Well, that was neat.

Yesterday when I sat down to work on my summer writing project, the other novel I'd been stuck on since February butted in, wanting to be worked on. This novel, Sum, had been acting like a giant butt for much of its first draft, and for that I put it on hiatus a while back. I didn't expect to make more than a couple hundred words of progress on it, max.

So I was kind of shocked to end up finishing the scene I'd been stuck on for ages, adding two new scenes - including one that was a tricky turning point - and reorganizing my notes and outline to throw out a bunch of scenes that weren't necessary, paring the next few chapters down to manageable lengths. And the whole time, the story kept its complaints to itself, and the characters refrained from whining about death scenes. The whole thing was fun and easy and left me with a stronger sense of direction for this story than I've had in months. I'm not planning on making it my top priority again anytime soon, but damn was that a nice surprise.