Drove over to Daniel’s today and sat at a coffee shop until we talked Shapeshifted back airborne again. (It was still airborne…but like one of those parade floats, and the strings were tangley.)
Instead of pressing on, no matter how badly I want to do so, I have to go back to the beginning and, using the knowledge I have now about the structure and path, redo some things to give me a firm foundation on which to continue. Seeing as this happens every book I ever write, I ought to be prepared better for it by now, but no. It always feels like a defeat, even though I know it’s just the 30k slump.
The bad news is, this tosses my goals out the window, so I’ll have to make new ones.
The things that I outlined happening, were all happening in the right order, so I don’t think I have to throw out much (or rewrite) too wholesale. I was just lacking the emotional reasons for those things to happen, and you can only plunge along full speed for so long without that…and then you really do get off track. So this is a good place to regroup, reconsider, and rewrite.
I suspect my new goals will be to keep on doing what I’m doing through the end of Sept, and then press on and finish the book in Oct, giving me November and December to polish it.