I didn’t get much done on the writing front this weekend. Reading front either. I’m only about 100 pages into The Demon’s Lexicon (insert subliminal message: buy it! cough. buy it!). And the house is still kind of a wreck. BUT, the yard has been mowed, and we finished the floor and shoe mold in the bathroom. We also ended up replacing the toilet (cracked the tank on the old one when we put it back because the cheap ass one that was original had no rubber gaskets on the tank bolts to help spread out pressure). Naturally, it cracked at 8:30 while hubby was gone for a beer run, and I was still in my birthday suit, having just gotten out of the shower. So after shutting off the water and using EVERY towel in the house, I frantically emptied everything out of his car (he was on the motorcycle), and he arrived home just in time to pull an Indy 500 to Lowes five minutes before they closed to buy a new toilet. Thrilling Saturday night, right?
Sunday we drove to Tuscaloosa and finally swapped out titles of hubby’s old Jeep for the title for my Honda CB550F. There was a snafu with it when he went to do the trade almost 6 weeks ago. Turned out that there was a typo on the title for the Jeep we’d had for 8 years. Took the DMV 5 and a half weeks to fix a single letter typo of what was a CLEAR case of screw up on their part (the vehicle history on the VIN on the title didn’t exist until the day hubby bought it and brought it back to Mississippi and the history on the actual VIN ended a couple of years before that date). So anyway, I am a proud owner of a 1977 Honda CB550F (and still in search of a stock seat, if you know where I can find one). I’m off to get my learner’s permit this week.
I’m going to my first ever legitimate writer’s retreat in Arkansas at the end of June. My pal Cyndi invited me up to join her chapter of RWA and it’s going ot be a fun weekend of writing sprints and good company. I actually sat down and checked my current writing schedule to see about where I would be in my current plot when I got up there (since the point of the weekend is to make sure we leave with a minimum of 2k), and damn if I’m not going to hit the mess that is my second half of Act 2. This would be the section where I know, for example, that there are 3 trials that the candidates for Alpha must complete. No freaking clue what they are. There are a lot of other things like that in the second half of Act 2 where I have little one phrase summaries but not the details. And then, of course, my outline has not been updated to reflect the major change in circumstances surrounding The Black Moment. Ironically, my Act 3 is pretty clear. I know how everything shakes out from the lead up to The Black Moment to the end, so per usual, it is The Dreaded Valley of the Shadow of the Middle that’s giving me trouble. I’ve got MORE of an idea what happens there and why than I normally do when I just pants it, but still not enough to get me painlessly through to Act 3.
The long and the short of it is that I need to put my plotting hat back on and figure this stuff out between now and then. I need to get from those one phrase summaries to answering my scene quesionnaire for each one. So that’s the plan this week. Or actually, I’ll be doing pre-cursors to that. I want to sit down and write out the plot arc for each of my major characters: Conall, Marley, and Knox. And also my subplot guy, Derek. I need to outline for each of them what I’ve established so far and where I still need to go in order to complete their story arc. I’m hoping that by revisiting their GMCs, that I’ll be able to clear up some of my confusion.