In the most recent writing course I took (which I guess I dropped out of since I missed the final deadline and haven’t heard back from my mentor since and now it’s been two months so yeah, that) one of my mentor’s complaints was the unlikability of my characters, which I understand. They were bitter. I was bitter when I wrote most of that story, which has now died a death at the bottom of my drawer. I thought my faerie story was immune from such bitterness, but now I’m struggling to come up with an ending that isn’t utterly depressing. And my characters are veering into unlikable territory.
So I brainstorm. I have a roadmap to my next point; I just have to write it down and get there. But then, when I get there, I’m lost again. Everything is so sour. I’ve written my characters into places where the decisions they have to make are all awful, which is pretty much like life but not so much like an escapist YA story about faeries. Everything I try (in my head) just makes me pucker my lips like licking a lemon (which Geoff does – eats lemons by themselves because he is odd). I’m souring like bad white wine and writing inane metaphors here rather than fixing my own work.
I like writing much more when I’m doing awesome and getting strings of acceptance letters for journals than whatever it is I am doing right now.