Matthew S. Rotundo's Pixeltown

I’m stuck.

Like, really, really stuck.

There’s a way through this mess in the middle of Apocalypse Pictures Presents, I know there is.  I can see where I want to go, and it’s gonna be really cool, a vast improvement on the first draft.  But I don’t.  Know.  How.  To get there.

Here’s what I do know:  I’m sick of being stuck.

I really wanted a good road map in place before attempting to proceed.  At this point in the plot, there are a lot of moving parts, so winging it doesn’t seem to be much of an option.  But if this crap keeps up much longer, I may have no choice.

Anyway.  Deep breath, Rotundo.  Rise above.

Write Club updates:  A tier two bounce from Ares.  Response time, 118 days.

And after 6+ months, I’m giving up on an agent query.  I can take a hint.

OK, I’m gonna figure this thing out.  Somehow.  When next we chat, I’ll know where I’m going.

Really.

Muddled through the rest of the galley proof, then turned my attention back to Apocalypse Picture Presents.  I still haven’t sorted the mess in Act Two, but I managed to weasel out some word count, anyway.  Only about 2.5 K, but hey, that’s better than nothing.  Magic Meter agrees:

“But wait,” you say.  “You were talking about how major this part of the rewrite was, and how you still didn’t quite know how to handle it.  How did you get any word count out of that, Rotundo?  How?  In the name of God, how?”

Well, see, it was like this:  I saw that a later chapter was pretty self-contained, off in its own little subplot.  So I just skipped over there, blithely ignoring all the rest of the issues, and voila!  Word count, like magic.

And now for my next trick:  figuring out the rest of the story.  Which would be good, considering that we’re deep into the second draft here.

Your snippet:

A small car, a navy blue hatchback, flashed by on the road, slowed, stopped.  Eddie got low and froze, fearing he’d been spotted.

It was an electric model, judging by its silence.  Two men in dark uniforms got out—Hills security.  The car drove on.

Both men carried rifles.  They spoke to each other briefly, gesturing and pointing, then headed in opposite directions, heading into the bush.  One was quickly lost to Eddie’s sight.  The other came his way.

No updates for Write Club.

OK, here we go.  Nothing up my sleeve . . .

No, seriously.  There’s nothing up my sleeve.  Wish me luck.

So I mentioned last week that word count might take a hit as I handled some business.  Well, I’ve been as good as my word.  That’s something, anyway.

Cut me a little slack.  Taxes had to be prepared, some important correspondence required attention, and I had a galley to proof.  Two of those tasks have been accomplished to my satisfaction, and I made a good dent in the third.

I’ll finish the proofing in the next day or so, and then it’s back to a rather major plot snarl in the second act of Apocalypse Pictures Presents.  Gonna get it resolved, I’m telling you.  Like I said at the start, I’m as good as my word.

In more ways than one.  I’m a writer, after all.

(Get it?  A writer, see.   Good as his word.  Get it?)

(Jeez, I kill me.)

No updates for Write Club.

Excelsior.  And stuff.