Weird Questions, L, and Warm Sake

I sat here earlier with a cup of warm sake--yes, I have a bottle of sake--trying to piece together a few things on Vitamin F. Right now, I've reached the brunt of the climax. Chapter 50 has turned out to be a beast, currently running about 18 pages. It would have been longer, but I lost a file completely and had to rewrite that content from scratch.

Note for the future: don't lose text that contains the death of a major character.

I've been lucky so far. Fifty chapters and I've only lost one file of text. Damn lucky if you ask me. And, yes, I've been backing my files up. A friend suggested I should start making hard copies as well, although that will get expensive quick.

On the topic of Vitamin F, I was discussing it with one of the beta readers, Megan, and we discussed the twist the story takes in Chapter 14. Not long after I clarify the twist to her, she asks me a very simple, yet odd, question. "If you had the chance to live as a girl for seven days, would you do it?" I had to get her to explain her question, and why she was asking it.

Megan wanted to know if I was given the option to change that one fact for seven days, keeping everything else just the way it is and everyone act just the same, would I do it. She also pointed out that she thought it would be interesting to do that, or to live as a kid again, or be an old person for a week. It was the whole point of view issue again, and, when I found that out, I wiped the figurative sweat from my brow. As a person who tries to be logical when possible and as a writer, there's really only one answer to the question she asked.

Still, to be asked such a thing, it put me into a seriously weird place. It's one thing to be asked to imagine walking around in someone else's shoes, but to be asked to see those shoes as having been mine in the first place... my skull was about ready to pop.

There are two really good things about this. I'm fairly certain what the last chapter of Vitamin F is going to be now. And I know that the whole understanding other people idea is definately coming across because of the book.

Ahead of Schedule?

At the beginning of December, I gave myself a list of goals, extending over a two month period. Most of those involved reaching a certain chapter by a specific date. For example, I had to hit Chapter 30 by December 20th. I think that was the last one I got to by the date.

As I noted before, I had to trim out a sequence completely. As far as completion goals were concerned, this was the one thing slowing me down more than anything else. I did "cheat" in assembling blocks of text, noting what had to be changed, and then jumping past the bulk of the sequence entirely. It helped that a couple of the beta readers started to find time to read Vitamin F again.

It does wonders for a writer's motivation to hear that his readers are picking up on certain elements without being led to them. In ten pages, I convinced Angie that Adam John was the villian. In about 12 pages, Lyndsey got mad at Bridgett for spilling Delilah's secret.

My increased motivation has led to me cranking out completed chapters. Before I knew it, I found myself in the last 1/5 of the novel, the section where everything shifts from being subtle and subdued to being overt and violent. It's the part where most of the nasty things happen, containing some bits of text that, when I wrote them, made me step away from the computer for a few days. I'm also glad to say that I've already integrated the first piece of text I ever wrote for Vitamin F--it's the start of Chapter 41, when Adam John first speaks to Bridgett privately.

Expunging Chapters

As much as I hate the thought, I'm going to have to ditch at least a couple of chapters of what I've currently completed of Vitamin F.

When I first made the list of groups I'd make mad with the novel, I knew that Christians as a whole would be one of those groups. Blatantly describing a future world where your religion gets supplanted by another--almost overnight--will tend to make members of the real religion upset. The transition was one I felt was important in the progression of Bridgett's life during the year that starts when she meets Penelope.

The more I've thought about everything, the more I've noticed that the nature of religion in Vitamin F isn't massively important before this problematic point, nor is it important after that point. It's also something that slows me down every time I come to it. Perhaps the idea of a religion capturing the hearts of every person in a single country is a bit too far-fetched for myself. Or it might be that I just didn't care for how that element of the story was playing out.

My solution is to just cut that bit of the story out. I'll have to patch a few things up about it, but the mass conversion angle has to go. There's only so much bullshit an audience can swallow and I think that might be a bit too much.