Life gets its way

I wound up missing some work last week. I was kind of tethered to the toilet, and having one about a block from my desk just didn’t work.

That does not mean I was any kind of productive at home. When you don’t feel well, sometimes it just requires dealing with the issue and nothing else.

The weekend wasn’t much better, because I had real-world tasks to deal with. I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for my water key. It’s time to turn on the sprinklers, but I cannot find my key. I’ll have to wait until payday and buy a new one. We can use hoses and sprinklers in the meantime.

Writing wasn’t great, but it comes to about 2200 words. It’s not awful, but it’s my sum-total for a week.

It’s all coming out in chunks right now and separated by section breaks. (***) I don’t particularly like it that way and need to put some thought into it.

Some of the section breaks are a great way to move the story ahead. When you have three per chapter, it could be an indication of a problem.

When this happens, it’s usually caused by a combination of things. I have characters who need to wrap up a few things. All the secrets are out with the exception of the last big one. Bringing that last big secret to the table requires some actions of each character and they aren’t all in the same place at the same time.

This is also made difficult with needing a reasonable amount of time to pass. Like a month or more. Something great is supposed to happen, but it takes time to learn that it might not be so great. My normal thing is to use a section break.

I could write this with complete flow, meaning to follow each character until they can deliver their discovery to the rest, but it would read like crap. My readers would have the information, but have to suffer along for a few thousand words before the characters could compare notes and draw conclusions. (I’m not doing this.)

I could do some telling. This is kind of anathema these days, but can work under some circumstances.

There are a few ideas in play. I’ll probably wrap this with a few section breaks, a tiny bit of telling, and by staying in the head of the character who has the most at stake.

Then there are the “rewards.” I still believe each character has to get something out of the ordeal. This isn’t like dragon treasure or anything like that. Maybe Cody and Bai start making a life together. Maybe Jenny gains some of the experience she needs along her path to investigative journalism. I can weave some of this into the other pieces to make it flow better. I promise not to write a scene where Princess Leah hands out medals to signify all is well.

Do any of you ever have problems like this? How did you address them? Do you know where my friggin water key is?

A positive step back

I spent the dark morning hours going through The Hat and tightening things up. This needed to be done, and I feel much better about moving forward now. There were some good suggestions from some of you about my section-break symbols. Jan Hawk encouraged me to try modifying a png file and seeing how it looked. I’m going to post what it looks like now, and hope to get some feedback from you guys.

In this scene, the hat is playing his bass, but Lizzie is providing the hands. It’s more important that she’s learning about the symbiotic nature of their relationship. If I leave the section breaks like this, would any of you find the bass clefs distracting somehow? Do they enhance the story at all?

Right now, I love them, but it could be the simple act of making them successfully and not how they might influence the story.

We finally got the dining room table assembled and but back in place. It looks beautiful on the new rug and the grey floor. We still need to get the rug for the living area, but it’s looking pretty darned good around here.

This afternoon, I assembled this week’s Lisa Burton Radio and sent the authors an advance link. I count that as forward progress too.

In other news, the annual pumpkin beers are starting to show up in force. I love this time of year, and can’t wait for it to officially be Fall. Oh, and the pet stores got a few pumpkin balls in. These are a lower quality than last year, but they said their stock is just starting to come in and there will be more stuff later on.