After spending much of the night staring up at the ceiling and really, really hating that wedding night scene, I realized what I did wrong. I fell back on a commonly used fictional trope to create tension; namely, I have two people who are not communicating properly with each other and thus have the wrong idea about the other. Matthias thinks that Danäe is appalled by the idea of bedding a guy old enough to be her father, and Danäe thinks that if she tells Matthias that she was never in love with his son (but was in love with him) she would look fickle, if not actually whorish.

Ya know what? I reeeeeeeeally don’t like that trope. It’s annoying. And they’re going to have enough shit to deal with later on in the story that they don’t need additional miscommunications on their wedding night. So I’m going to go back and tear all that out, and write what should have happened — Danäe stops Matthias’s deliberately truncated foreplay after he assures her he’ll make it fast, asks what he’s doing, winkles out the real reason, and sets him straight. And then they have still kinda awkward but MUCH hotter sex because Hellenes have rational views on physical intimacy and godsdammit, Danäe wants to get off. Heh.

Started With: 9,285 words
Wrote: 3,012 words
Total word count: 12,279 words (yes, I know this doesn’t add up correctly but I deleted a scene so I was at a deficit when I started).
What else did you do today, Nicola: due to a bad night not nearly as much as I wanted to get done. But I did manage to get the living room vacuumed, checkbook balanced, and cat chores done, plus one hell of a leg session at the gym (oh, Lord, I have to start going more regularly because this business of not going for weeks and then going back hurts like a mother) and a shower.

Oh, I told Ramón about this challenge today. His response: “Because you have a rod for your own back that you haven’t used recently, I assume?” He understands my little foibles so well.