At the end of January, we had a blizzard that closed school for three full days.
I was kept busy online -- creating and posting assignments, correcting student work, and connecting with students -- from 6:30 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon. But once 3:00 rolled around, I was free.
Note: It's a common misperception that teachers only work to 3:00 in the afternoon. Usually, I leave our building around 5:00, brain weary and exhausted. I get home, cook, and sit down to eat. And once I'm down, I'm useless. Nanowrimo is a great motivator because once the month starts, I don't want to miss posting my progress a single day. I end up writing after 9:00 pm, when I get a second wind (composed of guilt, mostly).
But these snow days were so much less taxing. At 3:00 in the afternoon, I still had plenty of mental energy. It was wonderful.
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| Not a blizzard. This was just a nice, normal day in January. With a sun dog. |
So, during the January blizzard, I dove into the "middle" story of the series, which is the first bit I drafted. I call it the Prison and Princess section. It was amazing. I hadn't read it in over two years. It was like reading someone else's novel -- engaging and even surprising!
I had more ridiculous glitches to fix, of course.
* One character's name was so dumb. So. Dumb. I plan to change it. The right name just hasn't popped yet. I'm not sure why this guy is so hard to figure out. Maybe I need to write a chapter from his POV and see what's happening in his head.
* Lamb's magic was too understated, so I had to pump that up. It took a good week of mulling to think of 4-5 possible "magic" moments. Then when I looked at the text, only 2-3 of those moments actually made sense. Drafting them was a challenge. When I'm in the zone, I usually write 400 words an hour. But writing a short paragraph (maybe three sentences) to insert into previous work took over an hour.
* And for some reason, a particular pie had various different meats -- pork, lamb, etc. -- each time it made an appearance.
After that blizzard, we had a balmy break.
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| Only in Minnesota is -2 F considered "Not as cold." |
Now this week, in February, we had another blizzard that shut us down for two more days. Like before, when 3:00 rolled around, I was ready to dig in. I thought I would be able to make all the corrections I had marked while rereading P&P, but I ended up using my time to type up a list of chapters, by POV character, with short summaries for each. I needed to sort out that pie business (was it one meat pie, or several?), and seeing the timeline of events was the only way I could keep it straight.
After I finish my revisions, I need to outline the end of the novel. Since it has been two years since I shifted to the prequel, I don't remember all the particular choices/ideas I had planned for the middle story. So I guess my next step will be to ransack old files, looking for notes.
Fingers crossed for a March blizzard?
