Out of the teens

Yesterday, I officially broke out of the "teens" of my novel when I finished Chapter Nineteen. And today I wrote the excruciating Chapter Twenty...the chapter that I've both looked forward to and dreaded writing for several months. Allow me to explain.

In "Nor the Battle," Liz (my main character) gets put through a lot of crap. And I mean A LOT of crap. For the most part, I've enjoyed putting Liz through this, just so I can see how she'll respond...how much she'll take before she starts beating my brain. But the crap that occurs in Chapter Twenty, in particular, is the worst so far. I knew she'd make it through, because she has to, but it was still hard to write. I think she tried to beat my brain a little bit, but my brain won, and the chapter got finished.

THIS chapter in particular is the one where a certain musical kept singing a certain song in my head. "Die Vampire Die" from [title of show], to be exact. Just so you know, in the show a "vampire" is "any person or thought or feeling that stands between you and your creative self-expression." Here's the vampire that kept sticking its head up while I was writing this chapter:

"Brothers and sisters, next up is the air freshener vampire. She might look like your mama or your old fat-ass, fat aunt Fanny. She smells something unpleasant in what you're creating. She'll urge you to pssssssst it with some pine-fresh smell-em-ups. The air freshener vampire doesn't want you to write about bad language, blood, or blow jobs. She wants you to clean it up and clean it out which will leave your work toothless, gutless, and crotchless, but you'll be left with two tight paragraphs on kittens that your grandma will be so proud of."

Anyway, that's where I am now. I finished writing the painful Chapter Twenty and I now know that Liz can pretty much take anything else I might dole out to her over the last few chapters. Because, yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am now on Chapter Twenty-one out of TWENTY-FIVE! And if Liz could survive Chapter Twenty, then these last few chapters will be a breeze...