The Writing Week (Vol. 2) part 104 - Back in the Act Two Habit

Even though I know that vacations can be the best time to write (since I have nothing else to do after I wake up at noon), it can be really hard to motivate myself to be productive then. Fortunately, I managed to motivate myself this break, and the results so far have been... interesting.

We've written a lot on and off on this site about music and the influence that writing to music can have. Sometimes, all I need is background noise, and I'm good to go. Other times, music either interferes completely, or the wrong mood will completely throw off my writing sessions. These past few days have been an odd mix of all of the above.

Typically, I'm a fairly fast writer once I have an outline written. In reworking Act Two of my post-Apocalyptic spec, I feel like I've been all over the place. Some days, I'm doing great. Others, it's like I can't choose the right tunes, and the hour that I write for drags by with barely a word typed. To be honest, these past few writing sessions I've had have also been some of the more disappointing I've had recently. Sure, I'm making some progress and the page count is slowly but steadily growing. At the same time, though, I come away knowing that scenes are really little more than a framework for what they need to be. In the past ten pages I've written, there are at least three big beats I know I have to go back and fix, since the characters' emotions are totally inconsistent and do not make sense from one scene to the next.

I wouldn't say that I'm afraid of ot even really all that uncomfortable with this approach, though it's certainly not the one I would prefer. Rather, it's just unfamiliar territory. I don't like knowing that there's a lot of work I have to do when going back to the pages I've already done. On the other hand, maybe it's a sign that I'm recognizing needs and elements that are not yet flowing naturally from the pages, and I will have to identify the things that need to be changed in order for the script to unfold more organically. Today and yesterday in particular have left a very strange taste in my mouth, and I'm just not quite sure how I feel about them, at all. I guess I'm going into new territory for myself as a writer, and I'll have to wait before i can definitively say whether that's a bad thing or not.