Have found it hard to get into writing mode lately, so I will write every day this week. It is so easy to start reading and editing and get sidetracked, but I am rearranging stories within the manuscript, as I want to make it collide, come to a head, and sort of begin to intertwine. Yes, that’s it. Intertwine. I love the mental image — like a Celtic knot.

Thrilled to see the difference in the new chapter format, I am going full speed ahead. There is a method (whatever that may be) to the madness (whatever that is).
I want the novel to be witty, enchanting, and profound.

As of today, it contains twenty complete chapters, plus five that have dialogues and extensive scenes. I know it must spread and needs kneading to move the characters and the point forward — whichever that (those) end up being. Trying to answer the writing a novel questions is useless. Makes me stop, consider, doubt, and stop writing. So, I will do what I did for the first two novels I wrote: type and write. Then, move things around. What the plot is, if the character resolves the question, quest, what is the climax, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (The King & I =), is out the stinking window.

Each chapter begins with a thought or a quote. (Now, in 2024, it ends with a thought or a quote and begins with conversations between a group of friends—explained below.)

I had decided on that already, and half the chapters had them. Now they all do. What puzzled me was connecting the writings, which is funny because the impetus for this novel lies in just the opposite: how disconnected we seem to be when, in reality, we are so interconnected. We’re not alone. As John Donne wrote: No man is an island … Anywho, I have folders in my Scrivener file with dialogues and scenes for different characters, miscellaneous (for whoever), and one in particular for women group. So, I added dialogues from that folder to the beginning of each chapter. Often before the character appears, sometimes without the reader knowing who speaks. And it so works.

Chao to the lists.Should shred.

Delete. Trash. Just not now.

 

BYE