Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Losing the thread . . . .

Over the weekend, I lost the thread of my novel or, as mystery writers call it, my WIP (work in progress). I had been going gangbusters, a thousand words a day, last week. But then Friday I got busy with other things, Saturday Jacob came to stay, and Sunday Colin, Jamie and Jordan arrived for the memorial service for Charles. Yesterday it was 9:30 before I even picked up a book, by which time I was too tired to think about being creative. This morning I ran errands--for some reason it took me forever to wrap and mail a package--the local post office substation I went to had closed, so I thought, but then I found out it had just moved. Meantime I went back home to get the handicapped tag so I could park in a good place at the post office. Anyway, there, with emails, went the morning.
But this afternoon I settled down to it, read a bit about where I'd left off, and began to write--at this point I'm mostly getting words on paper, forging ahead. I have definite ideas of what's going to happen but I'm afraid if I start moving toward the climactic parts of the novel, with only 43,000 words done, I'll end up really short. I'm thinking, however, that's what I should do, see how it comes out, and then rewrite. I did write a total of about a thousand words today, some of it going into the early parts to clarify some things and some of it moving ahead. And I guess I know where I'm going with it, so I can move ahead tomorrow. If I write every day I keep up the momentum of the story--and I think that's important.
It's much easier to keep up the momentum on my nonfiction book--those are short entries, and I can easily do one a day if I put my mind to it. The problem will come with finding illustrations, if the proposed publisher likes the manuscript. Right now, it's really short--16,000 words--but there are so many pictures I could include, like Frito Bandito and all the Dr Pepper memorabilia.
Jacob was having a boys' night with his dad, while Jordan went to a girls' happy hour and then came by here for supper, because she didn't want to have to cook at 7:30. We had a nice visit--I had already eaten half my tuna cake (too big for one helping) and some squash casserole and fried her the other tuna pattie and made a salad--squash casserole would never pass those lips. I really feel like I've overeaten today--a rich but wonderful smoked turkey, cheddar, sprouts, tomato sandwich on sun-dried panini for lunch. Bet I gained weight today.

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