Avoiding the unpleasant

It's been a pretty good week to be a writer. My time and schedule seem to have normalized somewhat, finally, after being sick twice and helping a friend through a crisis in the last few weeks.

I'm attempting to turn my body's natural clock on it's ear, and although a struggle, it's not been too bad. I'm a night owl in the extreme, but decided as part of my "new life" I wanted to try to write, workout, and get other stuff done during the day as much as possible instead of in the wee hours of the morning as I've done in the past. (Well, obviously the Y's not open during the wee hours, so the workout was not really a transition!)

Two out of three completed days this week so far, I've succeeded. I've had two productive afternoons of writing after getting to sleep earlier the night before, and have gotten some stuff done around the house I would normally postpone for the weekend. I did write until early in the morning Monday night, but mainly because I had some assignments for my class (Barbara Samuel's voice class) that I hadn't been able to finish over the holiday weekend, and needed to post that night.

My word count on LOTH is creeping up slowly. I'm in a difficult part of the story, and I think that's one reason I'm moving like I'm swimming through molasses. I'm as resistant to the scenes as my characters are, but they've gotta happen. In the meantime, time is standing nearly still for them, and perhaps that's how it would be if it were real life. Interesting psychology there.

There have been other scenes that were unpleasant to write in this and older manuscripts. I noticed I put them off and put them off, but once I started, the stuff just poured out of me like a stomach virus. (I'll leave the rest of that metaphor to your imagination.) They were very emotional scenes, and it was easy to get caught up in the drama once I got over my initial revulsion to putting fingers to the keys. But this one, not so emotional, not happening so fast...just plodding through some bad, drawn-out stuff, like a season of yuck in real life.

If you're a writer, have you experienced this? Are unpleasant scenes harder for you to write than happier ones? Do you avoid them like you'd avoid a bad ex-boyfriend? Or...do you relish them, head on, rubbing your hands together and cackling before you slap them down? (You must be sick, but I'd still like to hear about it.)