Writing Grinds On

This week was a mixed bag for writing. A good week for the most part, but with enough other stuff thrown in to keep it from being one of those absolutely excellent weeks.

Dealing with the previous week’s dish washing injury was the primary damper. Finding new ways to do routine things can be a tiring business. It’s amazing how something that’s so simple with the right hand becomes a complicated procedure with the left.

I also learned how much I use that pinky finger. Who would have guessed it plays such a role in everything from typing to painting to pouring hot water over a tea bag?

While painting continues to feel the brunt of this injury, writing took a bit of a hit, too. I made the 1,000 fiction words per day goal every day this past week, but only by the skin of my teeth on some days. Some days started very slowly but turned out well. It didn’t matter to me what time of day the words were written, so long as the average was 1,000 a day or more. It was.

Work on the synopsis for Anderson Baxter was even more mixed than fiction writing. One day passed with only a journal entry, but the synopsis continues to move forward. I shifted my focus from developing the time line for back story to writing the synopsis for the story. With such a good foundation already in place, the synopsis work proceeded well once I got started with it. The synopsis wasn’t complete by the end of the week, but it was very close.

I also spent part of one evening jotting notes for another idea that has been rattling around in my brain for a little over a year. For most of that time, I’ve done nothing because, like most ideas, it wanders around, makes an appearance every now and again, then disappears again.

Late this week, I was taking a break from Anderson Baxter when, all of a sudden, there were two scenes for this dormant idea. Unable to ignore them, I went back to the computer and wrote out quick descriptions of each one, then followed that with a little reading from Josephus’ Antiquities. I have a feeling this book will play a large role in this story should it ever reach the stage of being the ‘story I’m working on’.

The stitches were removed from my right hand Friday morning and I’d hoped that would mean greater mobility and comfort. It didn’t, but the discomfort had very little to do with the stitches. I’d tried to work on a colored pencil painting Thursday afternoon and the work went so well, I worked an hour.

By Thursday night, there was discomfort in my right hand and stiffness in my fingers. There was nothing to indicate infection, but it was troublesome. When the doctor pronounced the injury well healed, I was relieved, but by Friday evening, there was enough swelling and heat in the hand for Neal to notice it.

We decided I’d been too adventurous on Thursday and should take the weekend off from work. No artwork and, most likely, no writing either. So today passed pretty quietly with a movie (A Quiet Man, with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara) and a couple good books. I’m going to finish the Bonhoeffer book I mentioned previously, but also picked up a couple of Frank E. Peretti books while at the library. This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness. Between the three books, they should keep me from exerting my right hand too much with anything but turning pages!