Jackie Powers Writing Blog

Done with the edit of chapter 2.

But can’t get into chapter 3. I know some of it is this hormone-crap that’s going on, I could feel the brain-cells solidifying as the day progressed.

But part of it is also that I fought the transition from the last scene to this scene for… I just checked… _4_ months. Last time it took me _four_ months to get this transition to work.

The good news it that the lessons I learned then were well-learned, and I now know how to make scene transitions work. I guess that’s good news.

So, tomorrow I start chapter 3. And, I figure, since I can’t sleep at the moment, I’ll go ahead and do the prep-work, so tomorrow I can get right to doing what needs to be done.

Chapter 1 is done, and two more quick passes at chapter 2 should finish it up. Chapter 3 will not be quite so fast (not that any of this has been fast, but relatively speaking), because most of it is new. But I’m moving and progressing, and feeling really good about the book, for the first time in a very long time.

Life is good.

I edited today, and I’m now 3300 almost-final-draft words into Chapter 1, with 800 more to edit, which will surely expand to 1000 words, at least… which will make the chapter about the size I want. I worry that the beginning is too slow, but I really like how it reads, so I’ll leave it as it is.

What was the first two chapters in the old draft will turn into the first three chapters in the new draft, as I move some stuff around and explain more why things are the way they are.

As far as my lack of brain cells go, I’ve made a doctor appointment for next week, and I’m thinking the fix will be simple and hoping it’ll be effective. I really can’t keep going on as things have been. This part of getting old is for the birds. The only good thing is that, by definition, it’s temporary. This too shall pass, and all that.

I wrote yesterday afternoon and today, on Sarah’s book, for the first time in months. It felt so good to get back into the swing of it.

Yesterday blessed me brain cells and a really cool idea. One of my biggest problems with this book is lack of big chunks of time to get into the world. Doing all the kid-stuff my everyday life requires is not conducive to big chunks of concentration time. Then, yesterday, Nick wanted to go to a friend’s house after school and stay until 9pm, and suddenly I had six hours of uninterrupted time on my hands. So after Nick got home, we called this friend’s folks, and Nick is now scheduled to go over to their house every day this week, so I am kidless from 8am until 8pm every day. WOW!!!

Yesterday I wrote 1500 new words, finishing up a rough draft of the new 1st chapter. Then today I worked on those words some, wrote 1300 words on the beginning of the 2nd chapter, reworked some of the character reference sheets, then put all the various bits of scenes together and began to weave them into a new whole. So, I’m finishing off the day with 1200+ words of the first chapter at the next-to-final-draft stage, with 3600+ more words at very-rough-draft stage.

Tomorrow I shall continue weaving bits of the rest of chapter one, then begin on chapter two. Some parts are new, some parts are from the old draft, the challenge is creating a smooth whole of all the bits.

For the first time in eons, I’m looking forward to it… and praying with all my might that I still have brain cells tomorrow to keep working on it.

Well, yesterday’s schedule didn’t recover from my unanticipated nap. I got stuff done, but not the stuff I’d intended to do, or needed to do. Well, I needed to do this, but it doesn’t bring in any money.

I spent the day putting all my receipts into Quicken, then going through and reconciling everything. Which is good. It’s been needing to be done for much too long… 5 months much too long.

It got a bunch of stuff off my desk and filed. And it got a couple things off my mental to-do list. But it just made it all that more clear that I need to be bringing in some money. So now I feel guilty, I did my bills instead of working at work-stuff, just so now I know exactly how much I really need to do work-stuff.

But, it’s done and that feels good. And it’s nice to have at least one pile off my desk.