The Ink-Pot and the Palette

I've spent the entire day slogging through a series of events and motivations in the novel. Character A does this, and Character B reacts, causing A to step up his actions, which in turn cause B to freak out, etc. I'd written the scenes at widely disparate moments, and not in linear order, and I was pretty sure they weren't flowing logically.

I'm pleased to report that after ten hours of wrestling, I've got them lined up, and the causal links smoothed out, and everyone's character intact. (I did this by identifying the ten key scenes, then making each of the main characters tell me what happened from his perspective, in the first person. They took their sweet time.)

So I'm gonna have a bowl of ice cream. Haagen-Dazs coffee, with hot gianduja sauce. Then I'm going to write some more. Because it's torture, but it's a good torture, you know?

My break from working on Restraint has borne some fruit. I woke up this morning knowing that I should leave the serial numbers on.

Why? It just felt better. And if I don't follow my gut in creative matters, what the hell am I doing being creative at all? Huh? Look at all the glee I get to retain if Restraint stays fanfic:

• Owzers's fantastic manips
• All four prologues if I want
• Posting in parts
• Posting in ebook form to OTW's Archive of Our Own
• Soundtrack!
• Minor RP character glee
• The silly Supernatural in-jokes that got in there on Day One and have resisted being edited back out
• The ridiculous Latin pun on Mr Acklebury's name

So, fic it is. Yay! I can get back to writing.