Friday Five
1. There is nothing quite so relaxing as a deep massage. I've been having massages regularly since some shoulder issues several years ago, at least one a month. However, for the past month I've gone with full-body to help with the sciatica as well as the shoulder. If you're carrying around any tension, physical, mental, or emotional, I highly recommend it.
2. My first ever guest blog post will be up on Tuesday--over at Karly Kirkpatrick's blog on Tuesday. Cool fact--we connected via #yalitchat on Twitter. That's social media at work.
3. Putting your characters through hell can take you down some interesting paths. This week I've written one physical confrontation that went quite well, which is suprising because I'm not a physical confrontation person. But this one somehow worked, at least IMHO. The second going through hell involved vandalizing a vehicle. That one's proving a bit more difficult, for some reason. Looking forward to talking this through with some teens.
4. Someone in my house finally asked the question--"Where are you in this book? Are you getting toward the end?" --so, two questions, actually. Two questions I found difficult to answer. At 230+ pages, I need to be nearing the end, in terms of length. But in terms of story, I'm not. On the other hand, the end is in sight. I know where this has to finish. So I suspect that when I reach the revision stage, I'm going to need to severely condense the beginning part, where I was feeling my way into the story.
5. Corn season is upon us, and I've just now realized I've got one more week of real vacation. Then it's pre-semester division meetings and--oy, (or ach!) where has the summer gone? But I still think I can finish this rough draft in the time I have left. And then I'll be free to rejoin the rest of the world.