Sunday, 27 May 2001

I had a dream about my story last night. It wasn't exactly my story, though. It was a different story that shared something of the flavor, pacing, and atmosphere of my story, told with characters who were similar to the characters in my story. It was as if my subconscious were copying my store, but being careful not to infringe the copyright.

I spent much of this morning plotting. My revised plot was pretty good, but still wimped out at bit at the climax. It is much better now. This afternoon and evening I spent several hours working on a draft. It's at about 1500 words. That's pretty good progress for me. If I can do the same tomorrow (and I don't see why I can't, given that I have an outline), I'll be most of the way through it. Despite the changes in the plot, there has still been a lot of the old text that I can salvage. (Actually less changed than it would have with the earlier outline, because I'm back down to just the one main character).

I'm pretty happy with what I've written, although I worry that it is off to too slow of a start. I'll go over it later and see if I can trim out bits here and there, and maybe there is some way to introduce a bit of action earlier as well. But this particular story takes some time (in the story) to play out, and I can't talk about just the one element that needs the time, because that would make it too obvious.

I got out for a run again, finally. I've been feeling just a touch under the weather for several days. That, together with the bad weather and general schedule pressure was keeping me from running. I ran today, though, and it went pretty well. A bit short of two miles, I suspect, but I felt pretty good the whole run. After running, Jackie and I lifted, and that went pretty well, too.

I'm actually pretty tired after running and lifting. That's okay--my character is tired, too, so it is easy to provide some verisimilitude.