For this, my 200th post, I have a very important announcement to make: I chickened out. I finished the one-pass rewrite of the Chapter formerly known as 13 of Meet the Larssons today (on the train). Attentive readers may recall that I said that finishing the rewrite of Chapter 13 (as it used to be called, before I cut the first several chapters) would be difficult because my main character was going to have a date, he was going to take a lady in whom he is romantically interested and go out for a fancy dinner. This would be a difficult scene for me to write because the Green Eyed Siren and I have children, and while we occasionally go out for parties and other social obligations, I cannot remember the last time we simply went out to dinner.
I know that you’re thinking that I must have tremendous creative powers to write this kind of scene with so little recent experience on which to base it. Unfortunately, my creative powers provied just slightly less tremendous than needed. However, it occurred to me as I wrote the scene immediately before the date scene that it would be better for the plot — and for my MC, who was feeling a little too good about himself — if the lady in question were to cancel dinner. Not permanently, and not out of any ill will toward my MC, but dinner is definitely off.
I had discovered a way out. I may have the female lead cancel dinner three or four more times during this rewrite, because it’s more useful to the plot and it saves me from having to figure out what the hell they’d talk about over the bread sticks.
So I’m a big chicken. There you go. But Chapter not-13 is so totally done done donnity done, so I don’t care. Up next: Chapter soon-to-be-something-other-than 14!
The Unfocused Life 