Writing While Annoyed

Ever have a lost week? That's what this week feels like to me. I am pumped to get on with my novel, but outside forces are doing their best to prevent that. Yesterday I tried, I really did, and finally I just gave up. Too bad I wasn't writing an "anger" scene. I could have drawn from real life.

So, I have very little to report, and what I do have is boring and rote. Trying to write while distracted is impossible. Did I manage to move the story forward? Only a tiny bit. I continued the scene with the mysterious man showing up outside the tour bus, asking to see the star. My main character is worried that he's a stalker and won't let him in, but he dials up his cell phone and soon the star emerges from her suite to welcome him aboard. By all appearances he presents as a love interest, but MC can't decipher the dynamics between he and the star, and the one other person who could clue her in refuses to tell her. I left this open-ended, sure to arise later, since why introduce him if it's just a throwaway scene? Now I have to follow it through. It's like Chekhov's Gun.

After that, I basically summed up the tour. Not exactly scintillating. MC is sad that it's ended, because she's felt safe and cocooned, and now she has to go back to her regular solitary life. I didn't write her ruminations well, because again, distractions. The last thing a story needs is "boring", and I was just writing words to write words at that point. 

I threw in a couple of hints during the post-concert party ~ the star's assistant keeping the key to the liquor cabinet on a chain around her neck and the star nursing a cup of coffee while the band and crew celebrated with drinks. (Yes, of course; too obvious, reviewers will say. You know, I'm getting annoyed again. Do I need to be so subtle that the star's secret just pops up out of nowhere?)

And that was that. That's when I threw up my hands and quit. 

At least I know what the next scene will be, and F scene jumping. Everything can't be written consecutively. Sometimes in life nothing happens. I'm not going to write that.

But the scene after that? I don't know. I want to show the dichotomy between being part of a big tour and the reality of an unknown artist tooling around in a subcompact to little out-of-the-way bars. Rise and fall, or at least semi-rise and fall. I'm thinking she's going to suffer a few indignities along the way. Plus, I think her record label is rather sadistic in its "plan" for her career. The A&R guy will explain it away by telling her she needs to "earn her chops" or something. This'll be her third tour, in essence. Her first, of clubs in Texas, wasn't bad. The label put her and the band up in decent hotels and the nightclubs were fun and rollicking. Then the star tapped her as the opening act on her stadium tour. This third one will be the pits. I like the idea; it has lots of possibilities, one of them being MC questioning her career choice.

So, while being extremely irritated, I was still invested in the story. Too bad I wasn't allowed to write it.