Changing gears

Wow, changing gears was SO the right thing to do. I accomplished a lovely 1605 words on *Quest to be Queen* (nano'04) this morning. I'd read through the previous 54K over the past few days, and decided to ditch what I had for an outline for this section. (*Quest* requires seven tasks, and this is the last one.) I took stock of all the interpersonal relationships at the end of the 54K, and decided which of them needed to be solved by the end of this task. The big one, obviously, must wait until the grand finale, but some development (negative) must happen in this task to keep things interesting. So having decided who all has to save who else's life, and in what order (!), I threw them out to see what would happen. Then I discovered that a man they meet, that I thought was neutral to the whole quest thing, is actually on Teagren's side. But once she went off with him, I realized that he's only pretending. That sets things up nicely for tomorrow. It was WONDERFUL having fun writing again! :D

A while back I signed up for February's romance challenge at FM, so today I wrote the first draft of a short scene when Taafa and Shann meet (from Taafa's first person point of view). It's not how I intend to write the novel, but it did give me some insight into how she thinks. It's going to take a bit of spit and polish before I post it on the board. The challenge was to write a first meeting between two people who will eventually fall in love, and to show the initial conflict between them. There is plenty of that between Shann and Taafa (her country wants him dead, and expects her to help), so we'll see if I got a handle on any of it. Oh, and I finally got my maps colored, too!

Then I read through the article for Zette, for Vision's March edition, and couldn't find anything else to tweak, so sent that off. It was a very productive day, all in all. It occurs to me that I should post a link for Vision ezine over on my blog's side panel, in case anyone is interested in having a look. I'm not *just* pitching my own article here; there are many helpful writing articles in each issue of this free bi-monthly ezine. Forward Motion has been publishing it for more than four years; all issues are archived and are downloadable in adobe format and in palm, I think.

What else is new? A few weeks ago I mentioned a physical problem I'm having, and that I require an ultrasound. The day before my scheduled appointment, the ultrasound machine/computer broke down. When the parts arrived from Toronto, they were the incorrect parts. So I'm looking at at least another week before I can get the procedure done. I understand that patients with more critical needs have been granted appointments out of town, but apparently I'm not considered to be in dire straits (which I suppose is some sort of good news...). I'm not particularly enjoying the waiting game. As a writer, I have a better than average imagination, and I'm trying very hard to keep it turned OFF when thinking about this. It is certainly an opportunity for learning more about relaxing in the Lord and trusting that He remains in control, even of broken down ultrasound machines.