You know love's a funny thing, you just gotta let it be

It didn't take me until the end of the week to hit the 30,000 word mark after all. I pretty much had it Monday night and then just finished up the scene I was working on Tuesday morning. At which point I realized I needed to move into a different character's head, as well as a different physical setting. At which point I freaked out a little: "OMG, I don't know enough about this setting. I can't write it believably enough. I'll never be able to make it convincing! I should just quit now!"

I can be pretty dense like that sometimes. I have since remembered that a) I didn't know enough about the other two time periods/settings/historical characters/cultures I've written scenes in before I researched them, either, and I think those scenes turned out reasonably well. And b) Um, that's what that stack of books over there is for. To READ before you try to write these next scenes, remember? It's called RESEARCH?

I have always gotten very easily fixated on word count and daily production of it. My agreement with myself on Crowmaker was that I would try a different approach this time: I did the basic, absolutely necessary research before and during outlining. I will do the nitty gritty, need-the-details-please research as I write the draft. This necessitates relaxing my stranglehold on the word count tracker, because it takes time to do the research before I can write the scenes. Which is, y'know, what I've been doing. I just sort of got all caught up in the excitement of watching that little bar grow, I guess.

That, and I want to get this next part written so I can get back to the two characters I have to leave in limbo while I switch to these other characters. I'm going to take that as a good sign. Even better will be if by the time I get to the end of these scenes, I don't want to leave these new characters, either.