Plumbing

I seem to have wrapped up the sub-plot for Kitchen Sink last night. My anticipated 15,000 word mini-adventure has turned out to be a 3000 word couple of scenes, which has left me a tad discombobulated. On hashing it out with the housemate, however, I've concluded that expanding it would be the wrong choice. It'd be fun to see these characters go off and play, but it would undermine several developments later in the novel, and the new character I'd have to introduce would end up overshadowing the main villain in the end. So no, it's not just me copping out and going for the easy solution; it really is better for the book.

This morning, I took care of the mysterious package contents that have been lingering in writerly limbo. Between them, these were my loophole for any plot threads that I needed to tie up or (more likely) backfill, but it turns out I connected everything fairly effectively without them. So instead I put in some jokes about bureaucracy. ;-) Works for me.

I've got one mostly-characterization scene left to fill in, and a couple of tweaks here and there, and then this thing should be ready for a proper beta-reading.

For those who find process interesting, ( a week in the life of a writer )

Meanwhile, I've been so focused on my writing quota this week that I completely forgot I have a query quota to fill! Last week's query ended up getting done the following Monday due to virulent Sunday-night inertia; this week's may get rolled over due to, well, oops.