Sunday Night

Last night was a bust as far as writing was concerned. Maybe my discipline is just going out the window.

Something I've put off for a week and a bit pushed up in the priorities list and took most of my afternoon/early evening to get done. I also had a bunch of things to get done around the house on top of my usual weekly chores. Then Man Utd was playing live, James Bond was on Fox, and I wanted to play a little golf.

In the end, we taped Bond and decided we needed to go out and buy the series. I played golf until the soccer started. Writing got overlooked :(

Just one of those periods of down time I guess. Tonight I'll be looking at my next assignment. Might have to give the golf a miss (that will be hard to stick to).

So not much to report today, although I have been thinking about this next chapter for Newlands and I think half my issues come from not liking it. I think some of the sections can definitely be incorporated into other chapters and the transition could be handled much shorter and swifter. I will have to have a look at altering my outline a little I think.

This is one of the benefits of doing an outline. Much easier to move things around at any given time. For instance: One thing I wanted to include, didn't make it into the first chapter so I moved it into the next chapter. That made the second chapter run a little long and left two things until chapter 3. One of those was incorporated easily and the other I weaved into chapter three and four. Chapter four left another thing until chapter five which had one section (action) take up a lot more space than I thought it would. That's left a fair bit to move into this next chapter. A lot of it, not strictly necessary and so will be culled or severely shortened.

My problems come when I weave in the second story. Things that happen in this one will affect the other one so I can't have dull, dragging sections of my characters just meandering along--which is primarily what the next chapter looks like becoming.

So a quick reassessment is called for and a slight alteration of the outline and then back to the action.

The big thing to remember here is this is only the first draft. The primary goal is to get the story out of my head and onto the page. I can always go back and fix it on the second and subsequent drafts.

No news on submissions, but I didn't check my email this morning either. Something else to do tonight. Must get onto Idolatry too, it's been sitting idle (no pun intended) for too long.

Good luck with your writing.

Speak to you soon.

BT