A Step Backward

Today's a rough day... let's look at last week's numbers:

Mon: OFF
Tue: 2116
Wed: 2295
Thu: 2074
Fri: 2076

Took Monday off, but really these numbers are irrelevant because...

Today I deleted over 30,000 words! Okay, not really DELETED, but I removed them from the work (saved them in another file, just in case) and am considering whether I want to keep it or not. I really got bored with what I was writing, and that to me spells disaster. I had originally planned for this novel to go one way, then it ended up going another. Somewhere (74,000 words in) I realized I hated that new direction. So I went back to a major moment in the plot and hit "cut-paste" and tossed the trash into a fresh document (in case I want to change my mind, or revisit some section).

The reality that hit me was that things were getting too heavy-handed and too cliched in some spots. The overall story was boring the hell out of me, and I was losing track of a lot of the characters. The lesser issue is that the "science" part of "science fiction" was being loosely used. It wasn't too bad, but it was making me uncomfortable enough that it all added up to removal. It's the first time this has really happened to me, where I had to delete a massive chunk of a story to start again, essentially, but I'm in no real hurry with this book.

I'm a little upset about it. It's a lot of work that I'm essentially resetting, but I really think I can make this story a lot better by doing this. We'll see. I'm going to plan out a little tonight, see what fresh ideas hit, or see if I want to revert to the original plan. Either way, this whole project may end up getting restarted. We'll see, and I'll keep you posted!