I think I gave myself the kiss of death. The other day at work when I was talking about how the book was going, I mentioned that I was still fighting for every word, but at least I hadn't needed to do any major cutting for the last five chapters. Guess what I did last night? Yep, right before I went to bed last night, I cut everything I'd written on Monday and Tuesday with the exception of two pages.
The first half of the fight scene is in the previous chapter and that went well enough, but when I went on to finish the fight, I ended up getting stuck. Part of it was that there was no real suspense since there was no jeopardy. I went into the previous chapter and changed that. I'd hoped that alone would unstick the scene, but it didn't. I finally figured out around 9:30 last night that I'd made things too easy for my heroine. That's when I went in and ruthlessly cut the chapter. I'll start over nearly from scratch today. Hopefully, now that I know I need to torture her, things will go better. (And, hey, if any characters deserved to be tortured, it's these two. After what they put me through....)
In other news, I came home yesterday to discover that two types of the lilies I'd ordered and the tree peony had arrived. The tree peony is supposed to be planted immediately (once the nighttime temperatures do not go below 35 degrees). I still haven't decided where I'm putting this thing! It likes full sun, so obviously somewhere in the backyard, away from the tree. In a phone consultation, my mom suggested planting the lilies around the peony, but I don't think that's going to work because the lilies need partial sun. If I plant them around the big tree, they'll be shaded by it, but the tree peony won't be big enough to do that for them. So the dilemma continues. Gee, the plants are difficult already and I haven't even put them in the ground yet!
