Look, I worked in healthcare for 20 years. I have a body of knowledge and first-hand anecdotes that are terrifying before applying imagination. This is incredibly useful for maintaining my social obligations at a tolerable level.
In defiance of recent technological woes, 221 rough draft pages have become 348 revised pages.
A lot happened in this section, but it’s very plotty here on the back end and harder to allude to in non-spoilery terms, so we’ll see how this goes.
Heroine has foreseen a number of negative consequences as a result of breaking the curse—still has to be done to right an injustice, but no illusions that once it’s done, there will be nothing but giggles. Now she gets a new piece of the great interlocking puzzle and realizes the theft she’s committing may revive a curse that ended at about the same time Hero’s began, pissing off someone exponentially more powerful than the parties she’s already predicted will express displeasure. While she had no sympathy for those other parties, whose interests were purely financial, this time her good deed is actually going to hurt people who don’t even know they’ve been beneficiaries of this apparent curse transference. There are solutions to the other problems she’ll create—it’ll be like natural disaster recovery for a while, but life will go on. This is the blood of innocents on her hands, she’ll have to live with that stain, and how much further will she go in the likely event she fulfills her end of the curse-breaking bargain and the dragon says, “Oh, one more thing…”?
So we’re getting toward the end and quest success is tantalizingly near, but it seems like she’ll be losing her man and her sense of self as a dispenser of justice as the price of victory. Does she think this is bullshit? Yup. Is she going to do it anyway? Also yup. She probably would do what she thinks is the right thing regardless of the personal sacrifice if she’d stumbled into this quest on her own. Wouldn’t be the first time. But apart from this being Hero’s heart’s desire, his life is limited by this curse. There’s no question she has to set him free, at any cost.
Some of that cost will be absorbed by other characters because *drumroll* Overarching Series Plot, but she obviously doesn’t know that while she’s weighing her options and coming up the loser every time.
Heroine takes her third trip into a liminal space, which is showing the effects, for better and worse, of her previous visits. This space is important in the Overarching Plot, so I’m pleased I found so many uses for it in Book One. I’m not sure yet how much it will come into play in the middle books[efn_note]The twin in the middle could reasonably pass through… oh. OH. That would solve the traveling complications of her companion, and he did mention, when we met him early in this book, wanting to try it someday. Okay! Fine example of Past Me giving me everything I need to work with and Present Me being kinda slow figuring it out.[/efn_note], but at least it won’t be sprung as a New Thing at the end of the series.
I’m trying to drop hints about things that will be significant in other books to establish the connectedness while at the same time keeping a light hand because I don’t want to over-commit to using something later. Within a single book, I’m perfectly happy moving/changing/cutting anything, but once that book—a portion of a series that has its own story—is published and read by others, I can’t go back and change anything significant in that portion of the series story. I built myself a little wiggle room because the POV characters come from different backgrounds and will naturally have contrary opinions (Character A opines on a thing, and later character B says, “Well, that spoiled princess would think that, but here’s how it works in the real world”), but that doesn’t give me an unlimited supply of switcheroos to fix my regrets. A purposeful difference in perspective can be an exciting twist, but if I start changing anything at any time for authorial convenience, nothing I write can be trusted, so I’m feeling a lot of pressure to get these clues foreshadowing the distant future right the first time or disguise them well enough that I can deny they meant anything at all. Not like I’m on deadline, so I can take as much time as I need to make it right, but the angst is real.
I improved a fight scene that had Heroine basically waiting for multiple enemies to kill one another. Her tools are few, her foes mighty, and her body a little beaten up at this point, but she really needed to be more actively involved in solving the problem. Still needs work, but it’s better, which is all I ask of the first revision pass.
There’s a spot in that scene that’s supposed to be highly emotional (but still isn’t as written), and I made a note [THIS IS DUMB], as though there’s any chance I’ll feel differently when I come across it next time. I need the layers to resonate for emotion, and at this point, the layers are all over the place, not even in one messy heap, so fixing it on this pass is an impossible task. Like I said last time, this last stretch is going to be a bit crappier a bit longer than the rest because we can’t put on a good roof while the walls supporting it are at all wonky. Not really worried about the deficiency yet. If the next draft doesn’t improve enough to avoid a [THIS IS STILL DUMB] note, then I’ll have reason to fret. I have to get to the other side of the bog that is this draft first, though.
And we’re so close to the end! Only two more updates until we can take off our soggy boots and let our feet de-prune by the campfire.[efn_note]This will not happen with the speed anyone thinks it should because I have two write-for-hires that need to be finished before the C-suite leaves for Thanksgiving and doesn’t really come back until after New Year’s. We live in different worlds! In mine, I have to contemplate how much resale value there is in things like used shoes so I can buy a tool that enables my uncredited work to continue to support the lifestyle of people who take four months of vacation every year. LIFE IS A RICH TAPESTRY.[/efn_note]