Word Count: 1,175

Daily Reward: None achieved.

Verdict:

There usually comes a day during NaNo when the motivation wanes, when you (the author) realise that the story just isn’t work and that the characters are meandering around doing not much of anything and you’re just using their actions to help with your world building.

That day was today (or, to be precise, yesterday, since I’m updating my journal belatedly now).

The conflict has really established itself and the main intended antagonist is pretty much just playing-the-friend atm, leading me to wonder: what turns her into the enemy? Does she strive for friendship and have it flung back at her, and turn in an act of petty revenge? <– this is my preferred option. Or was she just a sly fiend all along?

I’m not sure how to fix it, and I’m totally okay with rewriting or deleting large portions of work (they still count towards my final goal, after all!) but… my brain is no longer in it. I’m tired of forcing the words out. Being a writer is not necessarily easy.

I’m working my way through Take your pants off at the moment (a different kind of writing book than I give you my body despite the possible connotations in the title) and plotting out Tail of Two Scions using their techniques. I think, ultimately, the plot I had previously, tentatively, planned out does fit the character-overcoming-flaw-scenario, and hopefully this will help me to tighten it. Possibly I will return to this story later in the month, but whether or not I can achieve my NaNo word count goal remains to be seen.

There’s always option #3, which is just to write random scenes that do fit into the Love in Tirra-Inle plot and see how it helps develop the world and the characters. Or further develop the “ghost story” I had started on (featuring Lilith), turning the other students against Kataryna and more or less pushing her into a dark, dark place. Keeping in mind the beginning of Book Two (Which is hardly a spoiler – it’s printed in this very blog!), Kataryna’s story must be a bittersweet one.

Today’s illustration is by Amanda Allan, drawn way baaaaack in the early days, when Kataryna was my online fursona and I went by a different moniker.