It was a pace-scribble-transcribe day.
I made good on my goal to write the bandit fight—if you can call three petty crooks getting owned by a superior strategist a fight. It’s a Princess Bride-style scuffle that makes everything look ridiculously easy for her so there’s a baseline of comparison when the difficulty escalates and she has to break a sweat, then sustains a minor injury, then a more severe injury, then faces the final boss who’s capable of killing her.
That’s right, the bandit dispatcher is the heroine. The hero was a soldier, he can fend for himself, but since he, specifically, has to stay alive to complete his quest, he prefers not to risk dying via unnecessary violence. At this point, that’s what he wants the reputedly bloodthirsty heroine for.
(“It’s just business,” says the unsuspecting fool, baffled by the laughter of romance readers everywhere.)
I’m done sharing pages for the foreseeable future, so I no longer have to revise as I go. That doesn’t mean I’m oblivious when I make a mess. For example, I’m aware I’m overusing “wry” and “precious” to the point they’re like fishhooks in my eyes. But rather than fiddle with minutiae of word choice right now, I’ll jot that down as a Known Issue in my revision notebook to search-and-destroy later. At this stage, progress is more important than perfection.
(The exception to that “rule” is when something in the story is broken and proceeding without fixing that thing breaks more things. Keep driving with faulty brakes, end up totaling the car, yeah? Sometimes it’s best to stop for essential maintenance, but this one’s running smoothly so far, so we press onward.)