Stop fighting! You're supposed to get along!

If you're not a writer, this blog post may make you think I'm mentally insane.  I'm not.  Trust me.  Just sometimes when you're writing, your characters have a mind of their own.

Yesterday was Sunday, and ideally that should be a day where I get a huge chunk of writing done.  I didn't.  Word count grand total was a pathetic 252 words.  I was very frustrated and later mad at myself.

My best writing troubleshooting always occurs while driving (I'd just drive around for no reason when I have writer's troubles but gas prices being as they are... that's not a feasible solution).  So today while driving home from school, I realized what my issue was yesterday.

I'd encountered a problem that I hadn't encountered before.  According to my plot, I needed two characters to work together to help another character in need.  When I put these two alpha females in the same room together for the first time... they soooo did not want to work together.  Instead the scene turned into the equivalent of a cat fight, leaving me shocked and frustrated.  While I've had characters act, speak, and behave in a way I hadn't anticipated, I've never been writing and then had two characters not get along like this.  And I couldn't think of a way to "mediate their situation."

Today while driving, I realized I could have solved this problem or at least still added to my word count (instead of just giving up and doing grad school reading).

I could have :
     A. Brainstormed areas of common ground between the characters to give them a solid reason to work together.
     B. Brainstormed a character that could act as mediator.
     C. At least chosen a different scene to work on that day to get SOMETHING done.

So while I did get a lot of grad school reading done and while that was a productive use of time, I still regret not getting more writing done yesterday.  But at least I've learned from my frustration.  In the future, brainstorming about character relationships might be just as necessary as creating a character bio.  Lesson learned.

Now let's see if I can knock out 1,000 words tonight to make up for it...

UPDATE... Later that night...

Switched projects.  Was insanely inspired.  Brainstormed a great deal, and wrote 765 words.  Wanted to keep writing... but the clock read 11pm, and I really can't afford to get sick AGAIN this school year.