It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This

Does it get any better than this? At some point the story takes over, and you're so caught up it almost feels like taking dictation or something. It's as exciting as writing can be.

After I stopped for the day yesterday, I found myself getting more and more excited about getting back to work. If Max hadn't been so into his Minecraft game, I probably would have.

I spent some time Thursday afternoon with the notebook, amending my sketched-in plans for the next few chapters. Then last night, just as I was falling asleep, I had to get up and hurry out to the kitchen to scribble down another idea that had leapt unbidden into my brain, this for the end of the book. The words I found in my notebook this morning are "Ruined remains of an old dinghy." I know exactly what that means and what it gives to the story.

This morning I jumped right in. It's getting harder to say exactly how many words I've written or what progress I'm making, because I'm now working directly in parts that were already done, and I thought done well. But this is even better. I wrote 949 fresh words, deleted 1,087 including one image that I really liked that now wouldn't make sense, and when I was finished for the day, I had two chapters totaling 2,232 words where one chapter had been. So that's definitely good progress, but some of it is kind of sideways.

There's another section coming up, probably a couple of days from now, that I was never really happy with. Too wordy without much payoff, and kind of a dead end. I know how I'm going to handle it now, and have already sketched out the action. The key word here being "Action." As Leonard Elmore said, try to leave out the parts readers don't want to read.

Now I've got some yard work to do.