Editing on the fly

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Rows of straight-line quilting, oh yeah!

Hopping back into my novel has taken a couple of days. The chapter I wrote yesterday ended on quite a revelation that I wasn't quire prepared emotionally or backstorily within said chapter to reveal, ahem. Yet the word count is pushing 120K, whoa! And while it's a first draft, I didn't initially envision this tale to get much beyond the 120sK, although it's fine that it will, and boy let me tell you, it will. How much it will is yet to be determined, but if today's chapter is any indication, there's not much left of this yarn to spin.

Which is GREAT because 1) The end of the year is nigh. 2) I'm ready for an extended writing break. 3) We're going away for the Christmas weekend and I'd LOVE to be done with this book before that. 4) Um, all of those combined lol!

Of course, as my dad often said, you can want in one hand and cry in the other and see which gets full the fastest. Oh my goodness, I was a young teenager before I truly understood that homily! Tears won't be necessary, because if I don't wrap up this book next week or the week after, it's not going anywhere. I'll keep plugging away until IT IS DONE, hah! Today was a good example of flexibility. I knew yesterday after the post-writing read-through that some editing would occur before I added another chapter. I had a busy morning scheduled for today, but enough time emerged for a couple of new scenes and a couple of paragraphs excised. (I spent the morning making a big pot of sausage and green bean soup and I won't need to cook until maybe Friday!) After lunch I wrapped up the day's rewrite, pleased for how the chapter now flows. Then I started machine quilting what will be the last sewing project of the year, WOO HOO! Yet still on my mind was that altered chapter, and how even in a first draft there is time to rearrange the plot's direction.

Are there rules to writing? I suppose; sentences usually end with punctuation, paragraphs are normally indented, dialogue set off by quotation marks of some sort. Yet writing is also a whimsical journey into one's psyche and heart where regulations don't apply. The soul cannot be restricted, nor can the story from which it springs. I'm grateful to have enough noveling experience to take a day to regroup characters that suddenly got way too far ahead of where I wanted them to be. Sometimes the cast makes the big decisions, and that's okay because ultimately this author controls the delete button, heh heh heh. Today was one of those days, no idea what tomorrow will bring (other than maybe completing the machine quilting, lol).

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