So yesterday didn’t start off great. I was extremely pessimistic about what I was going to accomplish. It felt like the kind of day where getting out from under the covers is too much effort. I knew–for sure–that I wasn’t going to make it to yoga. Juggling three dogs, one of whom is not being very nice to the others, felt like plenty of exercise. But somewhere around 9, I found myself taking a shower and getting into workout clothes and somewhere around 10:30, there I was leaving the house, having already edited some and started writing. Came home, did a little more revising and a little more writing, took the dog to the vet, came home with three different medications for her (poor Zelda, no wonder she’s cranky), did a little more revising and a little more writing, and by 6 or so (time to walk the dogs yet again!), I’d posted a 2000 word chapter and started the next one. It felt like a quite productive day, unexpectedly so, and I credit the yoga. Getting out of the house to go felt like an achievement, the kind that makes you think, ‘well, I did that, I bet I could do the next thing, too’.
In terms of total new word count, it was probably only 800 words at most. But I tweaked a lot of what I’d written in the two previous days, so it felt like more, and I was pleased with both the words of what I’d written and the direction in which the scene had gone. Sometimes I get to a scene where I know how it starts and I know how it ends, but the middle is a mystery. Often those can be where I get stuck for a while, try out different things, spend a lot of time thinking about what my character would do and whether this character is exactly like some previous character I’ve written and so on. But yesterday, I just knew that Natalya had a streak of devious in her that none of my other characters have ever developed, and she ran with it.
I’d post a favorite line, but there isn’t one that works well out of context. Maybe it’s “The gun in Thompson’s hand looked much too familiar.” ? My poor heroine is spending a lot of time with guns pointed at her. Pretty soon they’ll start going off.
So today, some errands to run, some dogs to take care of, some words to write. Ooh, and at some point, some Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to watch!