Hate · 5:05am Jan 22nd, 2016
I'm not going to lie. I hate this chapter. I've rewritten it twice from the ground up, banged my head on my desk for missing stupid stuff, reworked the dialogue more times than I can count, walked away for a few days, and it's still not done. Again, I'm not going to make excuses because I've been trying to get out of the habit for a long time. But I am going to say that it will be a while before this chapter is presentable. Even then, it may undergo further rewrites as the story continues.
I've prided myself on making each chapter the best that it can be and to ensure that my writing is impactful and meaningful to the plot. I don't like doing filler bits even though I very well could to pad my word counts.
I think the issue is that I've lost the ability to characterize right now. I can write dialogue, but it turns the characters into accessories of the narrative rather than actors that drive the narrative. Developing characters with agency is something that I have been pushing for this entire project. Dropping the ball now in the interest of attempting to continue the narrative would just produce a broken story.
So yes, chapter is still actively being worked on. It's just slow right now because I've suddenly forgotten how to write characters.
Hey, take the time to get it right to your standards, I can wait. Trust me, you're not the only one that had to go through revising certain chapters or trying to get the new chapter just right the first time.
Especially with forgetting or trying to make the characters fleshed out as best as possible, most authors have went through this kind of insanity at one point so you're not alone on this
You think you've got it bad?
I have one story (besides a crackfic I don't count) which I've been "writing" for years. And I say "writing" because for the last two years or so it's been stuck in a never-ending loop of rewrites and revisions, and I've been having a helluva time breaking out of it. I've been making good progress of late, but I'm not letting myself make anymore revisions, so now my chapters come out slower because I'm so set on making them as good as I can on publish. Yet I trudge on.
I think you're doing pretty swell.