Allow me a moment of Yay!

Thank you, world, for finally letting me come up with a beginning I can work with! Somehow I managed to get 4 pages done tonight. 1396 words. That means instead of having to write 5000 words tomorrow, I will only have to write 3704 words (approximately). And that? That is totally doable. In fact, it's something I've done several times. Which makes me significantly less panicked. Oh, and I freaking finally have a voice for my journalist that I can stand. Because I now have a good reason for her to be bitter, rather than her just generally being bitter, which makes a huge huge difference. So happy. Ah, and these happy moments are so rare sometimes. But yay, yay I might not die tomorrow. Yay!

(And since I don't utterly hate this version, if any of you want to read the first chapter tomorrow when I get that part completely finished, let me know and I'll pass it along. Unless, of course, I wake up tomorrow semi-rested and decide I don't like it anymore. I'm hoping my sleep-deprivation right now isn't that bad, though. And I do usually write a bit better on less sleep. Probably because my brain isn't working enough to question everything I write.)

On and on and on

I've still got a good 8 pages to finish before tomorrow at noon. Thankfully, that feels completely doable. Especially now that things are starting to fall into place. I'm in a bit of trouble with my word count, though. What I thought would only be 5000 words of writing is going to be something like 7000-some unless I suddenly hit a lot of dialog. I'm nearly to 4000 words and I'm only on page 12. But at least I don't want to kill my main character. Even if I'm worried she's starting to sound too much like me, I'm hoping that's just a matter of my style rather than me just... writing her as me (I hope I'm not writing her as me, because, though I like her more now, I still don't agree with her on a lot of things and she still kind of annoys me). I'm thinking maybe by chapter four or five I'll be used to writing in present tense. I need to be really, really careful about how many sentences start with things like "I walk." Too narrate-y, I think.

Also, my characters, specifically my two main females right now, need to stop randomly changing their jobs. Especially Gabby. She's gone from being a photographer to a boutique-owner, and now I think she's some sort of PR person, or temp or something in Heather's office. Freaking Gabby, gives me so much trouble. But at least as a temp she'd make more sense. And could justifiably be way too immersed in pop culture. Which I will need later! (I'm rather happy with where this is going, almost to the point that I'd consider finishing the entire thing, rather than just the first movement.)

I just got comments back on my outline for my TV writing class, and the ones that aren't things I didn't already know and was already mad at myself about (plus a few I didn't notice and am mad at myself about now) make me very happy. Positive reenforcment from authority figures works so well on me it's almost sad. I'm also very glad I decided to do a script for Scrubs, because I can get away with being unnecessarily philosophical and random.

Edit [1:58]: Man, Donnie Darko is a strange and wonderful movie. Glad I'm not sleeping tonight, since this way I ought to have fewer nightmares. Also, hello BA, you are at 5056 words and still only on the 17th page. And I'm only just now nearing the end of the second chapter. This is not good, because my original draft contained three chapters. I cannot, in good conscience, turn in the next draft without that chapter. I'm hoping that, since it's mostly dialog, I can cut and paste most of it back in. In fact, I was kind of optimistically hoping I could get into the fourth chapter, but that'll only happen if I not only skip sleep entirely, but also somehow step into a time vortex for a few hours. I guess I'll save that chapter for when I meet with my preceptor next. While I'm here, though, I think I should address my characters. I'd like to thank Gabby for finally developing a personality. And Heather for finally freaking letting me write her. She does actually feel older than I had her again, which amuses me to no end. Heather, stop changing ages on me again. If you jump any closer to 40, I'm going to have to address the issue of why you don't have any relationships. And Dirk... Dirk, I'm not sure why you didn't allow for so many Hitchhiker's references in the previous draft, but thank you for allowing for it now. And BA in general, you now have a sense of humor. I have no idea where that came from, but I'm glad you no longer rely on narratorly snark for your amusement, because that didn't fit at all.