Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Predictability...

God, I can be a pain in my own ass, sometimes. And shoulders. I got a nice tense headache over another little bout of writer's block dealing with UG. I tried every trick I knew to get around it...then just sat down and restarted the book. Set up a new Word doc and transferred the first 30 pages over since I liked those...and rewrote them.

Nothing major but enough to shift the setup a little bit. Made clear early on that Devlin Pope wears an inexpensive suit. Expanded on his confusion as to why he's pulling his crap while in another country, since his lawyer's in NYC. Added to his guilt and awareness of how wrong he's being.

I then dug into the draft I'd been working on and pulled over two more sections to establish the second and third chapters, cutting around a bit about a guy Dev punished in Chicago. Seems that was what was locking me up. I have this long opening where Dev forces Reg, who is the Underground Guy, into having sex with him...even though Dev knows he's straight and married and innocent of any wrongdoing...and it screws Dev up. He'd be focused on why that is. not reminiscing about another man he forced into sex...not yet.

In fact...I think he's going to be deliberate about revealing his past actions. Almost confrontational. I think subconsciously he wants to be punished, so after he's arrested he gets just as harsh with his interrogators as they do with him. Like two big cats hissing and howling and about to launch into battle. It works better...and even if it doesn't, it got me past the block.

Now maybe the tension in my shoulders will go away.

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