Small Days

For me, sometimes writing is less about getting words out of my brain or even researching than it is a period of exploring what's already on the pages, to look around different places in the manuscript, to throw a little polish and elbow grease into a rough edge or two, to find out whether there is anything I can delete.

These days are a pleasure for me, because even if it's not a "Wow, I wrote 8,000 words today!" accomplishment (in my life, I have never contemplated my word count by the day; though I have at least watched the total count on a manuscript), there is gratification in taking a walking tour, as it were. Yesterday, I read a passage to check the "your research is showing" quotient on it, and found myself loving the scene. I'm not sure I tweaked it at all.

Today, it's been making sure "I covered that." It's one of those can-I-delete-this-placeholder-infodump runs, which are sometimes tricky because: rabbit holes in abundance. But they can be really good runs, these romps across the manuscript.

And enticing, too. Enticed to and/or BY my own work? Heck yes. Yesterday, I looked in on the scene of the old midwife cleaning a newborn and evaluating the child's viability - the sort of scene that skirts the "your research is showing" issue all too closely, oftentimes. But as I read, I saw the light, felt the warmth of the quiet room, could sense the infantile quaking of the newly emerged life, her "eyes still closed and tight as beans", swaddling her for the first time, "at last to look at its mother." The detail, to me, right now, feels more tactile than "lookit what I researched, cool huh?"

We'll see, once I get as far as beta readers.  But for now, my own nascent, quaking little baby of a manuscript ... it looks viable.

Now I gotta clean it up.

Image: Google Labeled for reuse image search
By: peagreengirl