So...progress... I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to turn this sow's ear of a chapter into a silk purse of plot and character development. I jotted notes. I consulted the outline. I tried deleting and rewriting it. I tried yelling at it. Nothing.
It was pretty crushing. I started to realize that it wasn't just the chapter, but the whole story was crap. Why was I fixated on these characters, anyway? What if I'm just not cut out to be a writer at all? Maybe this whole thing was pointless...
Finally, I was visited in the night by the spirits of NanoWriMo Past, Present, and Yet to Come, and they told me to quit fussing around and just get on with it.
To humor them, I left chapter 2 and started re-reading chapter 3. I realized that I'm not a terrible writer; it's just that one stupid chapter that sucks! So...I'm probably going to delete the whole thing. Its only justification is a scene that's probably movable.
My main concern, and why I've humored it for so long, is that I have difficulty sometimes with putting Enough information into my stories. People praise my "ability" to keep things short (which is much like a fish's ability to breathe water, try making it do the opposite and see how impressive the results are), but one of my writer flaws is a tendency to leave too much out, which can result in reader confusion.
So...that's the update for now. Hopefully more to report soon.
