A Busy Week.

Yup. It’s now Tuesday, so I’m back on form! Not only late again, but with excuses – but I have some pictures for you!

Most of last week was absorbed in fitting roofing panels on the Rabbit Barn in the increasingly forlorn hope that they’ll get to live in it before the year’s out.

This was a week when the stars aligned for the roof work to get done. The weather was perfect, there were two of us available for two full days of work and with some pushing, shoving and occasional burst of profanity, we got the long side of the roof up.

If on any level you think I enjoyed this work, allow me to correct your picture of the world, for the real one does not include an Andrew Wellington at all comfortable with heights. I get in a cold sweat on a step-ladder.

What About the Book???

In the last blog post I wrote, I hadn’t come to a complete conclusion about the way forward, so it being Girl Scouts Troop meeting night, I took a new printout and the Chromebook with me, but forgot my glasses and, what with it being Fall now, it got dark early so I couldn’t read any more.

By Friday, however, I had settled on the salient points to cover and had indeed broken the offending chapter into two parts rather than the three that the old would have neatly broken into. The first part – the new Chapter 11 – deals with a long, tiring day for our young Hall Boy. This is one of those times where I had previously tried show-don’t-tell as a means to communicate the length and exhaustion of the day, but that didn’t work at all because the chapter became long and tiring too, and I wouldn’t blame a reader for giving up on both it and the rest of the book.

The three points I need to convey are how tired Little Jimmy is at the end of it since his day starts at 06:00 and this one doesn’t end until after 02:00 the next morning; there’s the hint of a clue as to a major plot development that was in the previous incarnation of the chapter; and I’m going to try working in another clue for a different plot development that was never presaged before.

As things stand, the last time I managed to get my hands on it was Friday and the word count stood at a sneeze under nine-hundred. Yes, a sneeze, because it’s that time of year again and apparently I can’t stop. I’ve no idea what I’m allergic to, but I wish it would sod off.

Up Next…

We’re going to be waiting on grading work before we get back to the shorter but steeper, front side of the barn roof, so hopefully that’ll free up some time, but commitments seem to precipitate all around. While the weather is other than terrible I have work to do in the garden. On top of that, I have three classes over four days next week – November 6th, and 8th through 10th – so there’s less room to shift things to the right on my calendar.

That means I have to be realistic about my goals, which is, to put it mildly, bloody depressing. My goal for next Monday is to be able to report having finished these two new chapters and be cracking on with the next. The astute among you will notice that this is the same goal as last week.

Anyway, so long as I’m holding myself accountable – the primary use of this blog right now – and I’m making progress, I’m happy. Writing this book isn’t the only thing I’m doing, so I can cut myself a little slack.

Meantime, tomorrow is Hallowe’en or Samhain, which means Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here before we know it, so enjoy your week.

Happy Hallowe’en!

Categories: Revision, The Mini Barn, The Old Man, Work Around the Property, Work Update, Writing