Mid-Month Check-In

30.5 hours of editing in March so far.

The fiddling with the first half of the book is done-- well, mostly. As I work on scenes for Act 3, I think of little tweaks to better set up what's coming.

At the moment, I'm hacking away at the second story block. This is a scene that existed in the last draft, but that needs extensive reworking. Basically, I had two scenes in this Act with Willa and another character. I decided to swap the locations of these scenes. The essentials of the scene-- location, action, topics discussed-- don't need to change, but the tone does.

In the old version of the scene I'm working on, Willa was absolutely furious with this character, and the betrayal she felt made for a very tense and bitter conversation. Now that the scene has shifted to just after the mid-point, her whole mood is completely different. She's thrilled to see him-- has in fact been pinning all her hopes on him-- and he is going to completely let her down. So whereas the old version of the conversation went: betrayed fury --> righteous indignation --> confusing offer leading to ambivalence, the new version goes: happy excitement --> confusion --> irritation --> confusing offer leading to ambivalence --> chilling realization that something is seriously off here.

That's the state of the writing at mid-month!