I'm trying hard to ramp up my exercise schedule (which currently consists of walking to work as many days as I can fit in) to get my endurance back up to some reasonable level. And making changes to my diet as I do. And I'm trying to ramp up my work hours because I've almost but not quite paid off my Greece vacation (and plus I really want to keep this job). And I'm pushing the writing, to an almost nanowrimo pace.
So of course we're bringing out a new product at work and we're trying to build a whole new assembly line for it and, yeah, there's a lot of stuff happening that's taking time and energy and attention. So, yeah, is a little crazy.
Pity because I'd love to take a mini sabbatical right now. I am so close to getting the draft of the novel to the first big moment, the place where I will learn if the idea is working or not.
Today I crunched my way through the flight-to-Germany chapter. The conversation wrote itself...and I kept having to go back and edit most of it out. 90% of what Graham is eager to talk about isn't actually required this early in the story. If I let him have his way it would be a huge lecture and look far too much like the naked info-dump it is. So I write ten lines of dialog. Throw out eight of them. Try again.
Yeah...it is always the rule. Writing 1,000 words is easy. Writing 100 is hard.
I'm still struggling to decompress but I still haven't found how to do that. My latest thought is I need more words that are generic. Lines of dialog that don't do much, for instance. Or description that is colors and sounds and smells and so forth but doesn't include any names or technical terms; sort of less "The sunlight brought out the deep bas-relief of the entablature" and more "The stones gleamed white against the blue sky, almost as bright as the puffy clouds."
So, yeah. At my current pace I'll be lucky to hit that key scene before Sunday. And it is very, very irritating not to have more time available to work on it.
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