This is an amalgamation and slight rewrite of two weekly updates on my website, the first to give context and the second to give an update.
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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote myself into something of a roadblock. Here’s the problem—the first twenty-three chapters of the “A Healing Love” manuscript cover January 2014. As things stand, the book is due to conclude at the end of the first week of March 2014, and there are some very significant milestones to hit before then.
But… most of February will be “routine.” In practical terms, January sees Paul and the other Westmouth Students get a week of holiday, a “reading week” during which they have revision sessions ahead of the two-week exam period that rounds off the month.
By contrast, February marks the start of the second semester and the beginning of a new “routine” for Paul—new modules and a new timetable. However, on the first day of the new semester, there is also an event that will be crucial to the end of this book in due course.
So, how do I convey that Paul’s life is returning to a “routine” while documenting not just one significant event but several? My original plan was to start with “Life settled into a routine…”, except that is a phrase you would use to “time skip” a week or so. But I can’t time skip even a week because I have four events across Monday and Wednesday that need to be documented.
I had about fifteen hundred words covering the first of those events, which also introduced a new character who will be significant going forward. But that needed to be expanded if she is to be the significant character I need her to be. This event is on Monday.
But then I had about five hundred words, pretty much skipping over the third event on Wednesday and not even mentioning the second event, even though that second event, while relatively low-key, may well be the most important of these events.
So my task was to expand the first fifteen hundred words into a whole chapter on its own and then, either at the end of this chapter or the start of the next, casually mention the second event as if it’s no big deal in the grand scheme of things before going on to describe the third event in detail.
After I’ve covered the fourth event—which is actually the one I’m looking forward to writing most—I can use the “life settled into a routine” line to skip to the weekend and every weekend between then and the end of the book.
At least, that’s the plan. I’m happy to say that I successfully expanded the fifteen hundred words that introduced a new character into about five and a half thousand and I’ve started working on the next step. There is still the small matter of the event that will define the end of the book, but I need to mention it in passing and not make a massive deal out of it yet.
It will become a big deal. But not yet.
I’m not sure how I’m going to handle that.