Slow Going

I've been planning a big family reunion for over a year now. It finally happened last weekend. And relatives came in early to check out the lovely town I live in. So I had company for five days straight with a big party in the middle.

It was fabulous. I caught up with a lot of cousins and met new ones. Everyone had a great time. We all came together for a happy occasion and this started a tradition that I hope will continue. The next one, in 2019, is penciled in now.

However, the day after the last guest left I was a zombie. It took me two days to catch up on my sleep. Apparently, I spent a lot of time standing because my feet and legs felt like I'd run a marathon. And I pulled a muscle in my back trying to wrestle the compost pile into a more seemly shape. (Like anyone would notice?)

Needless to say, I didn't do much writing. But all the stress is gone now, so I plan to write harder. My deadlines are shot, but they are just there for me to aim for. It's more important to fix the book than to meet some arbitrary due date.

When I opened up the WIP yesterday it felt really good to get back into my routine. I feel like I've had a vacation. My mind is clear and my energy is good. Now I need to get back at it.

Back in the Groove

I found the missing subplot in my WIP. Now I just have to layer it into what I've already written. And that means a lot of cutting scenes and rearranging them. Which gets confusing when you know the whole story because you can accidentally refer to stuff that won't happen for another chapter or two because it used to happen earlier.

As I'm fixing/rewriting scenes I see the stuff that really didn't fit. Putting this subplot back in makes everything work so much better. I had tossed in a mini-plot that sort of made sense, because I knew it needed something, but it never really meshed. It implied a larger theme that I had taken out because that didn't work either. So dragging in a piece of it just made a bigger mess.

It's going a bit slower than I had hoped. Although I know what needs to happen, I have to figure out how to introduce it into the world in a logical manner. In the great doorstop it was a major info-dump that ran a whole chapter. Yikes. Now I not only want to avoid that kind of delivery of information, I also want to delay the full disclosure and extend the mystery. So in addition to the action, I need to weave the information in slowly.

And that means writing, which I need to go do now.