(no subject)

*sigh* I am at that point in the NaNovel (Bottom of the River) where I have written myself into a corner and I'm trying to work my way out of it. The first 20K of NaNo I just banged on straight ahead; it's the most recent 10K where I ran into a wall. I know the Big Picture of River; it's just the details where I get confused, because (and the same thing happens in Dust), I get an idea for a cool scene and then get stuck on it, even when it doesn't necessarily serve the greater purpose, and then I have to work out how to make it do so. Sometimes this is beneficial: the original keypoint scene for River was scrubbed early on because it was, to be honest, fairly boring. (I suspect it might have worked visually as a scene in a movie or TV series, but not in prose.) Instead we got some action that originally wasn't planned for the story. And you know me: when in doubt, write in some action. I have in the past actually cut action scenes, but that only happens very rarely. (For the penultimate chapter of Bad Moon Rising, I actually initially wrote one action sequence, then cut it and rewrote it for character accuracy. Male or female, Obi-Wan is never going to walk down a hallway guns blazing not caring who's in the line of fire.)

Hopefully my penchant for writing action scenes doesn't get me in trouble this time. I can cut that chunk of River 4 (which isn't up yet; I'm trying to work at least a full chapter ahead of what I post for once in my life), but I don't really want to, because it has some great character moments, plus Anakin snarking like the jackass he is. (I love the kid, but canonically: Anakin is like the king jackass among the Jedi.) I think I do have to make a run back at canon for a characterization refresher, though; if I read too much meta I lose my grip on the characters and that's not good in the middle of a fic.

*sigh* I'd better go into version 3 of River 5, which means I'm probably about to lose two of my favorite lines so far: "It probably said a lot about Anakin’s career as a Jedi that this was neither the first, the second, nor in all likelihood the last time that he woke up in chains" and "I don’t know what part of ‘Jedi have psychic powers’ people don’t understand." I don't want to put River 4 up until I'm sure that I'm not going to have to cut the fight scene. (I really like this fight scene, okay.)

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Meanwhile I'm trying to make myself answer my damn e-mail so that I don't watch another deadline blow by for the third year in a row. This is one of the times when having separate academic and personal e-mails is a real downer, because I'm less likely to ignore something if it's in my personal e-mail. (I mean, I will, but it's harder.) As it is, I'm just holding off on going to check my Leicester and Tulane e-mails, and I really really need to reply to those e-mails ARGH.