This week has been a little like … let’s take one step forward, but then two giant leaps back. It’s been a little bit of a rollercoaster again, but we’ve managed to reach the weekend intact and relatively unscathed from the battle wounds that we’ve picked up along the way! This time last weekend and we thought we had it all sorted out, only to find out that a lot of what we were doing was … well, it was more for us rather than what would actually work for the story.
And that’s not a bad thing. Sometimes we need to stop and realise that what we had once upon a time doesn’t necessarily work here and now. So, characters we’d brought back have been sent off to re-bond in their retirement home. They’ll carry on bugging us to do something or the other with them, to be used. They’ll carry on talking at us and about things that are going on. They all have their own back stories, their own lives and they also have a world in which they can work. And who knows, one day we might be able to use that in a new project – and if not? Then they’ll be turned into short stories, for ourselves or for publishing. Who knows – and I’m certainly not about to hedge my bets on that one! The minute I do? Suddenly, everything will be turned on it’s head again.
I’m not going to say that we’ve now managed to take a giant leap forward. That we are where we want to be. I’ve learned that lesson (or so I hope!). But what I will say, is that things are feeling better. Our end goal, whilst it’s always been clear, and whilst we’ve always had a good idea of how everything ends, is now a solid one. We have a definite aim, and what’s more we have characters who are now in the right place to fight for that one. And that’s something we’ve been missing, our characters wanting to fight for this end goal, rather than being a bit … well, complacent.
Complacency isn’t a bad thing, not always, but I’d like to think that if I was facing Armageddon that I wouldn’t be getting loved up and wanting to talk happy ever after. I’d like to think that if it were me, and I could do something about it, I’d be raising a little hell. And that’s the issue we’ve had with some of our more prominent characters, they haven’t been raising hell. Turns out, that the reason they’ve not been raising hell is because we forgot to fix what we broke.
Well, okay, we didn’t forget to fix it we just didn’t realise that we needed to. We’re not always good at that, but eventually the penny will drop and we’ll both have this lightbulb moment with an “Ahh! That’s what’s wrong!” and put it to rights. And what happens then, when you have a character with all of those missing parts that are put back together, is magic. There’s no other way to describe it, it is magic in so many ways – for us at least. Even our resident psychopathic character is back up and functioning – and that’s not something I thought I’d ever say that I missed!
And that’s our week in review – who knows what next week will bring! I think Charlotte and I have both given up trying to predict that one!
~ Clara
Charlotte and Clara 