The whiny story of slogging through writing my first novel.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Peace and Quiet

Birdie actually interrupted me only once last night as I sat in the bedroom writing. She figured out in about ten seconds that she had PROMISED me I'd have quiet time at home, and left the room. The best part was she didn't get irritated with me for wanting a half hour or so. When I came out a while later I had a huge smile on my face, cause that felt GOOD.

I put together the jigsaw puzzle of notes I've made for chapter 12, which is where I got stuck a year ago. All the parts of the book that weren't working came to a head at this point, and they had to be unstuck before I could realistically begin again. The road to the end has changed about five times since I stopped writing, but this time I hope to have a better handle on it.

Kate told me to make a list of what went wrong with my relationship with the book, and that really helped. One of the things on the list - #1 - was that I had lost touch with the characters. They didn't make sense anymore in my head, and how can you tell their story if that happens? There simply isn't enough happening in the way of gore and danger, either. I intend to try and fix that as well, but it was further down the list.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Work On Chapter 12

This is the one I've been stuck on for so long. Tonight Birdie will drop me at the library and she'll go shopping, which is something she normally does while I'm in class. But there's nothing left in the evening schedule I'm remotely interested in taking, except drawing - and there's no freakin way I'm taking a class that meets twice a week from 6:00 to 9:30. !!!!!

So I've got notes, that will be typed today and then I'll write on those tonight. I do get a lot done when I'm at the library, but I'm only there a couple of times a year. We decided that we're going to try going there at least every other week, possibly every week, and when the weather gets warm we're going to go play golf. Well, I will play and she will walk with me, if my hand is okay for holding the club. She has tried golf and can hit the fuck out of the ball, but it hurts her back. That's good news for me, because it would be yet another thing she's better at than me. ;-)