When Good Resilience Goes Bad

A couple weeks ago, I did this: 

Don't ask me how. The penultimate night of Camp NaNo was taken up with an emergency room visit, the final night my boss asked me to stay late to finish something at work (it was a Friday as well as being the end of Camp NaNo, so I gave him 30 minutes and then headed out), and basically I'm pretty sure nothing I wrote during July is worth keeping.

Here's the thing: I wasn't expecting it to be worth keeping. In fact, I was expecting everything I write right now to be a dark and stormy mess of emotions that will have to be edited for clarity and probably lightened up a bit later. Instead, Sybil (my MC) has turned out to be impervious to pretty much everything.

When I started writing Sybil, I gave her emotional resilience on purpose--it's one of her traits that she shakes things off, at least in public, and is able to carry on instead of hiding under her covers every time something goes wrong. (Unlike her author, who quite frankly would happily carry a blankie and a teddy bear everywhere if that were socially acceptable behaviour for adults.) However, I wrote what was supposed to be a hugely emotional chapter that would finally show some cracks--taking Sybil more or less to her breaking point--and much to my alarm she bounced right back up again and zoomed off without so much as dusting herself off first. I'm not even sure she bothered hitting the ground.

So I tried again, and again, and--seriously, does nothing upset this girl? Is she dead inside? What does it take to knock her off her even keel?

So, obviously, at some point this will have to all be rewritten. But maybe writing isn't the outlet for my worst emotions that I thought it was. Which means I probably need to figure out where they've all been going.