All about perspective

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Excuse the slight reflection of this shot, taken yesterday.

We're back from our familial celebrations and prepping for the national holiday. Cranberry sauce is cooling; I put in vanilla per an online recipe, and it's pretty dang tasty, if not a little heavy on the orange juice. Notes have been made for next year; I love cranberry sauce, and I try a different recipe whenever possible.

As soon as I woke this morning, once the decaf brews were made, I sat at my computer and picked up on page eleven of my WIP; I'm hoping to read through it over the next couple of days, then we're off to see our youngest daughter, then we're back and I'll finish the read-through and maybe write a few chapters before dear friends arrive the first week of December! I would LOVE to complete this novel by the end of the year, but won't hold myself to that, in that the holiday season is full of surprises, and I want to enjoy Advent without feeling I have to do this, that, and the other, although I have SO LOVED writing this story, completing it would be like a gift to myself, lol.

Time in December seems to go faster than usual, so says Adult Me, hah! I'm sure my grandkids (and most children) would strongly disagree. Time is also altered due to how few hours of daylight that grace the northern half of the planet. Driving home yesterday, I was amazed how quickly dusk arrived, once the sun had seemingly set over dense forests. Yet the barest hint of light remained as we reached our neck of the Redwoods, as though the sky was allowing us a smidgen of the day unseen if we had been inside our house. I feel like that now, reading through my novel; I'm permitted a different view of the characters from when I wrote these initial chapters in the middle of October. A month has passed, where did those days go? Meanwhile, I have fashioned a world where an alien and very out-of-place humans have settled into 1971 as though born to that era. Writing a novel day by day makes for a fascinating time shift all its own.

My husband was driving when we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday; I snapped the above photo within a flurry while my sister-in-law gushed at the scenery. That bridge has been there for coming on ninety years, WHOA! As I hope to wrap up my book in the next five/six weeks, what are those weeks in the grand scheme? What's that novel mean in the same grand scheme, Past Me smirks. I ignore her, but the question lingers. Rare are the times I cogitate on why I write, other than to explain here every so often that it's simply a part of who I am and to not write seems impossible (even if writing is sometimes impossible). How many cars have traveled over that bridge, how many lives, how many holiday seasons.... Huh. This post is turning into something I'm not sure I meant it to be.

Books do that, so does cranberry sauce; I put in too much orange juice, but the quarter-teaspoon of vanilla I threw in at the end saves it. Will my current tale require something that revelatory? I won't know until I reach that part of the novel, and I don't know when that will be. Maybe by late December. Hopefully by late December! I'm a kid when it comes to writing, overly eager to achieve completion. But this time, I need to savor the journey. And freeze any leftover cranberry sauce to drizzle over lactose free vanilla ice cream when I reach The End.

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