Prepping for Part 2

I'm in a different mental space today--just spending hours reading through my outline and related notes trying to refamiliarize myself with Part 2 and thinking about what work I need to do. It's kind of a luxury to just poke around and let the different scenes bubble around in my attention in an unscheduled way. Actually, as luxurious as it feels, it's probably a necessity.

Of course, a big part of the work ahead of me for Part 2 is similar to what I did in Part 1--digging deeper and developing what is there. It has all the same kind of "dead stars" vs. "supernovas" that Part 1 had. All the same problems with lack of motivation and lack of action and a lack of clarity about who the characters are, the lack of focus on particular questions, particular things that the characters desire.

But another big "task" is creating from scratch a subplot that I'm pretty sure I'm going to layer on. I've been stewing on this idea since last September. In terms of word count, it's not that much material that has to be added, but it's figuring out how to weave it in carefully in a way that feels truthful. In a sense this work also is developing what's there, but not really because there is very very little in the first draft regarding this subplot. Just the tenderest seed. This subplot should act to pull my character in another direction, adds to the pressure he's under and lays the groundwork for the ending, which by the way will be a very different ending than what I wrote in the first draft.