Monday, April 5, 2010

Day 8, April 5, 2010

Sometimes you change your plans; sometimes the world intrudes; sometimes both things happen. Today, I started taking an extreme exercise class at my local health club. It began at 5:45 a.m. Over the next hour, I did more chin-ups, push-ups and dumbbell reps than I care to remember. As my wife, who worked out just as hard, and I were heading home, she said to me, "I hope you're up to using your keyboard."

Turns out I was. A little lactic acid buildup wasn't going to stop me. The main part of today's work was to move the main story line from being a closely held secret to one that is shared with the novel's protagonist, thus burdening him with resolving the problem. To make things more interesting, we see the beginning of mixed feelings in the protagonist's mind. Does he really want to solve this problem or should the people who created it, though inadvertently, be left to deal with it?

In another corner of the story, an important, though secondary, character makes a discovery that could change the course of the action, but for reasons of personal interest he chooses not to.

All of this was accomplished despite having the world intrude in the form of a sudden thunderstorm. The writing was humming along this afternoon when a T-cell, complete with thunder, lightning and torrents of rain swept through. In my area, this means there's a good chance of a power outage and a slim chance a lightning strike could run through my power lines and fry my computer. Not wanting to take any chances on losing either my computer or unsaved writing, I backed up the work I'd done, shut down the computer and pulled its plug.

Then since I was tired, anyway, I lay down and closed my eyes, knowing that my muse might have moved on for the day. But I got lucky. Lightning did not strike, me anyway, and my muse lingered.

I wrote six pages today, still pushing the pace.

Day 8 of writing my new novel is done.

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