Well, it feels like years.

39,000. That's where the word-count stands this morning. I've pulled nearly 40,000 words out of this puppy, all told.

I have to say...that is a lot of wasted writing. (Not that it was actually wasted, no, I understand writing is about learning and writing a lot of the wrong thing is a learning experience. I do. I understand that.)

But I remain a teeny bit frustrated by the vast divide between the Case Story as it existed in my mind and the Case Story as it became on the page. Okay, it was never going to be a world-beater, as plots go, but it was a decent case story and the elements in the case reinforced the developing slash plot nicely. There were all these reflections and echoes of what happened in the case affecting the guys' relationship and stuff. Just the sort of thing you're supposed to have in a Long, Plotty Story. Bits of random weirdness and Dramatic Moments and funny stuff and in my mind, it was all worth writing. Somewhere between my brain and my fingers, there was a humongous disconnect.

I reserve the right to remain bitter about this for the next five or six years.

Anyhow. What with one thing and another, yesterday I completed all the rewriting of bits and transitions necessitated by the drastic way I once again hacked the story to bits, removed scenes, moved scenes, and rearranged the order in which things happen.

There's only one Major Scene left to write, and it's a doozie.

It's all-new, nothing I wrote before can be adapted to work. And it's the money scene, the one where the slash plot either boards a rocket for romance or fizzles and sputters to a halt.

And I'm sitting here...staring at the screen and trying to decide. Have I just lost the knack of slash entirely? Or is it a characterization issue? Have I become so fixated about the characters as they exist on-screen that I'm just unable to write anything they don't do on-screen?

One Kind Friend who read through an interim draft of this monster kept noting, in her comments, that "all I know is (a) or (b) about theses characters. And I kept scratching my head and thinking, "well, that's who they are." She hasn't seen the show, but she picked up exactly who the characters are on-screen from what I wrote.

Problem was, all she was getting was what was on-screen and, as I've said a bazillion times already, the show was not well-written and the characters were not well-served.

What I have so far failed to do in this story is the one thing fanfiction is supposed to do. I haven't managed to flesh out the characters so that they're more than they were on-screen.

At the moment, I'm stalling. And listening to an episode, but that probably won't help.

Part of my brain is saying, "go wash the car, do that last load of laundry, dust the bookcases, go to the grocery story, walk across to Starbucks, vacuum the living room" and a thousand other things, but I'm determined to sit here until I work this problem out.

Of course...I could walk across to Starbucks. I'm pretty sure a Chantico would provide the inspiration I need. And a Chantico followed by a Venti Latte...what writer's block could possibly stand against the combination?

I'm all about the procrastination.