I just finished re-writing the first chapter of my novel.

The second draft begins! Ta Da!

And I wrote a crucial part of the chapter that I was putting off, that sort of sets the stage for what is to come. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but today I just sat down and worked it out. Several times I had to make myself slow down and take time to work out the details.

While doing the NaNoWriMo challenge in November, the object was to write fast and furious to make it to the 50,000 words required. Now I have to train myself to take my time and make sure that what I am writing makes sense, and hangs together. And I get to re-write a sentence over and over until I like the sound of it. A luxury I did not have before.

This reminds me of baking bread.

Huh?

Okay I’ll explain. When you bake bread, there is the beginning part where you have to measure stuff out and make sure the water is the right temperature etc. Then you have to knead the dough. You can’t make it go faster, you just have to plug away.

BUT when you get to the place where it’s time to shape the loaves, that is the fun part. You can twist it around in any number of ways. If it doesn’t look like you want it, you can wad it up and start a new shape.
But you have the DOUGH….the stuff of it, to work with.

That’s what this feels like. A great big batch of dough that I can now shape anyway I want.

See?

But I need to go outside now. The sun is shining and this is the warmest time of the day. I want to take advantage of it, before the frost begins to form again this evening.

You should have been here last night. There were hazy high clouds in the sky and the moon had a gigantic halo all around it. It didn’t look real. I wrapped myself up in a down blanket and sat on the swing for a while and looked at it, and decided I could not think of one simile to describe it. It was just the moon doing an amazing thing. I guess you had to be there. . .