I'm home with the kids today, so I stayed up a little later than normal last night. I didn't make a ton of progress on the novel revision, but I did get through a couple of pages.
I also resubmitted a short story and did and author interview, so it definitely wasn't a wasted night.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is that I'm pretty sure my thumb is broken. It's hurt ever since I bumped it into the wall moving some furniture a couple of months ago. This 10 below weather totally aggravates it and makes it hard to type. Woe is me, right? :)
I've got to say that keeping track of my progress here is really keeping me disciplined and writing every day. I seriously might get this novel cleaned up on time.
I do have a question for anyone reading this. It's about what kind of language works for transition to different times, such as a scene in the past or skipping ahead to the future.
I'll use two examples.
First, I have a short story that opens with a scene to set things up that happens six years before the rest of the story. If this was a movie, it would be easy to transition. A black screen with white text reading "Six Years Later" would suffice. But how can you do that in writing without sounding cheesy?
The second example is in the novel. The opening chapter introduces four characters. The next chapter introduces two more characters, but it takes place two days before the events in the opening scene. I can't find a good way to get that across. "Two days before such-and-such happened..." just sounds forced to me. I really don't want to rearange the scenes because the two-days-ago part is great for introducing the two characters it's supposed to introduce, but not an effective way to start the novel.
Oh well, leave a comment if you have any tips.
And with that, I've probably rambled on long enough. Tonight, I'm planning to get through another ten pages or so and no matter what, time will be put aside for both my wife and I to hit the treadmill or, even better, make it to the gym.
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