I broke down and took a tramadol last night. It took somewhat longer to knock me out than it usually does; I made it all the way through the season finale of House. Makes me wonder if the bottle I’ve got has passed its effective date. ‘Course by the time I started speculating about that, it hit me like a falling anvil, and I went comatose before I could check.
Woke up woozy and irritable this morning. Woozy I expected, but fractious, I didn’t. Struggling not to bite anyone’s head off this morning. The Adderall and coffee are helping to alleviate my foul mood, but I still feel like I’ve got a miffed Elder God on a short rein. Until I can mollify said Elder God, my ability to play well with others is pretty tenuous. I’m trying not to send emails or interact too much with people so I won’t say or send something I’ll regret later. But it’s a little tricky ’cause my swelling “to do” list includes several belated correspondences.
I hate feeling like my emotions are at odds with my intellect. The reasonable, rationale me knows I don’t have any basis to be snarly and cantankerous, but the unthinking, feeling me wants to lash out indiscriminately. 
On the plus side, my wingstubs feel better.
Writing Stuff
Received:
– Edits for “Princess Bufo marinus, I Call Her Amy” from Mirrorstone Books (via mroctober), including a request to rename it to “Princess Bufo marinus, Also Known as Amy.” I’m inclined to prefer my original title, but I’m pretty bendy when it comes to editorial requests, so I suspect I’ll end up okaying it.
New Words:
– 1150 on the Fox Princess novel.
I think I wrote myself into a corner. The chapter wanted to go a different direction than I’d outlined, and I went with it ’cause I was feeling discontented about the pacing, and this new scene speeds things up nicely. But now my protagonist is facing an adversary I can’t figure out a way for her to either defeat or escape. So now I need to either rewrite the scene and go with my outlined events–and come up with a way to fix the pacing–or think up a plausible solution to her current circumstances. Urg. Thinkthinkthink.
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15,105 / 40,000
(37.8%) |
Maybe going after that potentially unbeatable adversary in your current snarly mood would yield some results?
Heh. Actually, I did just that. Not so much against the adversary; they can’t be overcome with physical force (hence the problem), but I had her lash out in anger at her (defeatist) companion. It made for a good character development moment. But I’m still stuck in the scene. Urk.
While I obviously don’t know the specifics, I have to say that this sort of circumstance has actually resulted in some of the more interesting scenes in my own novels. See, when I’m outlining, I’ll often mention that the characters get into Situation X, or have to face Life-Threatening Hazard Y, but I don’t usually bother to outline how they get out of it. I prefer to figure out that sort of thing as I write the scene, forcing myself (as opposed to the characters) to really try to think creatively.
Maybe it’s a holdover from my RPing, when I don’t have any control over what situations I find my characters in. 😉
I’ve occasionally found myself frustrated to the point of having to rewrite, but the majority of the time, even when it’s difficult to come up with some way out, I find that when I finally do, it’s far more creative than it would’ve been if I’d planned an escape route in advance.
I’m there with you. Some of the best and most interesting scenes I’ve written I’ve accomplished without any plan or notion of how my protag is going to persevere, and then managed to come up with something neat and nifty. But unfortunately, I’ve also abandoned some promising stories when I’ve written a character into a sticky situation and then been utterly unable to figure out a way for said character to get unstuck.
However, I think I’ve got something bubbling in my backbrain. It hasn’t coalesced, but I can feel it fomenting.