La Bene Vita

Underdeveloped

Recital
Saturday's recital went smoothly. One student had an attack of performance anxiety, but she performed by the end of the session and did great! We finished and hauled all the instruments and gear back to the music school just in time for Snowmaggeddon to hit. We collected a ton of food (likely 150-200 lbs) but can't deliver it to the food pantry yet due to the storm, so it's currently all over my music-slash-exercise room (all nonperishable, so it's safe so long as I keep the poochies out of there).

Novel: Stuck
I figured out why I haven't added a chapter to my novel in almost two weeks now.

One of my main characters is about to have a crisis, and I slowed down during the approach like the story and I were magnets with opposite poles pointed at each other. I know what needs to happen, but I can't spit it out. (It's technically more of an "I don't wanna" situation). So I used the nesting headers feature* in Google Docs to collapse all the chapters up until this crisis except for chapters featuring or told from the perspective of this particular character who's about to have said upcoming crisis.

*see also: "Note: Check out my latest writing-related tech discov..."

An Underdeveloped Character
Here's what I discovered: When we first meet this character, she's experiencing a significant, life-changing event. However, that chapter is told from the perspective of a different character. Therefore, when my crisis character first starts telling her side of the story, said life-changing event has just recently happened...

...yet she comes home, greets the dog, pours some juice from the fridge and calls "I'm home!" to her mother in the basement. ??? Yeah, I'd say we're past the Ordinary World stage of the plot, and she's not frazzled enough. Or... at all.

This character needs more of my attention. I think I'm going to need to rewrite all her perspective chapters up to the midpoint crisis and develop her better before I can tackle writing the midpoint crisis.

Weekly Review
Is complete. By request: Review of "A Different Route Home"

Goals for the Upcoming Week
- One new novel chapter (or rewrite) per day
- One short story for "The Bradbury" 
- Two poems for "PromptMaster !"  final January submission
- One review
- Organize and prioritize all the work projects and tasks I've been avoiding to focus more on writing

What are your goals for the week?

Literarily,
Michelle