Emotional Evasion

I've been in the trenches and revising for over a week. Some of it has taken me ages, other bits haven't been too hard to handle. But I'm nowhere near where I need to be as far as wanting to send it to the editor. Not yet.

First I have to rework the most difficult sections. Sections I hope will impact the readers' emotionally and supercharge them with empathy for my heroine. She's a feisty woman with lots of backbone, but even my heroine has her breaking point. And I just couldn't bear to write the scene today. Not at the end of the day.

I made notes, jotted down ideas, and arrived at the painful conclusion that I need to ramp up the action and pump adrenaline into these scenes' arteries. This is how it is going for me. I have to write something painful, something deeply emotional, and it's going to hurt. Not just my heroine, but me.

The truth is this heroine and I have been together quite some time. I've discovered a truth about her during this revision that is deeply painful. But I don't blame her for hiding it all these years. I know she's deeply private. I know she's trying to protect herself and her family from this pain.

There's no way I can force her to go through this right now. Or myself. It's emotionally draining. I have to mine her emotional experience from the depths of my soul.

I shall do that after a good night's sleep.