a perfect scene

(Sorry about the delay, folks. Blogger hates me.)

The other day, I wrote a perfect scene. It was beautiful. It was funny. It was fast-paced. The beats were all in the right place, the point came across the way I wanted it to, and there was even some fabulous subtext that flew in out of nowhere. And it happened the first time out, without any of this foolish revision or editing or polishing nonsense.

I loved it. I sat there, admiring it. I re-read it several times. I giggled over it until Sailor Boy took the hint and asked me what I was so enthralled by. I read it to him. He didn’t seem to appreciate it as much as I did so I read it to him again. Then I read it over a few more times, and patted myself on the back profusely.

Suffice to say, I didn’t get much more work done that night.

And that’s not the only danger of writing a perfect scene. The other problem is that, when writing the next scene, you are bound to begin comparing it to the prior, perfect scene, and it will almost always compare unfavorably. Never mind that, in time and with revision, you might eventually make said scene just as perfect. It’s not that way now; hence, it sucks; hence, you suck, and are a hack, and should never again be putting fingers to keyboard.

And then, after a little bit of that, you give yourself a right good bitchslap, and settle back down to work. Sometimes you tell yourself that, as punishment for all the whingeing (thank God for Australians, who give us such fabulous words to work with) that you are not allowed to re-read the perfect scene and bask in its utter perfection and your own genius until you’ve written X pages/another chapter/another perfect scene, depending on how ambitious you’ve been feeling.

I think there are two perfect scenes in Secret Society Girl. Two scenes that appear exactly the way I originally wrote them, first draft, not a word changed, boom boom boom. One of them is my favorite scene in the whole book. It’s probably not any scene that would strike a reader as being particularly interesting. there are probably scenes that they like a lot better, but if you really want to analyze the plot of SSG one day (and really, be my guest) you’ll realize that the entire story hinges upon what happens in that scene, and had it not been perfect, the storyline, the plot that Kirkus calls “impressive” would not have worked at all.

So perfect scenes have their place, especially in the writerly psyche. I was feeling pretty down about my progress with SSG2, until I wrote the scene, and then all of a sudden I was all, “this book is going to ROCK!” Sometimes we need that little boost.
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In other news, eagle-eyed watchdog and pajama Connoisseur Kristen Painter has noted that there is an ARC of Secret Society Girl available on eBay. I checked out the listing, and it’s being sold by someone who appears to regularly sell ARCs and only ARCs. Other writers have told me that I should be pissed about this, because ARCs are not for sale, selling ARCs rips off the author, and my publisher sent an ARC to this person in good faith and not so they could pirate it out on eBay. (Can you pirate something if you’re selling it? What’s another good word? Pimp?)

Anyway, I thought about it, and I guess that I am pissed. I’m pissed that it’s only going for $6.50. WTF? This is some prime summer reading folks, and what’s more, it’s got the super cool *original cover* on it. That thing is a collector’s item. It should be going for six hundred and fifty. Also, anyone reading the ARC and thinking that’s the actual book is going to be very disappointed. There are whole paragraphs missing from the ARC.

I really don’t get eBay sometimes. How can someone sell something that says “not for sale” in huge letters across the top?

I’d advocate driving up the bidding price, but I don’t want to put money in this person’s pockets.