Progress for progress' sake?

I'm on page 264 with 25 chapters; the cruise ship wedding, climax, and hospital scene ending are all that remain of this particular episode. Then I go back in time to write the beginning. Riveting.

I find myself writing more and more in large blocks of text, and I don't think that's a good thing. I'm trying to speed through events to get to the end. Well, even with this technique, I've already written 15 more pages than the goal and I'm not to the climax of the story. This isn't so terrible, since making this book into a trilogy means cutting out several flashbacks from the beginning. However, I recognize that in my first revision, I'll have to add several more sections of dialogue in these rushed scenes so they don't feel so brushed-over.

I'm also realizing that I should do a few more scenes at the beginning and in the middle from someone's perspective beside the protagonist, Mirielle. Maybe her boyfriend, Brian, could talk for a while, or her godfather: the mysterious Angus himself.

We'll see what I can come up with. I love using my imagination to write this story. The frustrating thing is trying to make the writing good. The imagination is there--but the expectations of others demand coherent and uniform writing.

I need to regulate the number of pages in each chapter, and perhaps combine a few shorter chapters. I need to omit unnecessary scenes. I also need to go over each section of dialogue and make sure my characters sound distinct. I think they're all too vanilla, and I don't mean white... I mean boring. They need more personality. I just reached a place in the novel where Mirielle becomes better friends with her roommate, who hated her previously. To show their newfound bond, I was trying to list their commonalities and ended up realizing that Mirielle is really boring. I think I may have to rethink her personality--make her a bit more edgy, a bit more chip-on-her-shoulder, like I always was as a teenager. The good news is that the prequel to this book will do a lot of solidifying her personality, since she'll be seen from Angus' perspective in that episode. I'm excited to do most of that book from third person limited (-Angus-) so we can have more insight into why he does things without him having to say it out loud.

I guess what I'm learning is that writing is more than a process of trial and error, writing and revision. It's also a journey wherein the writer meets her characters several times for the first time and each time is forced to analyze who they are and why they do what they do. It's a fascinating journey, and also sometimes cumbersome. I wish they would just jump up and introduce themselves to me, but the truth is they are only what I make them. They don't surprise me by what they are capable of, as I've heard some writers say. They do exactly as the are told. Maybe that's the problem. This probably doesn't make any sense to normal people reading this blog. I'm just rambling.

And maybe now is a good time to stop.