Friday Fricassee

A brand-new Jodi-mitt wrapped around a coffee mug

Mr. A and I have just returned from a sweet autumn getaway at our favorite beach along the Jersey shore.  We wanted to see if our love for this place would withstand the absence of summer's warmth and bustle.

It did.

October in a beach town means no glut of vacationers on the street corners, waiting to cross.  It means stoplights set to flash yellow instead of going through their regular cycle, because the traffic has been reduced to locals-only.  It means wearing a hoodie on the beach, even though the water is warmer than it was in June.  It means your favorite restaurants are only open Thursday through Sunday now, so if it's a Tuesday night, you're out of luck.  

It also means 50%-off tee-shirts and an almost-empty bed and breakfast (which translates to snooping through all the vacant rooms to see if you like any of them better than the one you're staying in).  Fires lit in cozy hearths.  Long walks instead of long beach sunnings.

Glorious.  We had such a lovely time.

The timing, for me, was perfect.  I finished the first draft of my latest novel (huzzah! woop-woop!), so it felt wonderful to just set it aside and NOT WRITE for a few days.  Though, truth be told, by the last day, I was wishing I could curl up and spend the day writing.  You know how it is.

I did, however, get some much-desired reading time!  Finally I was able to dig into Mary E. Pearson's The Beauty of Darkness, which is a fitting reward for having finished my draft in the allotted 3-month span.  Of course, I'm still reading it, and today I'm officially entering Revision Mode, so I'll have to use it as my end-of-writing-day reward.  You know how it is when you get sucked into an amazing novel, yes?  All you want to do is to read.  And read some more.  And, well, I've got to write.  It's hard to do both!

Me and The Beauty of Darkness

So, what does jumping into Revision Mode look like for me?  First off, I need to complete my post-draft outline.  Which I'm supposed to be creating as I go (Scrivener makes this SO VERY EASY), but I tend to procrastinate because it's tedious and boring and annoying to stop at the end of each scene and write bullet points.  So now, instead of having to do it in tiny chunks, I have to sit down and DO IT ALL.  I got the first 10 chapters finished before vacation, with 20 to go.  Ugh.

Also, I'm working on character sketches of all the important secondary characters, so I can really bring them to life and make their roles in the story solid.  I started this process on the beach (my favorite place to work out story stuff!), but I didn't get too far--especially after I was caught unaware by the rising surf, which soaked my towel and my spiral-bound notebook (but fortunately not my iPhone).  So now my notebook is saltwater-warped, and I love it even more.

After all this preliminary stuff, I'll get to the best part, which is actually digging into the novel and doing the heavy lifting.  LOVE THIS PART.  My goal is to have a clean second draft before Thanksgiving.

So, that's my fall.  Oh, and there's this wee blog contest thing that I'm still narrowing down entries for.  I'm down to I've-got-this-many-yeses, and I'm going back over--and over--my list of maybes, making the painstaking decisions about which ones to put in the contest.  (Having this many maybes is a good thing--it speaks to the quality of the entries.  Bravo, all!  But, ugh. It's hard to choose.  Really hard.)

Coming up:  A showcase of the AFFABLE AUTHORS who will be reading and critiquing the winning entries.  In the days ahead, I'll also be offering more information on the actual auction--what to expect, how it works, and the best way to follow and root for your favorite entries on auction day.

I'll also be offering a special opportunity for those who submitted entries that DON'T get picked.  But more on that later.

For now, I'm off to revision land!  Happy to be home and ready to hit my autumn stride.  It never ceases to amaze me how the ocean refreshes and invigorates me, and how that effect lasts well beyond the actual vacation days.  Here's hoping it doesn't fade for a long time!