I’ve been keeping up pretty well with the daily word count and am up to over 12K, which is higher than yesterday’s total. Today’s is 13,334, so I have a bit left to go to reach it. Mostly I’ve been reading and cooking and doing laundry while mulling over where the story is supposed to go next.

I’ve already had a character do something unexpected. For those writers who are planners, this doesn’t happen. Even those who aren’t necessarily planners might say the same. “You’re the writer! The characters do what you tell them to!” I haven’t found that to be the case, really. Sometimes a character busts loose and does something that totally blindsides me. It often leads to a new direction for the whole story.

Not so much in this case. Not only did it derail what little plot I’d planned, it also put my main character in a bind, so much so that to get her back on track, I had to kill off the obstreperous character. Which turned my sci-fi adventure into a murder mystery and a budding romance, to boot! (I do not write a lot of romance!)

It’s probably an issue with my main character, Phoebe. I made her a bit unpleasant and someone who deals mostly in logic and science when she needs to have a bit of imagination. Her job as a historic librarian (I probably have to look up the proper title for the things she does) has her dealing with books as objects and not repositories for stories. I can see her as someone who loved reading when she was younger, but her vision has narrowed due to overexposure. She deals with books all day; in her free time, she delves into history and science, things related to her field. I have to write her rekindling that love of reading for pleasure, too. So far, that has happened too quickly. I probably need to slow that down but still get her on the research team.

I also have the nagging feeling one of the researchers–the one who invites her out for a date–isn’t quite what he seems. That he might end up being the Big Bad. Not sure of this yet. I’ll see how it goes.

In any case, I should get back to writing. I’ll be adding this post to my word count, too–just because I can. 😉