Conflict & Endings & Kisses

Personally, I shy away from conflict. It drives me crazy when people are angry with me. I seldom raise my voice. My temper flares up and dies away all within ten minutes.

So it’s hard for me, writing conflict. My instinct is for everyone to say "oh, it’s okay" and make up. But that’s not very dramatic, is it? What we want in real life isn’t the same as what we want in our fiction. Yesterday I struggled for hours with a pivotal scene between my main character and her love interest. She was already having a crap day, and then she had to tell him something that was going to make him feel betrayed, and they were both going to say some stupid things, and some dead-on but hurtful things. It surprised me, how difficult it was to write. It hurt.

But I think it’s good. Cate is getting to a point where she feels she has very little left to lose, and that’s an interesting place.

I have five more chapters left. It’s this weird push-pull, now, to work on it as much as possible (I love this story so much, even when I’m fighting with it) and to stop because I don’t want to finish and what if it’s not nearly as good as I think it could be? Soon I’ll have to turn a critical eye on it, especially to the messier first half and the gazillion world-building issues.

I’m tempted to try and write like mad and finish up in the next week before I leave for Cozumel. But I’m not a great fast writer. I was just bemoaning that to Steve–I need time to daydream and nap and let my subconscious figure shit out. I am jealous of authors who write a whole book in a month or three. Thrice will have taken five, I think.

Speaking of my brilliant playwright husband, he’s so supportive. The sacrifices he makes! Like yesterday:

Me: Come here. I’m writing this scene and I need–
Husband: Do you need a kiss dummy again?
Me: Yeah. Do you mind?

How else do you figure out where all the hands go?