I read a mystery that I really enjoyed.
I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a novel myself. I think I could do it, even though I tend to think of myself as a short-form writer.
But lately I’ve been thinking that maybe that’s just because I haven’t looked at the pattern. I can knit things from my imagination but honestly, they tend to work out better if I’m following a pattern. I never feel apologetic for following a pattern in knitting, so maybe I should take that to heart with my writing. Instead of trying to wing it and hope I’ve absorbed the structure of novels through reading so many, maybe I should get humble and look at the pattern.
So I’ve spent some time today going through the first half of the book I just read, looking at the structure, the word count, the chapter lengths… It’s fun. But here’s a thing. I’m a lightweight when it comes to work these days.
I just haven’t sat down to do one thing for this long since A was about nine months old and started crawling over to and chewing the wires under my desk. I’ve analysed half of the chapters (12) and I’m wiped out. I’ve probably been working for about an hour, with a few interruptions (thank you, online videos).
At this rate I’m going to have to do some serious brain conditioning before my anticipated free-time three mornings a week starting in September.