Just when I was ready to give up hope and settle for something second-rate, the last scene of Bounds of Decorum finally crystalized for me. I’ve been fighting with it for months, and no matter what I did, it seemed anticlimactic. I needed a conversation between Elizabeth and Darcy after their wedding, and I tried doing it outside the church (insufficiently private) at the wedding breakfast (unintelligible due to interruptions) and on the carriage ride to London (boring, boring, boring! I wouldn’t want to spend time with those people!). The tone was always slightly off, too, not enough humor and happiness to balance the serious elements.
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The good news is that I actually opened the Bounds of Decorum file and have been thinking about what to do with it. The bad news is that I’m not actually writing it. I had to turn in the manuscript for The Last Man in the World (soon to be renamed Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World, not by my choice), and I also polished up my short story “A Whiff of Darkness” (now renamed “A Brighter Future”) which is now posted at 50 Miles. It’s enough to make a person think about issues of titling a story. Read the rest of this entry »