Catch-up Tally

New pages written: 21 (goal: 6.2 pages per day)
Old pages revised on paper: 0
Pages of revisions typed in: 0
Pages lost or gained due to revisions: 0
Total page count to date: 116 (goal: 200)
Days remaining until D-day: 29 days
Emails from editor in UK: 0
Emails from agent in NY: 0

Chocolate consumed: A piece of chocolate birthday cake
Junk food consumed: none unless you count a glass of red wine with dinner
Exercise: none
Television watched: none (though hubby OD'd on an Everest: Beyond the Limits marathon)
Tears: none (though I got a choked up when we were going around the dinner table with our prayer petitions and my three year old prayed for the two climbers on Mt. Hood. She asked that they come down from the mountain safe.)
Fun link for the day: This is a new addition to the daily tally. Sometimes the link will be serious, other times silly. Check this out!

I think I've mentioned my writing process before. I usually write the first three chapters, then the last chapter. With this book, however, I tried something different. I wrote the first five chapters (struggling immensely with chapters four and five.) Instead of moving on to chapter six, I spent the last two days working on the last chapter. I roughed it out on Sunday night. Monday morning, I started revising and suddenly, things clicked and words started flowing. The conflicts became clarified. I knew exactly where I needed to take these people. Guess I should stick with my original process the next time!

On Sunday afternoon I reworked my synopsis for book two, current working title is The Wedding Dress and Mr. Wrong. I came up with a way to strand the hero and heroine in the wilderness without requiring (I hope) a suspension of disbelief from the reader! Of course I'm stuck on the black moment and resolution. It's just not there yet. Unfortunately that means I need to reexamine the internal conflicts.

It's only taken me ten (maybe it's eleven) sold books to realize if I'm stuck, I took a wrong turn somewhere. The tricky part is figuring out where I made the mistake: character, plot, conflict, motivation, fill-in-the-blank-here. But knowing where the block comes from has been a huge step forward for me as a writer. Plus it cuts down on the chocolate consumption. Melissa + writer's block = chocolate.

One more thing I need to add...

In keeping with one of my New Year's resolutions, I wanted to email a friend today but couldn't find his address since my aol imploded along with my address book a while back. I know he reads the blog occasionally so I'm doing it here.

Happy Birthday, JK! I hope it's a great one! xoxox