It took awhile, but it just hit me a minute ago: some of the scenes I've written don't move my story forward, don't bring any interesting conflicts or change...or are just plain boring. Now. This is normal for a first draft, but it was taking me in the wrong direction...which means I would have had to start all over again if I had not caught this. So I haven't been continuing my writing. Instead, I'm looking through my planned scenes trying to add new ones and see which ones need to go or just need to be fixed. This may take some time.
Something that might work for you: I did a timed writing asking myself what was I doing wrong, what I needed to change, ect and I came up with quite a few new scenes that way. It also gave me ideas I had not even thought about before. I have heard about timed writing before, but I never really thought it would work. But I was desperate and I tried it. And it did wonders for me.
The only worry going through my head at the moment is I won't finish this book by the deadline I gave myself. But, considering what I'm going through at the moment, I think I'll manage.
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I like the way your are thinking and working on your story, Tori.
I got lost in the duldrums middles on my last YA novel (which has now sold, btw) and I thought every scene I wrote was dead, even though they moved the story (sort of) along toward what I knew would be some incredibly fun stuff in the last third.
I decided to divide the book into thirds. I did this. 1st 8 chapters, 2nd 8 chapters, last 8 chapters (for example -- were there, say, 24 chapters). The last 8 chapters were not written, of course.
Then I folded the 8-chapter sections (mentally) on top of one another. And while I was working on CH 9, I went back to CH 1, and let the themes, actions, concerns of the character(s), and motifs etc. of CH 1 "inform" CH 9.
And CH 2 to CH 10, etc. Does this makes sense? I did this again for the last 1/3 of the book once I got there. I don't know if I am just really dumb to have needed this (we juggle a lot of balls in the air when we do book-length fiction), but it worked very well for me. Everything brightened and made a lot more sense.
Also, any "theme" or idea from previouis chapters that I couldn't work with in subsequent chapters got cut. You know, you set up a lot of things in the beginning of a book and the characters don't always get back to them all.
Sorry this is such a long comment. I really enjoy your approach to thinking about story and just wanted to add my 2 cents from recent experience wrestling my way through a book-length fiction. Best wishes to you!
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