The Water Balloon Fight is Over!

The characters in my WIP finally finished their seemingly interminable water balloon fight, and they did it (I think) on a very strong note.

It took me days (if not weeks) to write the scene and it felt like it was never going to end. I swear, I thought half the book must be that one scene and that it would drag on and on forever. But when I read back over it, it wasn't as bad as I thought it must surely be. The pacing felt quicker on a read through than I expected it to. I think I may keep most of it.

Usually I can pound out a few thousand words a night when I put my mind to it, but this middle grade novel is going much slower than that. I know what's going to happen and where the characters are ultimately going to end up and what they're going to do to get there, but my progress is much slower. I've mentioned it before, and I think it's because I have to be a lot more careful about what my characters say, how they act, and whether it is appropriate for a younger audience or not. My older YA characters can get away with a lot more and travel down some much stranger tangents than I'm allowing my MG characters to, and that's as it should be. It's just harder than I expected.

My kids are out of preschool and Mandarin class for the next 2 weeks. I don't know what we're going to do with ourselves. Bring on the glitter glue.