Saturday morning

Well, some progress at least.

Yesterday morning I finished Chapter 12, the trip to Glasgow. At work I realized chapter 13 was already written, it was just in a big chunk I had to re-paste into chapter format. I've been working on 14 this morning. Finished a major scene. Tonight will be another marathon session, during which I'll hopefully finish the other major scene in that chapter and move on. Chapters 15 and 16 are already largely written, just need to be formatted and smoothed over. I'm thinking about abandoning my family tomorrow and spending the entire day holed up with my computer.

I have finally really seen the light at the end of the tunnel. The gaps are closing fast, and it turns out I don't have so much left to write after all. The major thing slowing me down is that everything left to write is the slow stuff, stuff I haven't been able to "see" well, and transitions, etc.

But Little Boy just realized I am, in fact, home (does that make me a bad mom?) and I've got to be somewhere this afternoon, so I have to leave poor Elspeth kidnapped by Campbells and on her way back to Kilchurn to face Ormelie. It's a decent stopping point.

Fight scenes are hard for me to write. I want to make them accurate, and true-to-life. Elspeth can kick some ass, but she's also a woman, in skirts, surrounded by armed men with rather different attitudes about gender equality and fair play. I generally have to do them bit-by-bit, trying to imagine realistic actions to whatever move just occurred.

Today I knew one of the kidnapping party was going to try to abuse her, but I couldn't let that happen. I knew she fought him off but I couldn't "see" the action in one continuous play. So I'd write a paragraph or two, then have to think about something else and after a bit I'd realize what the most logical next move would be. And now it's done, her virtue intact, but not her sense of self-control...

(And because I have no self-control, I took another look at that CafePress list and found these gems: a mousepad I might have to get, and THIS SHIRT that I almost certainly will.)