Trying to gather the inspiration -- and thanks

Ugh... I go in such waves of extreme excitement for writing the story and then complete, unenthusiastic lack of interest. It's pretty annoying, to be honest; I wish I could stay consistent with this shit. But I guess since I get so emotionally involved in writing the characters, it's no wonder that I periodically burn myself out.

For... hmm, at least a week (closer to 2 weeks?), I've been sitting on writing my part of the chapter we're currently working on (Afterimage 21). It's pretty silly, since this was a part I was looking forward to writing several chapters ago. But of course now that I'm here I just feel like I stare blankly at the screen and feel utterly uninspired.

I actually had a dream last week that had something to do with the chapter; I woke up with this really intent feeling and sat down at the computer to write, but then I had to research several things and I was checking some previous chapters and got distracted rereading something, and then I wrote out a start and hated it and had to go to work. Since then, I just can't get into it. Every time I open that page, I stare at what I had, then try to start over entirely and feel like it's just not right.

It really bothers me when I can't get description or the psychology down right. If it doesn't seem intense enough to me when I'm reading it, I feel disappointed in the scene, as if it's failed to be effective and now it sucks.

I'm such a perfectionist -_-; That flaw will kill me someday.

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One thing I wanted to say -- thanks for the thorough response to our Boyd question, sglily! That was not rude/offensive at all; in fact, it was helpful.

I think one of the problems is that when we were editing, we removed some parts that in retrospect we perhaps should have kept in. We were worried about certain aspects of the characters seeming a certain way (ie, the first version had a scary sappy Boyd) and in editing I was just like UGH TAKE IT ALL OUT I HATE EVERYTHING. Like I usually do XD I'm very black and white about my own writing if you haven't all noticed yet XD

For the most part, our decision was the right one for the story and character. But I think maybe we went a little too far and accidentally took out more of Boyd being concerned/worried than we should have. At the same time, those were parts of paragraphs or parts of the scene and not the point of the scene so we didn't totally compromise the story by doing that or anything. But I do think that since we know the whole book, so we see everything in context of everything else, it seems different to us compared to what it would seem like to readers.

So that's another reason I'm glad we're doing this hiatus. I really think that in order to best tell the story to readers, it needs to be in arcs. We've started to split it up in our minds to figure out which chapters go with which... I can say that you will be getting 3 chapters at once in some cases, which I think will be more useful and interesting for all of you.

-Ais