Writing Log: 9-8-09

Started writing at 10 am

Really heavily revised Chapter 1. (Reader friends are undoubtedly rolling their eyes, but really, I'm making progress and have other chapters written this time!) Much, much happier with it now. I think I've fit in a lot of backstory and character stuff in a fairly interesting and amusing way. Well, at least I amuse myself.

(Today I read the entire first chapter out loud, making some corrections and modifications as I went, trying to get the cadence and the timing of the language and dialogue right. I haven't done that for a long time. Fortunately I was alone, so it didn't feel quite as silly. But a useful exercise.)

Then chapter 2 should start the ball rolling a bit faster with the action and plot.

Moved a big chunk of text out of chapter 1 into Chapter 2. Wrote roughly 4,200 new words for Chapter 1, completing the Ch. 1 first draft. Got notes down for Chapter 5.

Wrote for four hours today. Even though I'm getting an unpleasant head cold of some sort, today was a good writing experience. Lost track of time, forgot to eat, felt quite involved in the process.

(Another thing I did last night and this morning was jot down some ideas for specific bits of dialogue or description as they came to me, always with an eye to where they would fit into the narrative structure. I didn't use all of them, but just the act of doing that helped prime the creative pump, as it were.)