Progress Report: Not Much Progress, but It Was A Busy Week

Do you realize tomorrow is March? Wow, suddenly spring!

Crocuses, snowdrops, grape hyacinths will all be appearing in the next week. In fact, once the last of ice turns to slush and melts away — probably this afternoon — I’ll have to take a good look, because I bet the first crocuses are coming up right now. I do love spring, even though another reasonable term for spring in Missouri is Mud Season.

I don’t know whether you all got ice or snow or both last week, but we had pure ice, an inch or more thick, as smooth and perfect as an ice skating rink. Not only did the dogs not leave tracks, not only did I not leave tracks, my car literally did not leave tracks down the driveway.

The ice disarranged my plans somewhat, but not too badly, I hope. I drove to St Louis four times last week: once for heart clearances for four of the dogs and three times to breed Leda to Ish, which required my reproductive vet for reasons to complicated to go into. Except I’ll say that this is Leda’s third try and this time if she misses again, I’ll be placing her as a pet because this will be very strong evidence that she is unable to get pregnant. Well, now I can put that out of my mind until March 25th, which is when I will do an ultrasound and see whether she is pregnant or otherwise.

Meanwhile, that was all fairly tiring and I didn’t do a whole lot. Fiddled with Kuomat’s story; began revising Suelen’s story according to the comments of a first reader; paused Invictus once more in order to work with those.

I sent Kuomat’s story to one more first reader this morning and I’ll send Suelen’s story to one more first reader this week sometime, and then I will wade into the final 65 pp of Invictus that I haven’t revised yet.

My goal for the end of the week is to begin actually moving forward with Invictus. My hope (not a plan) is to have it actually finished by the end of March. If I don’t make that, then by the end of April. That ought to be more than reasonable because even though all this revision has been a pain in my neck, the manuscript really is in pretty reasonable shape. I think. I’m pretty sure.

The hard part recently has been figuring out (a) Why, in story terms, the captain of Invictus is going to do a thing I need her to do in the upcoming scene; (b) The reason she is going to give out loud for doing that thing; (c) The real reason she is doing that thing; (d) how that thing drives her to make a startling decision and what happens next. I mean, I know what happens next, but turning that flow of action into a correct and even inevitable flow of action is a challenge.

I actually had to pause and brainstorm reasons for doing the thing. I almost never brainstorm in writing, but I was stuck and sometimes that helps. I think I have plausible reasons lined up now.