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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Three days in, and I realized something: I have more material than I thought.

Apparently, this is what happens when you write a slew of discrete scenes in no order: you forget what exists, and you think you need to create when what you really need to do is organize and edit (and in some cases, review the material you wrote the notebooks you took to book events last year so you could write between customers, and see if there’s anything worth keeping).

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Second day, still going.

Admittedly, it could have been touch-and-go. I already knew I’d be working today. I also have a boatload of laundry that has piled up, in part because the limits on my well restrict how much water I can use for such purposes each day. Housework continues to get pushed off to another day. Today, there were at least half a dozen other valid and reasonable demands that could have consumed from one hour to six.

I wrote anyway.