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Of course I want to write faster. But I’m even starting to think my current writing speed is bad...for my writing.

So there’s two bits in the last novel I want to contrast. In one, Penny “sees movement” and reacts in time to dodge a rock. In another, she’s thrown off the ferry from Venice and is dog-paddling in the middle of the night until rescued...then talks her rescuers into beating the ferry to Greece.

So that second bit, I got out the maps and the time tables. I was looking at how traveling at top speed cuts into your fuel supply, and calculating where the Moon would be given the phase, and using Google Maps tools to measure distances and plot courses and all that in lots of big messy calculations.

And here’s the note I get from Dad; that rock is falling at 16 feet per second per second and I don’t believe anyone could dodge that. Not a word on the boat.

So I could protest he read the scene wrong. She didn’t see the rock the moment it started falling. But why would I take notes if I wasn’t going to use them? So I re-phrased to make it clear she’s reacting to the rock-thrower instead.

What I'm trying to illuminate is that, too often, the things the writer gets hung up on and works to try to explain are not the things the reader gets hung up on and wishes the writer had explained.

A different illustration; final episode of Doctor Who Season 12, there’s a whole bit in which the Master goes out of his way to explain he was worried the Tissue Compactor would have caused the Death Particle the Lone Cyberman was carrying to get loose and kill everyone. (No. Don’t even ask.) So there’s this whole bit in which he brings it up, shrugs, then says he got lucky but it hardly matters because apparently he’s suicidal -- something that has never come up in any portrayal of the Master before -- so it didn't matter anyhow.

This is all taking place on Gallifrey, heavily-defended seat of power of the Time Lords, the Master’s own people, which he just conquered and destroyed. Off screen. Because while explaining why something that hadn’t even occurred to the viewer might be a problem wasn’t actually a problem, how the Master conquered Gallifrey wasn’t considered a problem.

(Just to underline...in a previous season climax it took ALL of the Doctors, every canonical regeneration all working together, to save Gallifrey and make it safe-but-isolated. And this was a big, big event that had been in one way or another led up to over the last ten years of the show.)

Well, I could write many long essays on how the last couple of seasons have been a let-down. There are many such out there already. I pride myself in that most of them lead with their upset about the politics or similar choices. I lead with story, and the failure to communicate it efficiently or interestingly.

I just watched a random clip from late in the Stargate canon. A briefing room discussion in which, in five minutes or so, the crazy plan of the week is explained and the need to include the prickly genius Doctor McKay is brought up with various people's reactions to that.

A dozen people in the scene. At least six of them have dialog. And almost all of them get something that is interesting and funny and in character and illustrates their relationships; enough that if you had started watching at this moment you would still be getting the first bit of a grasp of the personalities of these people.

And I wanted to grab the whole production team of current Doctor Who and sit them down and tell them, "See! This is what you should be able to do!"

Right. So today's main work on my own much less accomplished novel is to start thinking about character arcs. Because I sort of forgot. I mean, the characters do have a part to play in the plot and they are changed by it. But I hadn't thought in the specific terms of character arcs and that alerts me to something I probably need.

And that is for those arcs to be visible. To specifically plan in places where the reader can observe the critical characters and learn new things about them...and to see them learning new things about themselves.

Well, I also was thinking about how to work the financial pressures I want to put on Penny and that led to a more satisfying and in-character way to handle some of the shifts in her relationship with Graham. So that was good.

But that also -- heck, all of the various belated realizations I've had this week -- are a good counter to the idea that I should write faster. Because apparently it takes time for me to come up with stuff that, when added to the book, makes it stronger.

At least I hope it does. Because beyond and aside the idea that researching is a double-edged sword you can cut yourself on twice, I also think taking time gives your inner censor longer to react.

Right, so doing a lot of research tempts you to put it all in. Also, research is a bit like filling a jar from a tap; you can only hold so much before it starts spilling. I'm already losing notes and links I had for things that would have been very useful if I was writing those scenes right now.

But the censor thing. I actually can't tell if I'm backing away from the fun but implausible and slowly editing it into the plausible but boring. Or if I'm getting used to the ideas and by the time I write them I've accepted them, as unlikely as they might be. Heck, I don't even know if the idea of specifically over-the-top action; of set-piece action that is intended to ride that line between cool and ridiculous, is necessary or even helpful for whatever kind of story I'm actually writing.

I just feel like there was a point where the plot was wilder and now that I've started writing scenes, it feels domesticated. And maybe it wouldn't feel that way if I didn't spend so long planning things.