Jackie Powers Everything 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.

I’ve spent the last two or three weeks bitching and moaning to everybody who will listen about how horrible and awful I’ve been feeling, not physically, but mentally: overwhelmed, irritable, exhausted, short-tempered, brain-dead, lethargic, depressed, anxious, unmotivated, and just about every other negative emotion in the book.

It’s been going on and on, seemingly forever. I haven’t been able to rub enough brain cells together to work on my book in months.

Then, out of the blue and completely off any schedule that once existed, my period started yesterday, and lo and behold, yesterday afternoon and today, it’s like I’m a new person.

Life is good, thoughts are flowing smoothly, ideas are coming faster than I can implement them, and I have the energy to do the things that need to be done.

I’m not sure whether to be exasperated or excited.

It’s not lack of will-power or exercise. It’s not bad eating or any other of my bad habits. It’s not lack of sleep or that the world is out to get me… it’s not something that I can do anything about! It’s not ME!

It’s the result of hormone soup that I’m probably stuck with for the next several years.

Suddenly, I find myself a real proponent of hormone replacement therapy. It was bad enough when I had to deal with this for a couple days every month, but jeez-oh-petes, dealing with it for weeks on end, with no apparent schedule, and no real end in sight… where are the pills!?!