I have never had so much trouble writing something as I have with Chapter 2 of the Remembrance rewrite.
It’s 99% new content. There wasn’t much about Diane and Sebastian in the old Chapter 1 that needed to be kept. Truth be told, there wasn’t much about Diane and Sebastian in the old Chapter 1 at all. Outlining was a snap. Mapping out the events was possible, even as they needed to change. And change. And then change again.
Chapter 2 had me reconsidering whether I wanted to do the rewrite at all. It had Nikki asking the same question.
Professional writers don’t always like what they’re writing. It doesn’t always flow out of their pens (and/or keyboards) like blood out of a gushing neck wound in a 1980’s anime. Sometimes, they’ve got to squeeze the words out of a paper cut drop by drop. Sometimes, they’ve got to do that over and over again until they’ve got something that they can be satisfied with, at least until the next draft.
The first draft of the new Chapter 2 is done, and it feels like I’ve bled a lot, very slowly. It feels like I pushed my way through wall after wall, didn’t have much fun, but wrote something that I would like to read. It feels like I’ve accomplished something.
The majority of Chapter 3 will be new content, as well. I’ve got my fingers crossed for a gusher.
I absolutely feel you on bleeding through a chapter. Some of my worst have been ones that NEEDED to be written but were very difficult to translate from the base sense of the scene to words and phrases. Well done on getting through it!