Another 4500 words on Apocalypse Pictures Presents brings Magic Meter to here:
The good news is that I’ve closed out Act Two. The bad news is–wouldya believe it–I’ve hit another wall. Yes, even now, this close to the end. And as of this writing, I have no idea how to get past it.
There are two main plot threads. I know how one of them wraps up, so that’s not a problem. As for the other one . . . well, I have all the pieces in place, the good guys and the bad guys set up for a head-on collision, with the protagonist facing an agonizing choice, and I’m pretty sure I know which way he’ll go. The rest should write itself . . . but it ain’t happening. I tried putting in a call to the muse, but she’s apparently wintering in Belize, or some such. I keep getting her goddamn “out of office” message. Which means I’m on my own here.
I’m baffled and more than a little frustrated. Every novel is different, each one presents its own unique set of challenges. And for this one, it’s the ending. It’s in there somewhere, I just know it is. But I doubt I’ll find it tonight. My brain’s fogged in with fatigue.
So: A good night’s sleep (one hopes), and then a visit to the proverbial drawing board. In the meantime, your snippet:
Catherine hadn’t been stepped foot outside the walls since they’d been erected–over two years. Her house in the Hills afforded a majestic view, of course, and she’d seen plenty of news footage and surveillance video taken by the Animates, but the sheer physical fact of the ruins, the enormity of the devastation, felt distinctly unreal. Her mind refused to process it. She couldn’t shake the sense that she’d walked onto a movie set, maybe one of the productions she had backed while at Fox.
Except that big-budget disaster flicks had not exactly been her forte. As Wendell had once said, she’d been too busy chasing Oscars.
And the hard truth was that the Hills were the movie set these days. The inaccessible fantasy land. The ruins of Hollywood were the reality.
No updates for Write Club.
And so to bed.
