Day’s word count: 3500
Total word count: 45,726
Writing location: CHA (Chattanooga, TN)
Work: 8:47 a.m. – 10:03 p.m.
Exercise: 40 minutes walking
Notes
Had to get creative with the exercise considering this was a 13-hour day. I had to go outside ATL twice today, so instead of taking the train, I walked. That’s 20 minutes of extra walking I didn’t have to do each time, so I’m going to count that.
There was one line in a dialog between Ilsa and Richard that even when I wrote it seemed awkward. It was a line where Ilsa tells Richard that she knows he originally talked to her because she’s pretty; she’s not dumb about that because she used to be a fashion model in college. At the time, I wrote through it, knowing that it would eventually be changed because good writing doesn’t settle for “good enough.”
Today, out of nowhere (and absolutely nothing like what I’d planned to write today), it occurred to me that if instead of having her drop that little piece of information, I had them have an earlier conversation about her time as a model, she wouldn’t have to say it at that point. That small adjustment not only smoothed out the not-quite-perfect part but turned into a largish scene revealing that not only is she beautiful, she’s just as intelligent, to the point that Richard is out of his league with her.
What I’d planned to write is a scene where I set up Richard looking at dried paint and finding it something fascinating, which is something that is later returned to in the book at a critical moment. (I’m trying to turn the “boring as watching paint dry” on its head just to see if I can pull it off.) The day’s writing went in a different direction, but a happy one.
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