Living in the half-light
Autumn has landed on Britain. It’s warm (well, not cold). The downside is the smooth, comfy blanket of cloud that’s keeping the heat in. It’s grey, grey, and a bit more grey. Yesterday, the sun did appear fleetingly in the afternoon, but it’s not expected again until the weekend. 600w of solar panels, tilted to the optimum angle, gathered all of 6 amps on Wednesday.
We escaped the gloom last weekend to visit friends in the Haute-Savoie region of France. We drove along the Rhone, around the Lac du Bourget, up mountains, through tunnels, down mountains and along streams. We walked up half a mountain and around a quarter of another lake. And all the time to sun shone. We retuned home Monday and flew into fog. At least we were able to fly – the two previous flights had been cancelled. Touching down at five, it was still foggy; and it was still foggy on Tuesday.
Halfway up Col du Sapenay.
I took Chapter 1 along with me, not expecting to get much done. However, on the flight out, and the slightly elongated one home, I read, scribbled out, added, re-ordered and knocked the chapter into shape. Later today I will try to make sense of the notes and arrows as seven pages of type collapse onto something tighter while simultaneously splitting into two. My new small chapter is very different from originally written – a character previously only referred to by name has developed a voice.
A few of the changes I’ve made to Chapter 1 will result in changes being required in Chapter 2. But I think once these opening chapters are polished, the rest should flow more easily. As my September deadline has slipped by some way, I’m hoping to be done by Christmas. Of course, NaNoWriMo might slow my progress. Even if I don’t take part, the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about NaNoWriMo have been good to focus the mind. A long time ago I had an idea for a story about data mining. (I promise it’s more interesting than it sounds.) This week I’ve finally done some research and reading. My two main characters are drawn and the outline of a plot exists. This story will definitely be character driven – I know where they start out and where they end up, but I have no idea how they get from A to B. I’m not sure whether or not it’s cheating resurrecting a story from nine years ago, but I was pleased the eight A4 pages of scribble hadn’t dated too badly.
Lac de Paladru.
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