ah, writing

*sigh* Hit a plot stall on Gambit 9 due to the fact I'd plotted Gambit out to chapter 7 -- I know roughly what's going to happen at the end, but I have to figure out how to get there in a logical manner without getting lost in the interpersonal relationship details that are going to have to come as part of the fallout from the last scene of 7. The other thing is that I conceived of Gambit in two parts, the way that Dust is a trio, so once I hit the end of part one in 8 I was looking at 9 as basically the first chapter of a completely different story. Which it both is and isn't, and I was trying to split the difference when writing it, which screwed it up. Step back! Look at the big picture! Figure out what is and isn't absolutely necessary to put on the page!

Meanwhile, although I had Gambit 8 finished when I put up 7, I started doing rewrites yesterday, and unfortunately these are the kind of ground-up rewrites where I need to rewrite almost everything from scratch, not the kind of edits where I tweak some words and add in a couple of new paragraphs.

Obviously, in typical Bedlam fashion, so far I've almost doubled the wordcount of the scene I'm rewriting. (Alt!Obi-Wan POV flashback to his meeting with the Jedi High Council; the reason it required ground-up rewrites was because the characterization was off. He might not be a Jedi anymore, he might be extremely well-armed -- can't resist a good disarming scene -- but he's not as angry and paranoid as he is later. Paranoid, sure, but differently paranoid because the reasons for his reaction at the end of 6 haven't happened yet. (Yes, we'll find out what they are.) At this point I need him way more mellow than he is in the next (present day) scene, which probably won't require quite the degree of rewrites as the current scene in progress. Plus there's an emotional gut-punch and some plot stuff that needs to be worked in.)

Ah, writing.

( snippet -- the disarming scene, of course )