Where does the story go next

After and before, whatever!

The weeding is done, as the photo above shows. Yeah I still need to trim the scraggly irises, perhaps a task for later today. Right now I'm feeling contemplative, because in today's chapter events took a turn I had not anticipated.

Sometimes surprises are good, like forgetting one is supposed to get a flu shot at eleven a.m. instead of at four p.m. That also happened yesterday, lol, but fortunately we were heading out to run errands when my phone alerted me that we first needed to stop at the local pharmacy where I did get my flu shot. Would that preclude the scheduled weeding I had planned for later in the day? It did not, whew, in fact my arm feels FINE, and the irises look so much better, and the sunshine was awesome and I went to bed last night feeling so good for all that had occurred. The writing is coming along with gusto, hurray! Garden maintenance is proceeding to plan, woo hoo! I'm all caught up on necessary vaccines, YES! But then this morning my novel took a strange turn that occasionally happens when the muse feels so inclined. I paused at the end of a sad scene, ate breakfast, then did some hand-wash, putting those items on the clothesline because this morning we have some sun slightly obscured by thin high cloud. But enough light shines that it was imperative to do the hand-washing, because who knows when we'll have another fog-free morning.

The weather has no bearing on my writing. I'll write while the sun shines, the clouds obscure, the rain pours. The only impediment is if the power is out, ahem, otherwise as long as I'm feeling compelled, my butt's in the chair, my face gazing at the screen while words slip from my fingers, plot and character and theme a'plenty! Yet this morning a wholly unconsidered twist emerged, slowly at first, then at a pace I knew was unstoppable. And it works nicely into the assumed plot, but not in a kind manner. It was a sad disturbance, I told my husband over breakfast, my mood not its usual pleasant tenor. I'm still feeling meh, despite completing the chapter, seven of them now neatly moving the story forward. I think tomorrow I will not write, permitting myself to either step away entirely for a day, or if I wake stupid early, I'll read it all from the beginning to see how it's.... It's certainly coming along, no question, but not as I had envisioned, but that happens, and I do try to not overthink it too much, in that what I think is going to happen sometimes is not at all what does happen, for better or worse.

Better for the book, but at times worse on my heart when this or that beloved character or idea gets axed. I am fully committed to these folks and their foibles, and today's events, while indeed beneficial for the protagonists, makes me a bit blue. Or maybe I am in sore need of a writing break, just one day mind you, but that has been my schedule for the last few years; write six or seven or even five straight days, then take a day off. Or a few days, if guests are here or if I am away for the weekend. I'm perfectly fine with those sojourns from the prose; I am not the writer I was seventeen years ago when this whole fiction gig began. In 2006, our last autumn in Yorkshire, I began my first book, writing every day. I amassed over one hundred K in November, merely in that I finally had a plot worthy of such efforts, and through National Novel Writing Month a group and virtual place to garner the necessary support. For a few years I wrote A LOT. I wrote all the time, lol. I wrote and while much of it was crap, I kept writing and got better and kept writing and that first novel, Drop the Gauntlet, was released through a small publishing house. I wrote more and released my own stories and then my dad's cancer became a doorstop to publishing my work. For a while. Then I started releasing The Hawk in sections as I wrote it, which I swore I would never do again. And I won't, but this series is separate books and, and, and....

And this novel, the fourth, isn't what I thought it was going to be. Which is FINE (it really is). It's fine because I never planned on Seth Gordon in The Hawk or writing the fourth, fifth, and sixth novels for Alvin's Farm (or the seventh, for that matter). Nor did I think I'd come up with a great story for the cast of That Which Can Be Remembered. And if I'm being brutally frank, when I started this current series, I was only trying to work out my own grief. But it has turned into something far beyond consoling my singular heart. I won't dare imagine who else might find it so soothing, but it helps me, except when it's confounding. And boy if that's not life in a nutshell, what is?

So yeah, I'm feeling a little unsettled. But that is okay, in that the writing shouldn't be so predicable. I need to be flexible when characters throw wrenches or the plot makes a detour. I can't control the fiction any more than I can the weather, which is now cloudy, hah! But as long as it doesn't start to drizzle, the hand-wash will stay on the line till later today. I have fabric to cut, a book to let simmer, maybe some gluten-free cookies to bake. This is definitely a day for chocolate chip healing goodness if ever there was one.