Well, this week was the week.
The week February began.
The week I started writing again.
And I’m not going to lie–it was pretty awesome.
First of all, on Tuesday I finally came up with a title. I figured it would be one of those titles that would take forever to come up with. Because for me, I either come up with it pretty quickly or it takes forever. And as I’d been planning this idea for the last four months, and I hadn’t come up with a title yet, I figured it would be pretty hard.
So I sat down on Tuesday, three days before I was supposed to start writing, and decided I’d come up with a title.
I pondered it for a little while, ready to write down any ideas that came to me. Masks had been the most perfect title ever, so I tried to think of how I came up with that. It related to the story in a very direct way, but it also had to do with the theme of the entire book. So I thought. I thought about how Mefistofele, the opera that brought on the creation of these characters in the first place, was titled as such. And also the opera Faust, which was basically the same story. So if it were just one character we were dealing with, we could just call it Lena, or Devon. However, we had two. And I’d already decided those were the names of each of their parts. Their backstories. Part one, Lena. Part two, Devon. Part three–well, I’m not 100% sure on that yet. I’ve been calling it “Together” for lack of actually having come up with a title for it but I’m not there yet so it doesn’t matter a whole lot.
Anyway, that didn’t work as the title. So I started thinking more. What was the theme of the book? Masks was so perfect because it was not only an acronym and the name of the society of superheroes, but it represented the theme of the story–identity. How the characters looked at and felt about themselves and who they were.
Theme. Theme. What was it? Hell? Sin? Lust? No. None of that was right. Redemption? That felt closer, but still not quite right. I didn’t want something negative like “Sin” or anything like that, but “Redemption” wasn’t the right title. That wasn’t the theme. The characters don’t care a whole lot about redemption until the very end. Sure, they’re trying to fix things and be better–but not with redemption as their actual goal.
But then–I swear I could almost FEEL the light bulb go on in my head–perfect moment. YES. That was the theme. How many times had those words come from my mouth or my pen or my fingers in the planning of this book? “It’s their perfect moment.” “It’s like the perfect moment.” “I wonder if that was her perfect moment.”
Stay Perfect Moment.
I wrote it down and I knew I didn’t have to think of any more. It literally took no time it all. Five minutes, maximum. It was awesome.
And the reason it works so well is because that phrase is one of the phrases used directly in the show Mefistofele. It’s part of the story, that the devil is trying to show Faust a perfect moment and if he does, if he gets Faust to say the words “stay perfect moment” then he gets Faust’s soul. Of course, it ends up that he doesn’t say the words the entire time he’s traveling with the devil, with the devil trying to show him everything possible. It’s not until he’s shown a vision from God with angels and singing and light and all this brilliance that he finally says the words “stay perfect moment” so he ends up getting redeemed.
Stay Perfect Moment.
So there was the utter brilliance of that.
And then I started actually writing on Friday, because it was February 1st. I wrote 1267 the first day, both the prologue and the first scene. It was awesome. Saturday was kind of a let-down, because I ended up not having a lot of time to write, so I didn’t finish a scene. My plan is to write six days a week, one scene every day excluding that first day, because I have 50 scenes not counting the prologue and there are 50 writing days until April 1st, which is when Lena’s part needs to be done.
So I’m going to write some today to try to catch up. I will not get behind after it’s only been two days.
But anyway, the point is it bodes well. I’m excited to write it all.
See you all next week.
Pathways of Progression 