2/5/2025. Life, as it inevitably does, has intervened once again. Too busy to write my usual 4-6 hours a day. I did get some writing done last week. And it’s true that I am three-quarters of the way through the second scene of the book. I worked on the novel yesterday and, for the first time, I was able to use material from my first draft. I just dropped it into the second draft and it fit pretty well. I should be able to pay attention to my writing tomorrow, which is Thursday, and again on Friday. I’m having lots of new brainstorms . It’s clear to me that writing the entire book, front to back, before I started editing it, was the best way to go.
As for this blog. I am not satisfied with last week’s entries. I’m trying to take on too much material and the result is it’s like a scatter shot across the page. From now on I’ll focus on one or two ideas and that will have to suffice. It will certainly make for better reading.
In the beginning of the book, a newspaper advisor at the protagonist’s high school dies. And she’s upset about this, but she’s bottling up her emotions and just trying to put it out of her mind. At one point, she becomes furious when two people in the newspaper staff joke about death. Then, I employ a symbol to represent death and her feelings towards it. The symbol is a yellow jacket. Kelsey, the protagonist, flies around the school room where the students are meeting. She will furiously try to kill this yellow jacket by slapping it with a magazine. Ultimately, she is not successful. I’m hoping that this symbol works. And I’m worried that using it will be a little bit too literary for a thriller.
I should finish the second scene tomorrow and on Friday I’ll let you know what I think of it.
Today I am helping to judge a Poetry Out Loud contest and later I have my weekly electric guitar lesson. Might get to writing sometime tonight.
