After a bit of a slump, I’ve been back into writing the last couple of days. Jubilation.

I am not the most disciplined of writers. This is an understatement. There’s a constant war in my head between what I ought to be doing and what I feel like doing, and the latter wins most battles. This propensity has a lot to do with my habit of jumping around a lot when writing my first and second drafts. I’m finding that I’ve been doing much less of that as I work on the third. Now that most of the bones are in place, it seems to make much more sense to flesh out my work as I move forward, chapter by chapter. I am still finding places that frustrate me – pieces that just won’t connect, or end properly, even though I know they should. I’m allowing myself to skip over these small bits, feeling certain that my inability to complete them comes from not having figured out some plot element that will become the glue.

And, in all honesty, my “slump” wasn’t totally unproductive. Thought I didn’t get anything on a page for several days, I did get a few large plot epiphanies for the overall series arc that have clarified quite a few characters’ motivations. (One happened while sitting in a drive-thru. It just crashed into me, totally out of the blue.) I think I’ve finally settled on the identities of all seven Archetypes, and all three Kaos fragments. I still have a good bit of backstory to work the kinks out of amongst my pseudo-immortals, but that’s to be expected. When you live as long as they do, your backstory is more complicated, just because there’s so much more of it. It’s inevitable.

At the moment, Gabriel is simultaneously the easiest and most difficult character I possess.

I should be digging into some very meaty stuff in chapter 5 tonight…

/cast iPod [Keane – Under the Iron Sea]