Flu Shot… and How Many More…

Update 16 20-26 Sept, 2021

This will be short and to the point this week. Have a lot on the plate due to misadventure and the fact that I will latch on any reason to be lazy and procrastinate from writing.

But I will make sure that I clearly state I did make all of my writing goals this week, even if I did make a lot of excuses and acted a bit of a fool.

Word Count

My weekly goal is to get 6000 words a week in three sessions. I only had two sessions this week but I managed a total of 7038 words and I would have gotten more words in, but I had to stop and write this post.

My writing schedule got all mixed up this week, but I’ll get to that in a short bit.

I’m wading into the new Version 3 of my manuscript. The POVs are handled differently, I have narration. I have epigraphs that tell some past history or other events that have an impact on the current (and future chapters). I’m overall loving the new flow of the chapters.

But then we come to chapter four. Wherein I wanted to cover information that was covered in three chapters back in Version 2. How do I condense 3 chapters into a single chapter and try to keep the word count at manageable? I aim to try and keep my chapters at below 6-8,000 words. I broke that rule a LOT in The Ashlands.

The Deal with Chap. 4

Besides condensing a lot of information, I’m also introducing a bunch of characters from the previous novel, and the secondary storyline for this novel. So, I need to get a ton of information across with as little info dumps as possible.

I think I found a good way to do it.

We’ll see what my pre-reader thinks when they get to these chapters.

I have the chapter broken down into three sections. A broken flashback/dream that is narrated gives a bunch of rapid-fire action scenes. It’s told, but at the same time it’s showing the events. This segues into the dreamer waking and having an argument with one of the other key characters. This argument serves to establish the current problems, their goals, their tensions, and other interpersonal problems. It also introduces many of the other characters, without them showing up on the scene.

And the final segue is into the POV of one of the aforementioned companions and how she thinks and what she’s up to in redirecting the mission.

Misadventure

Well, enough about that. I probably didn’t articulate that as clearly as I wished. I think it works better than I might have described it.

I mentioned a misadventure and missing out on a day of writing this week.

So, here’s the story.

Me (goes to pharmacy to get prescription)

Them: Take a few minutes, want to get a flu shot…?

Me: why not? (never had a flu shot before but very pro-vax after seeing all the stupidity)

Them: Hey… we don’t have a record of any other vax…

Me: Just the covid vax beginning of the year otherwise more than 10 or 15 years ago for the last…

Them… … you want some other shots.

Me (very dumb) give me whatever my insurance will cover…

Them: (sharp tooth grin.. maybe we’re all wearing masks)

Me waiting for guy to come back with ONE really large needle….

Them (coming back with SIX needles) Let’s toll up both sleeves and get started!… Half of these require a booster in a month…

So, yeah. I had six shots, and yeah, my arms hurt and my head ached, so I didn’t feel like writing. I ended up sitting in bed watching movies and reading lots of comics. I also updated my Letterboxd. I’m up to 4100 movies logged and I think that might be just about all of them.

This Week

The plans are to finish chapter four and five this week, maybe get into chapter 6.

Wednesday night will be my first Curse of Strahd game in over 2 months. That should be cool. Maybe I’ll finally have enough material to do a new journal entry on the site. (I promise nothing).

I have a recording session set for Thursday for the Podcast; I hope that you folks are also listening to that. Though I understand if the gaming stuff is not to your interest, this is a post about writing after all.

Overall, this should be a pretty good week and we are firmly into the Autumn that I love so much.

Outro

And that’s were we call this one.

Keep writing and keep reading my friends. I know I really need to talk about other stuff more. More games, more movies, more TV, more good books/comics. I will try to be more entertaining down the road.

Be well and stay safe.