I'm still tossing bouquets to the latest Writing Guru. (Immediate Fiction, by Jerry Cleaver)

Today's piece of Useful Advice: "When you sit down, before you do anything else, write one sentence."

That's all. That's from the section on dealing with writer's block.

You don't have to fight your way through it, produce something worthy of Hemmingway, or beat your head against a wall. You don't have to write a scene or a chapter or even a paragraph on any particular day. Just one sentence.

Interesting concept, isn't it?

I mean, I don't do that, because I'm O-C. If I write one sentence, I need ten hours to finish the thought it starts, but that, of course, is the point.

I'm not unaware, having suffered through many of them, that there are days when producing one sentence, no matter how lame, seems an impossibility. During my next episode of blockage, I predict I will turn to that section of this book with relief.

So...where stands the SEN today? After all, it's Sunday, right? That's Writing Day, in Anne's World.

To begin with, mindful of Cleaver's advice, I wrote a sentence.

Then I deleted 40 pages worth of stuff that just wasn't working, including the only two scenes in the entire mess that I actually liked.

I even, with many tears and much cursing, deleted the Original Scene. That's the one I thought of first, the one I wrote the entire monster for.

I hate writing.

After that, I mopped my eyes, blew my nose, and got on with it. I wrote twelve pages of new stuff, some bits to bridge over gaps I'd created in the text and a few all-new scenes.

I'm proud to report that, while the entire SEN still sucks, it sucks in an entirely new and special way.

Now, instead of being distant and unapproachable, at least one of the characters is maudlin, self-absorbed, and unexpectedly emotional for no discernable reason.

I hate writing.

And now, I'm ending today's session caught on the horns of a dilemma. Do I write the one "missing scene" and the one needed transiton for the SEN, then do another rewrite of the entire monstrous mess in a week to see if it's as bad as I suspect?

Or do I take the two deleted scenes, the only bits I thought were halfway decent in the entire SEN, and construct an entirely new story around them?

There's a charm in the second idea. I get to abandon all of the problems I've created in the SEN, tell the mopey and depressed character to go cry on someone else's shoulder, and start fresh with the "decent bits" I've accumulated along the way.

Essentially, we're talking here about deleting another 25,000 words and, based on the amount of deleting I've already done, doesn't really strike me as that extreme, do you?

Heck...with what I've already got, a day's work should produce an inoffensive sort of PWP. And I'd be done with it!

You know...I was joking at first. But now I'm thinking...well, why not? There's something very attractive about that idea, isn't there?

'Scuse me. I have some writing to do....