Writing Update: 15/03/24 (Patreon)

Start of week: 29,999

End of week: 34,922

Change: +4923

Year to date: 54.322

The word count hides a lot of additional work that's gone into Constant this week. At one point the word count dipped into the negative as I cut stuff away. The earlier part of the week was really challenging, as well: I was stuck on a particular scene and really struggled to push through, and everything I wrote those days felt forced and dead on the page.  Fortunately, it opened up on Thursday and feels back to normal.

Alongside this, I prepped the first half of Chapter 6 for publication.  It's up on FM now.  Reading it through twice - once at the start of the week and again at the end - cleared up a number of typos and a few mistakes and proved pretty time consuming.  But I'm pretty happy with what I've put out there.  While I think it's uneven in places, I also think that maybe some of the best writing I've done for Constant is in there, too.  I'm particularly pleased with some of the interaction between David and Julia.

While it wasn't part of my original plan, in writing it increasingly feels as though this chapter is about resolving the relationship with Julia.  She's grown into a more important character than initially intended, and I want to do right by her.  I'm not writing her out of the story--she's got some important plot beats coming up, especially in chapter 7--but she'll be stepping back a bit from the action going forward, I think.

So there's only a few scenes left to write to finish off the chapter, though they're pretty important ones and may prove longer than expected.  We'll be rewinding back to the start, with Cindy's first week back at work: Julia wants to know how Cindy got in with those girls from the office, and the relationship with Dan needs resolving.  There's going to be a short but important (and slightly kinky) scene with the office boss, Michael, during the office Halloween party.  And then there's a final long scene which will hopefully give a satisfying twist to the whole thing--if I can pull it off, of course.

See you next week! And please, feel free to comment on the published story, if you like--it's your patronage that's helped bring it to life!