1: Just wrote a scene in hero POV when he's in wolf form and licks his no-no. Hahaha! So funny. I am amused.
2: Scene in hero POV where he's in wolf form and licks his no-no. Have I seen this in a book before? A book sort of like mine, I mean, not a spoof of paranormal romance. I didn't read Twilight. Did Jacob lick his no-no? Maybe I should take this scene back out. It might not be what genre readers are expecting.
3: Scene in hero POV where he's in wolf form and ... What's missing here? I have a note to myself to fill this spot in, and I don't know why. I should write better notes to myself. What's this about a no-no? OH WAIT. I remember. I've slept since then. Maybe I should put that back in, since it actually fits the pacing of the scene.
4: Yeah, delete delete delete.
5: I'm going to move on to the next scene. I AM! The scene where he... And finds his... Dammit. I can't move on to the next scene until the previous scene is done.
6: Scene in hero's POV where he's in wolf form... He's trying to really LOOK and ACT like an actual canine. Wouldn't it be realistic if he did lick his no-no? Yeah, better add that back in. Luckily I saved it.
7: There. That scene is done. Moving right along. Hero has managed to--while acting realistically like an animal instead of a shifter--sneak past the bad guys to the place where the heroine is. And when she sees him, since he's acting so much like an animal, she...
8: She'd know it was him, right? Does he need her to believe he's an animal? Should he act very much like a real animal HERE? Should I put the scene of him acting very much like a no-no licking animal HERE, to fool the heroine, so her expression doesn't give them away?
9: Come on. She knows it's him even if he does lick his no-no. And if he licks his no-no, she's never going to let him live that down. Her snort of laughter when he actually licks his no-no is going to clue the bad guys in that something is amiss, and I'm not ready for the big confrontation scene yet. So he absolutely cannot lick his no-no here.
10: But what about in the original spot, where he's just sneaking past the bad guys? And--I hate to say this--but I think I need to add details, so I should probably consider senses beyond vision in this scene. Hearing, smell, taste... OH GOD I AM SO CUTTING THIS PART.
11: NO! I am GENIUS! I'll make him PRETEND to lick his no-no, consciously, because he's good at subterfuge! He's layered!
12: He's... Yeah, I'm taking that back out.
13: This scene is so damn long! I think I may have a writerly disorder called "Cantshutupitis". I conceive of a story idea and flesh it out and worldbuild it and start writing it and it goes on and on and on and suddenly I'm at 80K but the story is only halfway over, so I have to keep going if I want to find out what happens. You know how it is. But I'm not about to toss 80K worth of work out the window just because it's not done yet since that would be wasted effort on my part, so I roll up my sleeves and plug in my laptop and get serious and try to finish it in 20K...40K...some reasonable amount of time, fearing, of course, that "rushed ending" syndrome I've seen readers complain about with books that are paced well until the end when it seemed like, I dunno, the author had to wrap things up in 10K because she had a 90K publisher-set limit? Something like that. Anyway, I just don't know what's wrong with me! Why can't I write 80K books? Where do all these words and plot twists COME from and why do they all have to be every book? I don't...
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Hopefully when I finish this book, I'll land my publisher of preference and you'll be able to see this scene in action!
Jody W.
www.jodywallace.com * www.meankitty.com
