Whew. I need a break from trying to write for a while. This is incredibly slow going and I am really frustrated with how things are progressing.

If there’s one thing I have trouble writing, it’s fight scenes. Even knowing that I will rewrite this whole section over again later, polishing it with copious amounts of advice from my more combat-knowledgeable companions, just trying to get down the basics takes me much more time and effort than writing any other type of scene. I have worked on this all day (on and off) and I’ve barely managed to get — well, I guess 2,000 words isn’t that bad. But when I consider that I’ve reserved at least 6K for this major confrontation (it is the climax of the novel, after all), and I try to think how I can make the struggle more monumental instead of having someone chant a little spell and making all the bad stuff go away, it feels like more than I can handle. Not to mention that more than half of what I’ve written today was only build-up to the combat, and not actual fighting.

I’ve been listening to angry rock music all day. I’ve been playing violent fighting video games all day. I’ve been reading combat scenes in my current entertainment material. The new episode of Red versus Blue even had a little combat and explosions in it (not to mention karaoke). I should be in the mood for this.