Today my word count climbed by 2,142, but one of its main lessons was the gap between word count and real progress. I believe I resolved the novel’s main tension in a key scene because I couldn’t stand for my protagonist to subject herself to a certain kind of torture. It’s likely that I will need to go back and better motivate her decision to subject herself to said torture, but for sure—in hindsight—I was too quick to allow her to veer away from the torture itself. While her turn was satisfying to write, I suddenly felt lost at sea (in a Géricault painting) after finishing this scene. Perhaps this in itself is a kind of progress, since I feel more confident that the character arc I had sketched out for this piece is working. Otherwise, how would I be able to tell when I strayed from it? But that is the glass-is-half-full Erin talking. Raging pessimist Erin needs to vent about the need to rewrite about two thousand words.
Uncanny Vale
Home to the Literary Creations
of Erin Wilcox
Her hands were delicate, long like a piano player’s, calloused from hours spent knitting and tending the animals, warm and coarse. When they touched me I knew I had a home.