Last night at 2 AM, I was struggling to stay awake long enough to write one of two pivotal sex scenes at the end of Chapter 18 in The Billionaire Life. Good cider and Zyrtec are apparently a bad combination for staying focused and awake.
I've been holding the scene in my head for about a week - ever since I came up with the character Shelby (who won't show up in the published version until I post the Fourth of July party in chapters 11-12.) So, I was eager to finally get it on paper.
I managed to get it down before going to bed, but it was awful. The scene involved character development for two POV characters and a number of edgy elements. I didn't feel like the characters would actually behave the way I wrote them even as I was writing them. The edgy elements seemed to come out of nowhere and, as result, the whole scene was just Bad Porn.
This morning over coffee, I threw the scene away and started from scratch. I like it much better this time. It's still fucked up, but there's a natural, feline playfulness to both characters that comes out.
It's tricky on SOL where I post chapters of stories I haven't finished writing yet, but I've learned to trust my writer-brain when it tells me a scene isn't working and backtrack until I figure out why. Sometimes, it's just that one scene. Sometimes, it's because I've pushed a character's growth or descent too quickly to suspend disbelief.
The Billionaire Life is turning into a longer work than I originally expected - largely because it's a coming-of-age story for at least six of its characters and I don't want to rush them faster than it makes sense for them to go.