The stories, they are not working today

I’m spending a lot of time with old stories this week, and I’ve noticed that towards the end of last year I’d broken out this alarming tendency towards using framing stories. I’m not sure why I did that – as a general rule I’m not a fan – but I think I’d talked myself into believing that they were merely examples of discontinuous or contrasting narrative rather than a frame. I’ve cut the opening and final scenes of the last two stories I’ve opened and felt pretty good about it both times. That said, the bulking up of the story that remains is proving a frustrating thing. This isn’t unexpected – I’m so rusty at the writing thing that I practically creak when I sit down at the keyboard – but it is frustrating and it’s proving difficult to force myself to stay in the chair and keep working. Discipline is an easy thing when you’re in practice, but there’s a big part of my subconscious that doesn’t like being forced to do things it’s not good at and I constantly find myself giving into distraction (coffee, futzing about with CD’s, etc).

Claw Draft
Projected Total: 25000
Total Words to Date: 1744
Words Needed Today: 500 (+ continued revising)
Deadline:April 30th
Reasons to Like the MS: Hardboiled interrogatory dialogue between Miriam Aster and a possessed Russian Blue cat.
Reasons to Dislike the MS: Transition issues in the middle of the first scene due to not having the plot sufficiently in place.