No book club this week as it is the last day of term so I didn’t get to read out loud today. I’m definitely going to miss that over the next few weeks! It also meant I had to provide my own snack (half a leftover Brownie if you’re interested).
But Mrs Camp, the librarian, did send me some pictures that the girls produced in response to my task last week. I’ve used them as inspiration for the description of a significant object in Chapter 6! It involves The Vitruvian Man but I won’t give away any more than that.
I found this week’s chapter very tricky to write. The MC had to meet a significant new character and I was a bit rabbit in headlights at the beginning of the week. I’d done lots of research into the new character’s traits and it felt like it should be an important, watershed moment in the story. I was so worried about getting it wrong that it stopped me writing anything at all! But I knew I had to pull myself together to send it off today so the club members would have something to read on the first day of their holidays.
In the end I chose to write longhand rather than type as I normally do. This meant I could be more messy and that felt quite liberating. I made lots of little notes and asides which I went back and addressed later. The result didn’t feel so final in pen so I didn’t feel demoralised when I embarked on the first of several re-writes. The result isn’t perfect but I did have a chapter to send off on time. It would have been terrible to miss my very first holiday deadline! I got something onto the page and that feels good even if I know it will need revision later. In other circumstances I might have prevaricated for a lot longer. This story has been bubbling away for at least a year but I’ve always given up and put it away to concentrate on something else when the going got tough. The expectation of book club members is a great motivator! This time I toughed it out and onto the page!