building pressure of the holidays intruding on my time to write: This afternoon, Piper was settled in watching Nanny McPhee and Zuzu was asleep. Primo time for writing, right? Except that I spent the whole time doing menu planning for the time when my Laura's brother's family will be here. More time will be spent doing this tomorrow as well, though I've promised myself (and Laura has backed this up) that I will get away for a couple of hours. Maybe back to Café Ambrosia, where I had such a productive afternoon last weekend.

I've gotten Walt through the flashback to his breakup with Jacqui, which is really only a device to get him to tell about his past. I can think of many pieces that I've left out, but they'll probably come up in the next scene, which is another flashback, this time regarding his time at a boarding school where he had to hide his history from his classmates.

It occurred to me tonight that my chapter outline might have a real problem: After Walt and Sherry get to know each other in the present, I have three chapters — two of them fairly long — where we leave the present. That's a lot of time without the reader dealing with the relationship they're supposed to care so much about. Or that I thought they were supposed to care so much about; maybe that's too much of an assumption on my part.

I looked briefly after finishing writing tonight at how I might rearrange these sections. And then I realized: Why bother? All of the content is good and necessary, so who cares right now if it's not in the right place? The important thing is that it's out. I'll figure out the right place for it later. Hell, for all I know, maybe the break from present-day Chicago for so long smack-dab in the middle of the book might serve as a sort of "halftime show" (maybe I should have Janet Jackson show up and flash the reader?) before things get cooking on the downhill.

This book is looking to clock in around 60,000 words. This is what I'm thinking right now: While I'm at over 29,000 words, I think this is about the halfway point. The problem is, I'm feeling very low on story ideas right now. I'm not sure how I'll find the creative energy to fill in these gaps; it's just not coming like it used to.

So, you know what? I resolve to only worry about what I can write tomorrow. Beyond that, I'm just going to have to trust that I'm going to work out the issues in my head and find the scenes that need to be there. What else can I do, really?