The Best is Yet to Come.

For those of you paying attention to my continuing practice of naming blog posts after songs, Tony Bennett's version of this song was the recessional at my wedding. I thought it was appropriate then and I still do, but in many other ways as well. I'm hoping to be a late bloomer in a lot of areas. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

In writing news, I now have 53 double spaced manuscript pages and 15,967 words. The goal is 100,000 words roughly or the end of the story. As many of you know, I've been trying to write for years, but it never really seemed to happen. I would plan characters, outline the entire plot, do a time line if it was complicated, and then I'd write 3 pages and drop it. I had a conversation with my friend Laura the other day about the draft this time, and why I'm actually getting anywhere with it. I think it's because this time, I planned the characters, and that was pretty much it. I took one scene from an exercise I did for an online writing class a couple years ago through Writers Online Workshops (Writer's Digest people), and I just started. I didn't even know what my plot would be. Now I have a vague three sentence idea of where I'm going, but it's just coming out as I move along. It seems like I just have to sit down for an hour and I have another 1,000 words.

I've been trying to figure out why I'm actually writing this time after so many failed attempts, and I think it's because I don't know where I'm going, so it's interesting. Every time I outlined everything, I was bored because I already knew what the story was going to be. Secondly, I think I have really and truly given myself permission this time to write utter garbage. If I don't worry about what other people will think when they read it, words end up on the page. I've been trying to do 20+ double spaced pages before I will allow myself to go back and revise what I just did, and I only get one rewrite of that material before I move on to the next 20+ pages. That way I'm not procrastinating by revising the thing to death.

I've been keeping a notebook in my purse to write bits in odd moments, and it's amazing how much you can get done while you eat lunch, or when you've got a minute to wait for something. I end up adding and revising when I type it in, so even bare bones sketches of what's going on in my nearly unintelligible handwriting ends up adding a lot more.

In fiber news, I think the third pattern change of the sock has done the trick. I've finished the heel and I'm half way down the foot of the sock. It's nice to work on small easily completed projects for a change. I'm saying this now, until I pull my next dumb masochistic knitter's trick. Shockingly I skipped Stitches East this year, even though it was in Hartford. I decided that it was too much time in the car and that my bank account couldn't handle it, and it's not like I couldn't go stash diving for years before I run out of yarn. So I let it go this year. I'm really going to try to make the attempt next year though.

Stay tuned for further updates from this station.