Get It Right The First Time

That's what my brain has been telling me all week, and it sucks. Every time I sit down to write chapter four of Semblance, my brain stops me because I know I'll do it wrong and I'll have to rewrite it later.

Um.

Hello, brain?

That's the point of a first draft!

So this morning I got up and did some cleaning. And after I write this post I'll go and do some more cleaning, and then I will cart myself and my laptop off to the library for a distraction-free/internet-free environment and write the stupid thing. And it doesn't matter if it sucks. I would have to rewrite and edit it anyway.

What's difficult about chapter four is not just the content (I'm almost parodying the typical "protagonist-has-to-learn-new-skill-in-order-to-proceed-with-the-story" scene). This is point in the story where two of my three heroes get over the hump of being acquaintances and become real friends. They let loose a bit. They show each other their true colours. They do silly things. They argue a little. They have fun, but then things don't work quite the way they wanted. At the end of the chapter they feel much closer to each other, but as one character has super powers and the other doesn't, there's still a kind of distance between them. Urgh. In terms of character development, it's the most difficult chapter until close to the end of the novel. If I can get past chapters four and five it will move quicker from there.

As mentioned in my last post, I tried just skipping it but when I did that I accidentally screwed up my order-of-events because I forgot about the gap in the timeline between the end of four and the start of five. It's messier than it sounds. Better to write this first. On with the show!