On Tuesday I went to the office for an editorial meeting. I also met separately with my boss to talk about some ideas that I’ve been working on. Most of the ideas were about changing the way we do certain things, but one idea was for something entirely new. She was receptive, even enthusiastic about some of the ideas, so I feel good about how the meeting went.
We ordered the carpet for the great room yesterday. This is a big deal because, once the carpet is in, the room will be usable for the first time in the ten years we’ve lived here. Still to come are the fireplace mantel, the built-in bookshelves that my husband promised me, and furniture. But that’s just frosting. At least we’ll finally have the cake.
Last night I worked on my novel, just a few words, but I feel like I’ve taken the first steps toward the place I need to be in order to finish the story. It was enough to remind me of how much I’ve learned about the people in the story and, more importantly, how I learned about them. I did it by letting the characters talk, at length, among themselves. It’s hard to write when you do not know what’s going to happen or why. It’s hard to have faith that the information will present itself. It’s even harder when you know that the majority of it will be garbage and that yet more writing will be required to figure out which parts are good. But this is the only method I’ve found to produce a story. It’s nearly intolerable, but it works, and I can do it.
P.S. I also updated Word Press recently. One new feature is the “Drop Cap” toggle, which allows you to add a large capital letter at the beginning of each paragraph. It made me want to turn this post into an acrostic by choosing initial letters that spell out something interesting. I soon found that “interesting” was too lofty of a goal for my groggy brain, so I settled for a word (OWL). It’s a cool feature, though.