Some clarity, some confusion

Like I had planned last Friday, I took time over the weekend to concentrate on the sense I was having that a breakthrough was at hand. And I did have some luck. I reached a lot of clarity about how plot, character and theme are connected, what the ending is and what the story is and outlined all that in some good notes. That was gratifying.

Less clear is what the overall momentum of the book is. This newfound sense of the story and its conclusion means that I have a new way of understanding each chapter and its contribution to the whole--how they build momentum. And that understanding seems to be just out of range of what I can see so clearly. It's still in the process of emerging. Which I don't like because it makes it hard to use my writing time effectively this morning.

I ended up using this morning more to collect my thoughts and straighten out my notes than to do any actual rewriting. (Though I messed with one scene in Ch. 3 a little bit.) And I'm finishing up without much confidence of what else I need to do in that chapter, so I don't know that I'll be productive tomorrow either.

That and some work and household pressures have me feeling like I'm not going to be able to make much progress in the next week and I continue to feel like, though all the work I'm doing is good and important, it's going way way too slow.