Now Listening to: You’re the Top by Cole Porter
Dear Reader,
I think Word Raccoon is getting into writing the novel now.
I say this because this morning, after I insisted she needed to do a recyclables run (we had a carful of cardboard!) and wash the car, she insisted we were going to the café to work on the novel because, get this, she wasn’t happy with how much we didn’t get to do yesterday.
“But I squeezed a couple of hours out of yesterday after my hair appointment to take you to the café and revise.”
“Yes,” she said, “but we didn’t go to the gym at all, and we didn’t write much and you know we go to the gym.”
“We couldn’t do both.”
She raised an eyebrow.
I had planned to go to the gym after the musical we saw last night, Anything Goes. It was a stunning production. This morning, while watering the flowers, we halloed our neighbor to tell him how much we enjoyed his performance.
WR wants to learn how to dance like those dancers! And she was thoroughly entertained by Cole Porter’s music, especially You’re the Top.
By the time we got home, though, I was no longer feeling the gym, and WR scolded me.
What is happening to this raccoon? Caring about the novel and the gym? My, my…
(She has been writing a bit of poetry in strawberry jam on her breakfast plate lately. I suspect she’ll continue.)
Yesterday we made it through the novel thread we’d expected to be the knotty one. It turned out not to be so bad, though it still needs work, and we cut some pages.
Today, though, we tackled the dreaded Rebecca Pages™.
We made it through all 149 of them.
We read every page, made light revisions, and, perhaps most importantly, cut thirty pages devoted to a plot point we finally admitted we didn’t like.
Cutting those pages will help us find the novel underneath their weight.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to change Rebecca’s sections from close third person to first. I know, I know, but third person feels prophylactic somehow. It keeps me at arm’s length from her, and I don’t think that’s where this story wants me to stand.
(A fly is crawling around the outside of my water glass. I briefly considered pouring a little water onto the table for it. Is that ridiculous?)
Later today, I’m hoping to spend some time simply mulling the novel. Having seen all of it again, I’ve seen the good, the bad, and everything in between. Tomorrow I’ll figure out my next steps. I assume that will include deciding how to replace the plot point I removed because…well…it included the ending, and now I don’t have one.
We’re not skeered.
Dear Reader, surprise, I think these surprise lilies are making me sneeze.
If time allows (tomorrow’s to-do list is looking rather ambitious), I’d like to spend some of that mulling time on the café porch again. ‘Tis the season, and it won’t last forever. But we’ll see…
Word Raccoon enjoys watching the traffic and speculating about the lives of those who pass by. Stories are everywhere.
And now let’s see if I can do some of tomorrow’s tasks now.
Drema