A little bit of Aija and Chet in Diary

Today I started working on my novel again. I spent about 45 minutes reading through all the dream sequences I've written from the perspective of my character Chet, and then I wrote until I completed just over a page, which took me another 45 minutes. The writing process felt natural, although I'm a little rusty from not having written anything on the story for several months.

The section I started working on today, which for now at least will be the first part of chapter 20, is another dream sequence. I wrote it all by hand, so tomorrow I'll type it into the computer and then continue on with it until I finish that part. I may add some extra "dreamy" sentences to what I worked on today to set the mood of the chapter a little better.

After I complete that portion of the chapter, the day after tomorrow, I guess it will be, I'll begin the scene where Din'Chay confronts Jone Toshka at the gates of the fortress of glass. Toshka is holding Daphne hostage with a blade to her throat at the end of chapter 19. And then after that, the following scene will consist of Chet, Daphne, Aija, and possibly Toshka retrieving Carmen's body and dealing with the ghost, Anna. That should be the end of the chapter, other than maybe a short scene of the group rushing back to the fortress before it's sealed off from the rest of the world.

So that'll be 20. It's a pretty straightforward chapter to write, for the most part. 21 and on will be potentially much more challenging. Carmen needs to become my version of a vampire, all the people Aeirie killed in the fortress of glass in the past need to come into the story dead or alive, Bavane and the human king need to begin conspiring with Toshka, and the final battle with a secret society called the Black Hand needs to be set up and then take place. That's the rough plan for the rest of the story. There will be a lot of character development stuff that will happen throughout, too. And I need to wrap up the whole Pin Man sub-plot, to some extent at least.

I've found that the dream sequences I write are some of my favorite parts of the story. There's a sort of alternate universe that exists where Chet can be happy and have a strong, loving connection with Aija, although he is dead, zombified, in the reality in which most of the story takes place. So that's fun to write.

Today I spent some time hanging out with the parrots, singing to them, whistling, dancing, and whatnot. They were cute. They're walnuts on the half-shell, brain-wise, but they're still pretty nice creatures, except for when they get mad, which isn't too often, although it happens more than I'd like.

My mom and I went to a Mexican joint called Cafe Rio today. We both got two cheese enchiladas with rice and black beans, and salad with little diced tomatoes on top. It was quite good. In fact, I may just heat up what I didn't finish earlier, and have that for dinner in a few minutes. Whenever I read or write about food, oddly enough, it makes me hungry.

Obviously I'm excited to be writing again. Even though I just wrote a small amount, it was enough to reel me back into the process, back into my goal of completing the first draft of a first novel. More than anything, though, I'm happy to get closer and closer to the point where I can begin the polishing and rewriting process. That will be much more fun than putting all the pieces together initially. And, you know, I can tell what's good and what needs to go, or be redone. Any who, I guess that's about all I have to say for today.

I'll be writing in this diary much more regularly than I've been doing since I'm back to the grind, again. Working toward a goal, for me, is the difference between finding sanity versus insanity.