Life gets its way

I wound up missing some work last week. I was kind of tethered to the toilet, and having one about a block from my desk just didn’t work.

That does not mean I was any kind of productive at home. When you don’t feel well, sometimes it just requires dealing with the issue and nothing else.

The weekend wasn’t much better, because I had real-world tasks to deal with. I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for my water key. It’s time to turn on the sprinklers, but I cannot find my key. I’ll have to wait until payday and buy a new one. We can use hoses and sprinklers in the meantime.

Writing wasn’t great, but it comes to about 2200 words. It’s not awful, but it’s my sum-total for a week.

It’s all coming out in chunks right now and separated by section breaks. (***) I don’t particularly like it that way and need to put some thought into it.

Some of the section breaks are a great way to move the story ahead. When you have three per chapter, it could be an indication of a problem.

When this happens, it’s usually caused by a combination of things. I have characters who need to wrap up a few things. All the secrets are out with the exception of the last big one. Bringing that last big secret to the table requires some actions of each character and they aren’t all in the same place at the same time.

This is also made difficult with needing a reasonable amount of time to pass. Like a month or more. Something great is supposed to happen, but it takes time to learn that it might not be so great. My normal thing is to use a section break.

I could write this with complete flow, meaning to follow each character until they can deliver their discovery to the rest, but it would read like crap. My readers would have the information, but have to suffer along for a few thousand words before the characters could compare notes and draw conclusions. (I’m not doing this.)

I could do some telling. This is kind of anathema these days, but can work under some circumstances.

There are a few ideas in play. I’ll probably wrap this with a few section breaks, a tiny bit of telling, and by staying in the head of the character who has the most at stake.

Then there are the “rewards.” I still believe each character has to get something out of the ordeal. This isn’t like dragon treasure or anything like that. Maybe Cody and Bai start making a life together. Maybe Jenny gains some of the experience she needs along her path to investigative journalism. I can weave some of this into the other pieces to make it flow better. I promise not to write a scene where Princess Leah hands out medals to signify all is well.

Do any of you ever have problems like this? How did you address them? Do you know where my friggin water key is?