Ripples in Speculative Fiction

Well, I didn’t write a blog update in May or June but for slightly different reasons. My drafting of the first half of the second act of MK2 was going smoothly about until the second week of May. I know it was the second week of May because there’s a noticeable and consistent dip in my word count tracker. I hit an epistolary section of the novel (a multi-day hospital report) and decided I need to write the whole thing and then down select from there.

If that weren’t bad enough, it was/is boring to write. This is normally a big red flag for writers: if you’re bored writing it, readers are going to be bored writing it. But this is an exception (I think—at least, I’m pretty sure) for two reasons. The first is that report writing is dry, technical, third person writing. It’s just very different than prose and it’s in the medical field with which I’m not very familiar, so it’s slow going. And slow going always is a struggle for me. I’ve always likened writing to riding a bike, the faster you go, the more momentum you have and easier it is. So slow going always feels wobbly and sputtering to me.

The second reason I’m not too worried (at least not yet) about being bored writing this section is, when I go back and read it, I rather like it. I’m not bored reading it and I think it brings an interesting insight into the character. I also know the role it plays in the larger story and I think the epistolary section does something different than I normally see in epistolary sections in prose novels, so I find that exciting.

I am, however, still writing this section. The end is in sight, but it is taking forever. The writing is slow and I missed more days than usual this past June. So as a result, I missed my weekly wordcounts for most of the weeks in June, but not by much–I was still pretty consistent.

Hopefully, the next time I blog I will be able to write this epistolary section is done and I’ll also cover why I didn’t have time to blog in June and missed more writing days than normal. Until then!