September 22, 2022

Daily Diary, Day 751: Yesterday I did, as I hoped, get 2 chapters outlined, which basically means I wrote a couple sentences for each scene, setting out who is in the scene and what I want to accomplish.

I also had an unexpected, but long and enjoyable phone call from a relative. However, after the call, I was successful in doing a quick skim of the first part of the book--looking for mentions of one of the characters who is going to show up in this first new chapter. The goal was to remind myself of what backstory I had already produced, so I wouldn't be too redundant. What I did find myself doing is deleting whole paragraphs (in total, 220 words) that will actually work better if I put them in these upcoming chapters. They weren't necessary when they were just back story narration, but now I can pop the information in more as dialog to help move the plot forward. I will, no doubt, do much more of this in later editing stages.

However, very satisfied with how things are progressing. I have my usual Thursday zoom meeting, then at least one phone meeting after that meeting, so not expecting to get a whole lot more done today. But you never know. I might feel moved to work for an hour after dinner, which is what I did yesterday.

My walk this morning was lengthened by about 40 mins because I had a nice chat with a neighbor. She had good news to share about her daughter, and we got caught up on various things. I think I should count 40 mins standing in the sun as exercise, don't you!

I also tried to practice something I read yesterday about mindfulness walking--deciding to look for flowers of a particular color. I know I have been complaining about the lack of blooms, but when I concentrated on finding as many red flowers as possible I discovered quite a few. Above and below are a couple of the most vibrant, and I will post a couple more tomorrow.