Friday Progress Report. (Everyone is emotionally unwell)

Current manuscript status:

• The tension is escalating
• The characters are making terrible decisions with confidence
• At least one scene had been rewritten because, apparently, emotional devastation requires precision
• And I have once again reached the stage of writing where I stare at the screen like the manuscript personally offended me.

So overall?

Progress.

One of the strange things about writing longer projects is how alive they start to feel after a while. Not in the dramatic “the characters talk to me” kind of way, but in the sense that the emotional tone follows you around long after you stop writing for the day. A scene that works sits in your chest differently. A scene that doesn’t will haunt you until you fix it.

Unfortunately, the current manuscript seems determined to haunt me.

In a good way.

Mostly.

The deeper I get into this story, the more I realize how much of it lives in restraint. The things left unsaid. The moments the characters know exactly what is happening and keep moving toward it anyway. Those scenes are always quieter than people expect, but they hit harder when they finally land.

Which means I’ve spent a concerning amount of time adjusting single paragraphs like my sanity depends on sentence rhythm.

Writer behaviour.

But the story is getting there. Slowly, stubbornly, and with significantly more emotional collateral damage than anyone involved probably deserved.

Including me.