Creative Regrouping

The downside of a really productive day is that the next day is often kind of blank and unproductive. It's like I've run out of things to say and have to restock the word bank.

Meanwhile, I've reached the midpoint of the book, when everything changes for all the major characters. It's the point where their story goals expand and intensify -- they were after just one thing, but in going after that thing, they've discovered that there's something much bigger going on, and in order to achieve that initial goal, they'll have to deal with the bigger thing, and if they don't deal with the bigger thing, really bad things will happen, far beyond just the problem they were initially dealing with.

I also seem to be re-framing the overall concept of the book. Before I started writing, I wrote hypothetical back-cover copy for the book, and now it's mostly inaccurate. The main characters are more or less the same, but I seem to be emphasizing different aspects of the characters than the ones I played up in that back-cover copy. The initiating incident is the same, as is the main character's initial story goal. But the story is going in a somewhat different direction than I originally imagined and some of the motivations are entirely different. I also noticed last night when driving to and from ballet class that the "soundtrack" I created for this book (that's what I keep in the car stereo to help keep me inspired) now seems all wrong.

I think that means it's a good time to regroup and collect myself before plunging forward. I need to rewrite my hypothetical cover copy and maybe come up with a different soundtrack. Jennifer Crusie is big on collaging to help find the themes in a story, and I do have a photo that looks like my main character, but I suspect that plowing through magazines in search of other photos would be mostly a procrastination exercise and wouldn't lend much to shaping my concept of this story. The soundtrack, or auditory collage, does serve to outline and frame the emotional arcs of the story. So today may be something of a creative play day -- I may re-read what I've written so far straight through, rework my soundtrack, rewrite my cover copy and maybe do some brainstorming to outline the rest of the book.

In other news, and as a timely follow-up to yesterday's post, today I got an invitation from Borders to their New Moon DVD release party. I'm guessing that went to everyone on their list, or maybe everyone who's ever bought any kind of fantasy novel there, because I don't do vampires. I did read Twilight (I checked it out of the library) but I really didn't get it, so I've had no burning need to read the rest of the series and I haven't seen any of the movies. I am not the customer to target with that particular invitation, and about the only thing I've bought there that might possibly trigger the "you might like this" would be an Angel DVD box set I bought ages and ages ago.