First Day Back
I woke up early this morning - apparently a week is long enough to adjust to a time zone, so now I'm screwed up again. I'll have to double check to be sure my upcoming trip to Michigan won't involve the need to wake up early before I let my body get back on Colorado time for the next seven days.
Anyway, I woke up early enough to eat breakfast, sort laundry and put in a load before I went out for a bike ride. Not very long, just under 7 miles round trip, especially since I've been at low altitudes pretty consistently for the last three weeks and I tend to have wacky reactions to overexertion at altitude. Just long enough to remember why I love being home and riding before the heat of the day when there aren't many people out.
Also, I knew I needed to do some plotting, and it just sort of works well when I'm cycling. So I figured out how to smooth one of the prime wrinkles in my hero's side of the story, except that it means going back and changing a scene in a section that my mentor (Hi, Scott) told me very strictly not to fiddle with any more. But this isn't fiddling with wording, which I tend to do until I kill it, it's actually a significant change, so it's not like I can just brush past it.
I also realized that I need more time to figure out the bits and pieces of Devlin's past, because the situation that forced him out of his family is so complicated I can't even figure out what it was, and that's no good. Rather, the elements surrounding it come from so many different directions that the conflict there will obviously need to be somewhat... funny-shaped, as it were, to account for everything without leaving holes. I'm not at all discouraged about this, oddly enough, but it needs more chewing, so I'm planning a longer ride for tomorrow. And maybe some Wii boxing afterwards.
So, since I need a better feel for what drove Devlin south (and therefore exactly what's motivating him now in specific ways) before I can jump back into the plot, I decided to watch movies all day.
Those of you who've been reading for a while know about my love of both the Redboxes ($1 new release DVD rentals! Woo!) and the cheesy chick flicks Matt can't be coerced to watch and even I'm not willing to pay more than a dollar to see. When he's out of town, I take the opportunity to watch all my cheesy movies. I get to pretend I don't miss him, because who wants boys around for a chick flick marathon anyway?
And since I intend to make the most of the next few days of uninterruptedness to hash through the rest of Devlin's issues and start writing about them feverishly, I thought it would be a good idea to get my movies out of the way today, so I am. Two down, one to go, and then all I have to do is unpack, maybe spin out a book review or two (or four), and head to bed to get to work tomorrow.
It's a good thing, wanting to work. But it's also a good thing to take a day off now and again, and I feel like I've been running nonstop for far too long. The weather's been nice today. Sunny, but not too hot, with a good breeze through the screen door. Looks like it might storm tonight, which is fine by me.
One last thing - does anybody have any good ideas for things to eat for just one person? I have to admit, without the incentive of having to cook for someone else too, I'm inclined to eat bowls of Cheerios and ice cream (no, not together - ew). Yeah, there's pasta, but that's boring. Of course, so is Cheerios.
I'm off to cook myself a cheap microwave entree, then back to the couch for movie #3!
Anyway, I woke up early enough to eat breakfast, sort laundry and put in a load before I went out for a bike ride. Not very long, just under 7 miles round trip, especially since I've been at low altitudes pretty consistently for the last three weeks and I tend to have wacky reactions to overexertion at altitude. Just long enough to remember why I love being home and riding before the heat of the day when there aren't many people out.
Also, I knew I needed to do some plotting, and it just sort of works well when I'm cycling. So I figured out how to smooth one of the prime wrinkles in my hero's side of the story, except that it means going back and changing a scene in a section that my mentor (Hi, Scott) told me very strictly not to fiddle with any more. But this isn't fiddling with wording, which I tend to do until I kill it, it's actually a significant change, so it's not like I can just brush past it.
I also realized that I need more time to figure out the bits and pieces of Devlin's past, because the situation that forced him out of his family is so complicated I can't even figure out what it was, and that's no good. Rather, the elements surrounding it come from so many different directions that the conflict there will obviously need to be somewhat... funny-shaped, as it were, to account for everything without leaving holes. I'm not at all discouraged about this, oddly enough, but it needs more chewing, so I'm planning a longer ride for tomorrow. And maybe some Wii boxing afterwards.
So, since I need a better feel for what drove Devlin south (and therefore exactly what's motivating him now in specific ways) before I can jump back into the plot, I decided to watch movies all day.
Those of you who've been reading for a while know about my love of both the Redboxes ($1 new release DVD rentals! Woo!) and the cheesy chick flicks Matt can't be coerced to watch and even I'm not willing to pay more than a dollar to see. When he's out of town, I take the opportunity to watch all my cheesy movies. I get to pretend I don't miss him, because who wants boys around for a chick flick marathon anyway?
And since I intend to make the most of the next few days of uninterruptedness to hash through the rest of Devlin's issues and start writing about them feverishly, I thought it would be a good idea to get my movies out of the way today, so I am. Two down, one to go, and then all I have to do is unpack, maybe spin out a book review or two (or four), and head to bed to get to work tomorrow.
It's a good thing, wanting to work. But it's also a good thing to take a day off now and again, and I feel like I've been running nonstop for far too long. The weather's been nice today. Sunny, but not too hot, with a good breeze through the screen door. Looks like it might storm tonight, which is fine by me.
One last thing - does anybody have any good ideas for things to eat for just one person? I have to admit, without the incentive of having to cook for someone else too, I'm inclined to eat bowls of Cheerios and ice cream (no, not together - ew). Yeah, there's pasta, but that's boring. Of course, so is Cheerios.
I'm off to cook myself a cheap microwave entree, then back to the couch for movie #3!