I’m not regular about posting about what I’ve been writing, although writing happens every week as I try to meet my self-imposed deadline of finishing the first draft of a novel by the end of the year.

A lot of writing and research happened last week, though at the cost of lost sleep. So it goes, I guess? One night this week, I slept poorly, so many ideas filling my head that it seemed as if I were lying awake all night. Ideas swirled about for what I call the endgame of the novel: how to get the characters to the final full moon in which some, but not all, conflicts are resolved. Since I clearly wasn’t sleeping, I got out of bed at about 4:30am (way too early!) and started writing notes for the endgame, then turned them into sketches (actions and dialogue, but not final polished prose). All that made for a net 3300 words added to the draft last week. But there was a cost.

The physicality of what I’m writing is important. I want readers to see what I see. Or, rather, see what the characters see as they traverse the landscape. Parts of the landscape of the novel are invented, but these are often based on actual places (in New England, for this story). I do a lot of research using maps and images harvested from the internet.

My research often turns up small details that push the story in specific directions that I didn’t anticipate. As an example, I persuaded my husband to take a road trip with me to southern New Hampshire in the vicinity of the end-point of the long hike that I have set a couple of characters on. I wanted to know what they would see.  There is a mountain that is taller than the surroundings by a lot and the characters are heading for the vicinity of that mountain. I thought the characters would be able to see the peak as they got closer, but it turned out that views of the mountain are hard to find because of all the damned trees. Good to know. Now I can write dialogue in which the characters argue about the map and whether they are going in the right direction because they can’t see the mountain.

Didn’t see that coming. O! the joy of discovery.