Making Progress!

Debra is closing in on the end of draft one of her WIP!

After being away from my writing for a long, long, long time...last week I jumped back in with determination. My muse is in a good mood, and I am making a lot of progress.

It helps that there was less to do than I thought. At least for this first draft. I had a little less than 100 pages already written. In the last week I've increased that to 131 pages and 26,273 words. (I'm not sure what the word count was when I picked up again.) I had a lot of scenes done, but they were all over the place, and I've been doing a lot of connecting to bring things together. I figure I'm about 10 pages or so from being able to say, "Done." And then put it aside while I'm on vacation for a few days. When I return I can start revisions and edits and such on the 'second look'.

Now those ten pages shouldn't be a big deal. I know exactly what needs to be written. Trouble is...I'm not sure how to write it.

This is the big money scene.

The premise of this book is the heroine asks her brother's best friend to be her sex tutor. It's called "One Great Night". Up until now there's been a lot of kissing, some petting, and a whole lot of sexual tension. But they haven't done 'it'. After all of that, there needs to be a big pay off for not only my characters, but the reader as well.

And I'm not sure I'm up to the task. (Okay, there's a kinky pun in there if you were paying attention.)

Oh, I can write a sex scene. I know where everything goes and who does what, where, and when. But like clockwork, in almost every sex scene I've ever written, I get a note from my editor saying, "This reads like a play by play." Or "Get deeper into the POV character's head." Or "This is a little too romance-novel-cliché." Or, well...you get the idea.

Chloe and Jason's first time really, really needs to be fabulous. The sex has to be great, obviously, but the emotion needs to be there too, and that's the part I'm not so good at.

So I've been putting it off. But I'm going to pull out all of the notes I've ever taken, printed, found, etc. on emotion and study up. I'm going to reread some of my all-time favorite love scenes. And then I'm going to go for it. After all, this is only a first draft. Once I have something down, I can work with it. Heck, even if I get the play by play (ha ha) done, I can always get that emotion in during revisions.

Wish me luck!

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

Family Secrets, coming August 1 from The Wild Rose Press.