Photo credit: Aline Ponce on Pixabay

Tonight’s writing was less about producing and more about tweaking. Anything from a word to a sentence to a plot point—I skimmed through a chunk in the first section, playing with language.

To be honest, that’s one of my favorite parts of writing. I simply do not understand people who dislike editing. Editing is where the story moves from a barebones plot to having life and color. Maybe some people can create a full-blown scene on the first draft, but not me. For me, the progression is more like this:

My old guitar

Progress!

I finally figured out how to connect up a moment from early in the book to the climax. I love when that happens, when bits and pieces seem to link themselves together without my having to think very much. I did that once in a short story, and a reader who was also a writer commended me on having woven the victim’s silver ring through the story. (Since she was a friend, I admitted to her that the ring had been the last thing I thought of, after which I went back and planted references.)

Photo credit: Monfocus on Pixabay

To be honest, I’m not certain at this point which is doing more to keep me going: the book, the challenge, or you folks who are reading and following and liking these posts. Personally, I think it’s all three.

Without this combo, it would have been easy to take the night off. I know I keep talking about being exhausted, but today I really was. After church, I ran a couple errands and got home with the intention of taking a short nap. I didn’t even bother with lunch; I just went to lie down.

That was 12:50 p.m. I woke up at 3:30 p.m. Just in time to get everything ready to take dinner to Mom, which meant so much for the evening.

Photo credit: Monica Leonardi on Unsplash

And it’s been a week.

Granted, not every day has involved a lot of progress, but every day has involved non-work writing. So that means I’m halfway through the challenge and it’s primarily been successful.

So far, so good.

Photo credit: PublicDomainPictures on Pixabay

I think I did it.

Not certain, but I think so.

Here’s what happened. Once dinner was finished, I sat down with the Surface and prepared to write . . . something. I didn’t know what. I didn’t have any specific ideas in mind, except a couple hours earlier, I called a friend who recently emerged from a month-long hospital stay. Her story reminded me of my own trip to the hospital a few weeks ago to have my appendix removed. So maybe all this was swirling around.

All I know is that I opened up the Surface and opened a new document. With no forethought, I started to type.

Ned is very concerned about the lateness of his bedtime snack

I’d be lying if I said this was a particularly productive day in terms of the book. I made some edits, but it’s difficult to concentrate when you’re exhausted. Not that it was the book that was causing me to fall asleep; I know this, because I closed the document and tried to watch Stephen Colbert, and I kept falling asleep sitting up.