Weekly Dispatch: Not All That Nice
Some actual writing progress this week. ✨Plus✨ a few thoughts on why I like making my characters' lives difficult.
Words Written: 1101
Writing Streak: 8 days
Made slow, incremental progress this week on "Irredeemable" despite the usual work stress and a new health issue that showed up to vex me. My renewed focus on avoiding zero wordcount days seems to be paying off, and there was one day where I wrote nearly 400 words—more than I've written in a single day since I finished drafting "The Breaking" over a year and a half ago. I'm pleased!
I've been writing on the same darn scene for over a week now: Kassandra and her Unwanted Companion (UC) have just survived an encounter with Cult soldiers, and now she and UC need to rest and recover. Good for them—but possibly boring for us.
Thankfully, this is Deimos!Kassandra I'm writing about, and she hasn't been shy about making her lingering resentment at UC's presence known. That makes for some interesting conflict. But I also have to keep things in balance—a Kassandra who's an unrelenting, unrepentant asshole isn't someone I'd want to spend a whole novel with. I've been having a good time threading that needle throughout this scene, but when I reached a point where Kassandra has just been made to offer some lukewarm praise, I had a choice to make: continue the dialogue in a positive direction, or have Kassandra immediately follow her praise with criticism.