(Psycho)Analyze this!

Only a little over two pages today--eh. I'm trying hard to hit three pages a day before work, but I have such trouble getting myself out of bed. I think it's all psychological. It's like I'm afraid that if I get out of bed even earlier, I'm putting more pressure on myself to write. Which is dumb. I'm already getting up earlier than I have to for work in order to write. So what if I get up twenty minutes even earlier than that? Because if I get my pages done faster, I can go back to bed. Or, I could read, or work on my outline for my mystery project.

The only upside to the crazy way I'm doing it (increasing the number of required pages but leaving the time allotted the same) is that I'm learning not to overthink everything so much. I have to just get it on the page. On weekends, when I have plenty of time to kill, the three pages can take me an hour and half. On a weekday, I can sometimes do it in 45 minutes because I have no other choice.

The funny thing is that usually, no matter how hard starting the page was, I'm eager to keep going at the end of it. So, I'm always leaving my writing room, bummed that I don't have the time to squeeze in just a few more lines. And maybe that's a good thing. I like leaving and feeling good about coming back the next morning. If I reach the point where I don't know how to go on, I don't want to approach writing the next morning with fear. Of course, at this point, I'm basically rewriting what I've already written. AND I've got an outline. So you'd think that wouldn't be too much of a problem, but who knows.

In cleaning out my writing room during moving, I found notes on this sequel, the book I'm working on, that are probably TWO years old already! Good grief, Stacey, just get it done!

On my mystery project, I'm frustrated because I'm getting close. Little pieces keep falling into place, here and there, which helps. But the big picture, so to speak, just isn't there yet. I've got the main plot pretty much sorted out. I know who did what and how they did it. It's my subplots that are driving me crazy.

Some of it's my fault. Thinking that this book would be a one time shot (not a series), I tossed in every kind of problem and conflicted character appropriate to the world that came to mind and spoke to me. But now I've got all these awesome (in my opinion, of course) conflicted characters who each have their own stories to tell and motivations for what they've done. They deserve time and space, but this book is already nearly 400 pages long and it's very rough. If I had all my subplots running in this one, I don't even want to think about how long it would be. And yet, I can't see any characters who could be cut. Well, that's not true, I suppose. It just would be hard to do because I think they're fascinating. It's not like the first draft of The Silver Spoon, where Asha's team was originally made up of six members and I cut two of them because they were basically just window dressing. These people, in the mystery project, have heart and soul, flesh and blood. And they're totally and utterly messed up. Flawed. Which makes them so interesting to me.

I probably need to figure out who's responsible for the action in the one other fairly major subplot. Then I can work out who the red herrings are--some of whom will end up being the flawed and interesting characters mentioned above. Because one of the cool things about mysteries is when you have more than one person who has the motivation and the opportunity to commit the crime and it's subtle things (and the investigator's prejudice) that lead you to believe it's one person, when it's really someone else.

Here's question for you mystery lovers out there (Beck, Deb, and anyone else)-- a lot of mysteries start out with two seemingly unrelated events. CSI Miami (not that I watch that show very often) did this recently with the death of a woman in an apparent suicide off a church roof and a Wall Street Trader found burned to death in a car. Nothing at all in common with each other, until one little clue links them and the two teams find they're working on the same case but from different angles. I'm sure, even without seeing CSI Miami, everyone's familiar with this technique. What I'm wondering is, does it work in reverse? Can you have two events that seem related, are even assumed, by the investigator, to be committed by the same criminal, and then one clue suddenly blows the whole theory out of the water and it's actually two separate incidents?

I'm thinking you can. Especially if the investigator's prejudice or "leanings" make them want to believe the two incidents are related and if there's manipulation (someone trying to make them believe the two are related) by someone who has a stake in the matter and knows the investigator well enough to play to his/her prejudices. Hmm, the plot of my mystery is in here somewhere if you can find it!

Well, I'm going to keep plugging away it because at some point all those little pieces are going to fall into place. And as usual, just writing about it made some things more clear.