Day 4, in which I consider whether it might not be the best idea to count the days.

I was thinking, are you really going to care what day it is when it’s day 627 and I blog about changing the word “and” on page 3 to “but”? Are you still going to be with me in a year-and-a-half? A girl can hope… But if not, I’ll just pretend you are and it’ll be just like now.

I was also thinking that you might be more interested in the changes I make to my gelatin-dessert-like mass that I’ve been referring to as a story, if you knew a little bit about it. Here’s a one-sentence summary for you:

A man tries to convince a woman to return to the family she abandoned.

You totally want to read it now, right? Yeah. No you don’t. But please do read this.

Day 4: I rewrote the pivotal dialogue at the end of the story. Originally it had been between the woman and a male friend, but I rewrote it, just to see, so it’s between the woman and her husband. I’m chewing on that now. There is definitely more opportunity for tension and conflict if the man is her husband rather than some random old friend. I think next I’ll try rewriting the beginning this way next and see what we get. Also, there is a bunch of stuff in the middle that is unnecessary to the story. It’s weird to chunk out big portions of your writing and just discard them, but it’s totally necessary sometimes. Changing the character will definitely make this easier.

And it feels like progress. It doesn’t look like much. But it feels like it.

(Up next: Day 5: more of the same…)