Preemptive Retaliation

Monthly finger update: Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear.

So my super duper wonky genetics have made things worse and worse. Now I have creams and ointments and medications, and still it looks as though the tips of my fingers are being eaten by some virus. I look like the after picture of a burn victim, with peeling red raw skin that is both too dry and obscenely moist. Hopefully the course of whatever the doctor has put me on will improve it, but for now I wear white cotton gloves whilst going about my day to day. Right now I look like I should be holding shining jewelry to show you, or performing a magic trick.

Still writing though, and the gloves help with that (until the slightly too thick fingers confuse keys on the keyboard). I’ve been doing my three-hundred plus words every day for sixty days now, which is at least eighteen thousand more words that would not have existed before.

I also came across one of those oft bragged about moments where a character didn’t really want to do what I wanted them to. It’s a bit cringeworthy to admit that, for me. The idea immediately conjures someone on an internet forum blasting out in mismatched caps-lock that their characters are so quirky and they have no idea what they would end up doing half the time. It makes me roll my eyes half the time, which is a poor attitude to have but there we go.

Anyway, I had this big bombastic scene planned where all my characters had pulled together and were having the big meeting before the climax of the book. The one where all the heroes come together and decide to resolve or put aside their differences and defeat the big bad. Well that didn’t happen. One character refused, and rightly so. As I wrote down the arguments and discussions it became more and more apparent that this character had been through too much already, she had suffered enough at the hands of the protagonist. So she said no, and left, and because of the group dynamic everyone else said no and left.

I wish this was different. It is going to make the rest of the book very much harder.