Into the Wild

The Husband wins some kind of Supportive Spouse of a Novelist award for solving my "how do I write today?" freakout before even eating breakfast. He remembered that one of the desktop machines in his office has AppleWorks (yes, I still write in AppleWorks, and yes, it is now abundantly clear to me why I shouldn't), so he hauled it out of there and set it up for me, even managing to transfer my files over from my languishing laptop. So now I'm working in that most venerable of novel-writing home offices: the dining room table.

I wrote 215 words just now, finished a chapter, and crossed a threshold. Somi has just left the womblike security of the antru, and is trudging through the woods on her way to adventures she can't even begin to imagine. And man, do I ever relate to her. See, these first 37,000 words of the novel have been reworked before, and feel like very safe and familiar ground. But I just had to blow cobwebs off the file containing my last draft of the rest of the book. From here on out, the edits will be heavier, with more scenes needing to be written from scratch. I'm hesitating at the edge of the woods, noting with dismay all the mud and pricker bushes. But I'm excited, too, to see what adventures are still to come.