Time not wasted

It's rare that I can claim I haven't wasted time, especially since I have spent a month with a short section of my story in limbo. As my previous post details, this bothered me - it's all very well wanting to be the whole 'professional writer' - but if the story stubbornly refuses to be written, it can leave you feeling, well, useless. 

I was never convinced until last night that I had made the right choice in not skipping ahead in the narrative. I had made many excuses why I didn't want to do it, and to the creative person inside me - they were sensible reasons, to the person inside me pointing to the £ symbol on the keyboard, they didn't make sense, I was just wasting time. 

Now - with a wonderfully tied together scene that excites me, a new character who crawled her way out of the woodwork into the story and a series of (in my mind) quite epic links to the rest of the narrative - I am beyond overjoyed with having waited. And in the end, it was the right choice for this story - and hopefully will produce a better piece of work than I would have done had I skipped it. It may have taken a month but some quite important issues were resolved in my head, and as my last post said - my character felt empowered, I've now joined her. 

Part of my main worry has been the depicting of the main character in this story, as it is written in the first person - and everything is seen from her perspective, the early parts make her seem, well, a tad useless and a lot selfish - which was never intended, yet has worked well for the story. This new scene, which never existed before this week has cemented the change in the character, it brings her to a fork in the road - where she can act one of two ways, the way she has been (which hasn't been brilliant) or change, and become who she wants to be. 

This scene is currently still in hand written note form, as I've only just brought the main narrative up to the point that this scene occurs. It's messily laid out, the new character hasn't had her name chosen yet - but it's a solid scene. It forces the main character into action, doing things rather than managing to coast on by (as she's managed so far) - and this interaction and action brings out a lot of what I've so far been unable to show, it also sets the stage for the change in her - a change which before I found difficult to transition in. I always knew I had a problem there, there was no turning point for her change, now there is. 

I'm looking forward to writing this scene, I have a few finishing touches to put to my note form, mainly fine details on the mechanics of what is going on - but the important parts are written. The dialogue between the main character and this new character, the tension - which starts out high, and ends up in an uneasy truce. Mainly, this wild card, this new female character who has opened up a lot of possibilities about later scenes. I can only feel that the story as a whole will be richer with this inclusion, which makes me happy, for awhile there - the light at the end of the tunnel was gone into the black hole of bookthatwillnevergetfinished, but it's now there again, so here's to time not wasted and sometimes the need for reflection bringing out surprises. ~ Kitty