Alchemist continues…

I’m not sure I’ll meet my goal of finishing by mid-February, but I’ll be awfully darned close.

I’m struggling with writing one character in particular. At Kate’s suggestion, I’ve made the effort to sort of “fall in love” with the character. That required some tweaks (she wasn’t my type), but now, I think I’ve finally got a character that I can write effectively. My other option was to construct someone that I disliked and take sadistic glee in putting them through terrible situations. Something about this struck me overly capricious.

What this means in the long term is that I need to be able to write characters that I dislike. I tend to find writing villains particularly easy (And what does that say about me, exactly?), I like flawed characters, and I like characters with plot-crucial complexity. When I have a character (as in this instance) that serves as a viewpoint (and not much more), it is difficult to muster the energy and enthusiasm to write her well. We’ll see how she fares in the coming weeks of writes and re-writes. If you see me here in another couple weeks lamenting my lack of l33t skillz, then you’ll know it didn’t go well.