Bone Dry Week 14

Current word count = 23,001.

How lovely it is to be back at Book Club! It was a catch up week. Of course, nobody had read the chapters over the holidays so we needed a major update. Also there were some newbies. The wonderful school librarian had printed out the story so far and, over the last week, several people had caught up. But I had to start by making sure everyone was up to speed before reading chapters 18 and 19. It made me look back at my original spread sheet which was created as a rough plot plan before the book club experiment started. I was surprised how much it has changed! The book club members have added lots of extra plot points and little details and the story is much the richer for them.

Initially I was a little nervous. Especially as at the start I heard one of the girls saying,

‘This had better be worth it, I’m missing hockey for this!’

No pressure! The bumper snack ration helped a lot I’m sure. Popcorn, pink wafers and grapes! Everyone needed energy because I ran some experiments today to test a few things out. The MC has to crawl through a very narrow tunnel in one of the chapters this week and I wanted to know how small a space a 14 year old girl could fit through. About 30cm x 25cm if you’re interested.

In terms of writing, it was my second week back up to two chapters and it was a bit of a squeeze. I finished the second instalment an hour before I had to read it! I’ve had lots of other book events on this week (for Danny and the Dream Dog) so it has been very busy. But knowing you have a very hard deadline is a great motivator. There were times where I didn’t feel like it but I knew I had to sit down and get some words on the page. This week has really crystallised that they don’t have to be good words (believe me, lots of mine weren’t good this week!). Any words will do to begin with. They can be augmented and moulded later but just getting something down so I had something to read today was the push I needed to squeeze in some writing time. And taking a bit of time out for some research into cave diving really helped too. Reading about it I mean, not actually doing it… that would be my worst nightmare!

There were some gasps as plot points from the holidays were revealed and the two new chapters went down well. I’ve missed the instant hit of feedback and the boundless enthusiasm of the book club. It’s good to be back!