Hello, Beautiful Scene

All righty, since deciding to multi-task and work on both Untitled Contemporary and Untitled Fantasy at the same time, I've kind of been using the latter as an excuse so I didn't have to get back to writing the former. I was still working on my writing, even if I was only trying to figure out my plot (an update on Untitled Fantasy will come in a bit).

I sat down tonight to work on plotting and outlining Untitled Fantasy. So I went to see if I could quickly find some advice on outlining (since I'm pretty awful at it). One thing led to another and I ended up clicking on this article by Susan Dennard with notes from Sarah J. Maas on how to maintain passion for a story. I sorely needed something to help me with Untitled Contemporary, so I decided to take a look.

And there in the article was the perfect suggestion. Long-hand. I prefer to just type things up in the main document since I hate transferring scenes from paper to screen but I also know that (for some reason) writing by hand destroys the pressure of perfectionism. It's much freer and it seems to expect less from you than that blinking cursor on the screen.

In that moment, I realized I was so caught up in getting from Point A to Point B that I didn't know what to do in between without skipping it all (can't do that) or it being the same old thing I'd written the chapter before.

So I read the last few lines I'd written, set pen to paper, and off it flew. A much more dynamic and meaningful scene unfolded before me. I only knew about one event from that scene. I knew Daisy (our protagonist) would be shoved in the cafeteria but I had no idea what her inner thoughts would be or what Adam (our friend and hero) would say.

I never would have thought that this scene I'd been struggling to write would explode across five pages of lined paper. I didn't know that Daisy would make a promise and I didn't know Adam would say as much as he did. But most importantly, I didn't know how grateful I'd be or how much I would end up loving this scene.

Every time I've thought about Untitled Contemporary, I've known what I wanted the story to be, but I didn't know until now that this also had another story within it. My deepest wish for Untitled Contemporary is for it to become not only a story of forgiveness but also a story of kindness and the power we each hold as individuals.

In honor of my breakthrough, I present my favorite line of the night.

"You have a beautiful life to live."