Progress Marches On

This morning calls for making home made hot chocolate and mixing it with coffee in the hopes it will kick start my brain. I woke up tired. The last few nights I've had vivid dreams that keep waking me up. In one of them, a large group of us were trapped in a locked facility while the world outside ended. There were interesting conflicts of what survival would look like with limited resources.

When myself and others finally escaped, we were hunted by a vampire-like creature. We ended up taking bikes on some type of trail to make it back to Ohio. All interesting ideas, but at one point I scared myself enough that I couldn't get back to sleep.

My issues with sleeping are nothing new. Usually, I'm careful to structure my time so my sleep is undisturbed. It's one of the reasons I don't use an alarm in the morning. Most days I wake up on time, but the few occasions I sleep in, I've decided to let myself. Writing when exhausted is doable--I've done it many, many times--but I find my emotional balance much harder to maintain and I feel less creative.

The scene I'm rewriting today is a difficult one so I need my A game. The overall tone of the scene is shifting. Characters are being added and fleshed out. I've been imagining the words and what happens for several days now, but right now my mind is a blank. Hopefully my sugary, caffeinated beverage will help.

The last two writing days have been amazing. Both ended with me feeling like I could conquer the world--at least if conquering involved a keyboard and words. This is my favorite part of the writing process--when excitement makes the words and ideas spill out of you faster than you can capture them. It buoys you up for the difficult hours ahead.

There are many things left to fix with this book, but the realization that this story is coming together exactly the way I envisioned is giving me motivation to press on. The hard part is knowing there is a limit to what I can accomplish each day. No one ever mentions how writing can be an endurance event. Every day in this stage of the process, I end with an aching back along with wrists and arms that hurt. Despite this, I wouldn't trade my focus right now for anything.

There are still several more scenes to be added and even more to alter to fit the new path. The ending must be rewritten to take into account the new material. Still, that burning sense I get when a book is on the right track has ignited. I know what needs to be done, the concept is good and the characters are starting to shine. All I need to do  now is execute my vision. Well, that and take care of myself.