File Fiddling and Tool Fondling

That title almost sounds kinky. But it is a fair representation of what I've been doing for most of the last two weeks since signing on to sweat for Sven. The metaphor was handed to me by my husband when he was trying to snap me out of the funk I slipped into over the weekend after I lost that loving feeling for the process. He was pointing out that I was spending too much time fiddling with my files, and references, and the applications I'm using for this project and dwelling too much on trivia. He likened it to a mechanic who spent all day fondling all the tools in his large multi-drawer toolbox, rearranging them, admiring them, cleaning and polishing them, but never using them to build or repair anything.

He said that I was obsessing needlessly over the whole timeline issue. But what if I write a scene in which character A is five years older than character B and then in a different scene character C is two years younger than character B and is remembering the days when the three of them were attending high school together? I whined. So what, he shrugged. Isn't that what rough drafts are for? You can't fix something that isn't made yet.

He suggested that I attend to at least one of the dozens of planned for scenes every day for a minimum of an hour. Its time to start bending wrenches, he said. That's mechanic's slang for applying the tool to its task.