Friday, July 10, 2009

Conjure Crickets Chirping

That ubiquitous summer sound is my daily word count this month. In the spirit of offering my writer's soul the same gentle understanding and benign confidence that a mother offers her children, I'm trying not to worry about it.

Upturned Stones is still bubbling away in my day dreams. I'm jotting notes about scenes and building a stronger sense of the major and minor plots of the story... so all is not lost in these simultaneously busy and lazy days of summer. Between my garden, five chickens, two little girls, and a family lake cabin not far away, I've had little time to generate thoughtful word counts.

Well, I've taken little time. I really don't want to miss these good summer bits with my girls. Splashing in the pool, playing silly games in the yard or the park... and by evening, we're all beat. I'm still filling notebooks, though, and updating a document I've titled "Upturned Stones Working Papers." There I'm maintaining summaries of the characters, the synopsis, and a general list and descriptions of the scenes I've already got in mind.

In other words, I'm not writing much, but I'm building a lot. I'm going to give myself two weeks, until the 25th, to get all of this in some sort of working order and conduct the minor pile of research that must be done ahead of time, and then from the 26th to September 7th, I plan to pound out the draft.

Uninteresting details, I realize. That's the plan; I'm too good at plans. My intention is to see this one through, and reward myself with a workshop class at the Loft Literary Center to help edit the manuscript.

In the meantime, my word count sounds like crickets chirping and looks like a blank white page with all that potential, and all of that trembling expectation.... I hope to start blogging more regularly, about 3 or 4 times a week again when I return Wednesday.

Off to adventure with my girls...

1 comment:

Anna said...

plannings and plans are BOTH necessary; from the planning comes the work and from the plans comes something we least expect. :)))

you are focusing on the main things; times with small children, pieces of life that when you look back will have incredible meaning.

and work on tap!! looking forward to hearing how it goes; enjoy the time off!!

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