Gripped

Two things aligned in the past 24 hours to help center my thoughts on this elusive story.

The first was last night's rambling summary of the novel as it was in my head. A fresh four page summary that dumped the major details, conflicting and problematic as they are, and refreshed my stale connection to the story.

The second, unfortunately, is my daughter's ongoing strep-throat-induced sloth. This is her 3rd bought of strep in the past 6 months, and the doctor brought up the dreaded "we might have to remove them" discussion. The poor sweet thing has been glued to my couch, staring blandly at the parade of movies that have trotted across our screen.

She perks up for an hour or two here and there, only to crash hard later.

While this is certainly difficult for a mother to watch, the fact that we are home bound has given my mind ample time to wander over the piles of story rubble in my head. Even as I played indoor wiffle ball catch with 18 month old Elliot, I sorted out some of the tougher issues and tossed the root cause of other, lesser problems.

By the time Elliot had moved on to chucking other, harder, heavier toys, my mind was free to creatively assess this new problem. Time outs don't work very well on a very young toddler!

So, with a free mind and new clarity, I'm off to iron out the next scene...