Tapping Emotional Reservoirs

When I wrote my first, now slightly dusty, novel I wrote everything in sequential order. I started at the beginning and I moved forward until I typed The End (which I actually did, thank you very much.) I did lots of things with that first novel that I find I'm doing differently with this one.

My first novel's motto could have been The Fast and The Furious. NaNoWriMo has a way of doing that to you. In five days I wrote almost 20,000 words. The irony of that statement is it was the end of the book, and with the exception the last chapter that not only sucks rocks but big boulders too, it was the best writing of the book. That in itself, is a sad statement.

If the writing of my second novel has a motto it's The Slow and The Plodding. Instead pumping out 20K in 5 days, it's taken me 5 weeks. And it shows. I'll spend an hour writing a measly 100 words. But the quality is so much better. The difference between my first book and second are like night and day.

So if the writing speed is different, and the writing quality has improved, could I write scenes out of sequential order? This sounds like no big deal, but my plot and story are organic. I have ideas but sometimes my characters surprise me and do the unexpected. They develop inside jokes. They have "moments," good and bad. I like to reference these things as the story goes on, or at the very least know that it adds something to their relationship. If I write a scene that happens in chapter 10, but the story is only on chapter 6, is it really going to work? I decided to give it a try.

I didn't feel well last night. I think I ate something for lunch that threw a revolt on my insides. My intestinal churning reminded me of a scene I have been playing in my head for days, a gut wrenching, devastating event that was eating at me. What if I channeled that physical discomfort into the what the characters were feeling? I put my children to bed, closed my bedroom door, shut off the internet, turned on some music (Muse/ The Resistance-- Exogenesis parts 1-3) and wrote. About an hour later I had 1300 words, not necessarily good words, but emotional words. I cried a little while I wrote but after I finished my insides still churned. I realized they weren' t churning from the soup I ate at lunch. They were churning from emotional distress. I reread what I wrote and sobbed.

That scene needs work. Lots of work. I hope that by the time I get to it in the sequential writing order, I'll have more context to add to it. But for now, it sits at the end of my work in progress, waiting.