No "real" writing has gotten done in days, but oh the muse is so terribly excited and demanding I drop everything and turn him loose. I've been brain-storming the character and plot problems for my novel with some of my writing group friends for the last couple of days, and now that I've shared the rest of the basic plot line of the story with them, I've been steered in the right direction and muse is screaming "That's f-ing awesome! This next draft is so going to rock!" My biggest issue was with my protag's motivations and her lack of being an active agent of the plot and its resolution and I kept putting off addressing her issues for the longest time because it was a big cloud hanging over me. But last night I spent an hour and half just writing up a couple paragraphs about her motivations, just thinking aloud about what she wants and what's important to her and trying to see how that relates to what the other main character wants, particularly over the entire storyline of both books, and now it's finally come together. I think the motivations were always there in my mind but I'd done other things wrong, blocking them from playing a part, or I made it impossible for her act or make a choice, or if she did make a choice, it turned out to be a non-choice. I gave my protag too much access to free-magic to solve all her problems with little consequence (big rule violation concerning magic and it's trade off values, which any decent fantasy novelist wouldn't have made, but I'm new at this and feeling my way around. At least I resisted my urge to try to query some agents about this book before now and so didn't ruin my chances with any of them). I also gave that same real consequence-free magic to another character and basically made it impossible for the antagonist to even have a fighting chance (not to mention that with this power, this other character should have just used it as soon as he was an adult and everything would have been over, happy happy joy joy! So now I snatch it back from him, ha! and make it much harder for my protag to use what she can, and now the antagonist has a fighting chance and she's the only one who can stop him. And the non-choice she originally made...gone, and she's going to have a much, much tougher one to make. Plus I get to keep around a character I really really hated killing off and he can cause grief and temptation for my protag in book two. And I get to bring in more gods! Hurray! After these sessions, I've come to the conclusion that I held back too much of the broader plot in this book, mistakenly thinking I needed to save it for book two, but in fact, if the protag knows some things about the broader plan of her beloved god, it gives her extra motivation to succeed and help out.

The muse is biting and clawing to get to writing, but I'll have to muzzle him for a little while, so I can write a query and see how my protag's motivations hold up. Then it will be off to another rewrite of the outline. Plus, it was recommended that I take a look at The Mists of Avalon, since I'm doing something similar in that I'm taking a myth (not a really well-known one, but the most well-known of that particular culture's mythology) and telling it from an alternate character's POV, so I bought that yesterday and plan to read it (this is the first time I've ever bought a novel with the intent of studying it in hopes of helping my own writing.).

And in other good news, the Zokutou word meter is back up and running again. Quite pleased to see that.