Excitement! Laptops! Plot Points! Oh my!

Yesterday my NEW LAPTOP ARRIVED!  WAHOO!!!!

I kept thinking I’d be making progress on my read-through of Red as I installed software, but the thing is so freaking fast, I basically just stopped reading for a couple of hours while I installed a metric crapton of software.  I got back to reading when I started transferring the 80ish gigs of documents, pictures, and music from my old laptop.  I’ve got to make one last pass today to make sure I’ve got all my old files and remembered to install everything on the new one, but I think I’m done.  This new one runs SO MUCH COOLER than my old one, and the keyboard is of a type that will be way more resistant to getting dog hair and crap underneath it.  Yay.

Now, my boss was home sick yesterday (Thank God.  The day before she hacked all over my office so much I had to throw away my bowl of fruit and Lysol the heck out of everything.  EW.), so I actually did get to do my full read-through of Red between juggling final changes to The Grant That Would Not Depart (which has, finally, departed, without errors).  This led to many things.

• I love my book.  It does not suck.  I didn’t really think it sucked, but it’s always nice to go back and read what you wrote and still want to hug and cuddle it because sometimes you really get to that UGH, I want to FIX YOU because you are AWFUL place.  Not there with Red.
• I figured out what to do about the journal.  Those of you who have read the opening chapter I’ve got posted here at the blog will remember that in the opening scene Elodie is writing in a journal, adding her own entry to this multi-generational documentation of the family curse.  It was my original intent to carry this trend through the book, having her chronicle her experiences.  Well, me being Little Miss Action Packed, that just didn’t happen.  I was way more into SHOWING things as they happened, so there’s not really any way to put those in without TOTAL redundancy or breaking up the flow of the text.  But I figured out how I can keep that information, change the format a bit, and eliminate the need for any expectation of more.  No, I’m not telling.  You’ll have to read it when it comes out. 😉
• I broke free of the molasses!  I’ve learned that when I start to stagnate in a book, it means I’m going in the wrong direction.  So my post mid-point bleh…obviously there was a problem.  At first, I thought it was because Sawyer was acting out of character.  That was fixed easily enough by changing a couple of internal reactions.  But no, the thing that was wrong was…they were still acting like they were in Act 2.  They were still REACTING, not being PROACTIVE.  There was no plan of attack.  In Act 3 (of a 4 act structure, per Story Engineering), the hero goes from Wanderer to Warrior.  People, there is nothing warrior-like about running.  Which is what they were doing.  But I FIGURED OUT WHAT THE PLAN WAS!  It’s not necessarily a GOOD PLAN based on rational, grown-up adult thought (particularly not from the perspective of someone like me with a really thick background of knowledge about criminal behavior, forensics, and legal stuff), but it makes TOTAL sense in this context with a couple of scared teenagers.  Besides, it gives them something else to LEARN, which is also important because even now, they aren’t QUITE ready to face the Big Bad and win.
• I dreamed my entire second half last night.  Like full on, living color, I WAS THERE, people.  I could SMELL THE BLOOD.  I saw my pinch point 2 on CRACK.  SO MUCH better than what I originally had planned.  And oh, the ANGUISH.  THE GRIEF.  THE…okay I’ll shut up now because you’ll just have to read it when it’s done.
• I woke up practically GIDDY this morning.  Or as close to giddy as I am capable pre-caffeine when I got like 2 hours less sleep than I needed.  446 in the Dark and Early and I’ve got that effervescent, story-in-the-blood, stay OUT OF MY WAY EVIL DAY JOB, as I HAVE WORK TO DO kind of feeling.  I wonder if boss is home sick again today…