Week One Report

Ok, it's been nine days and while I may still write yet tonight, I have 13,500+ words under my belt.

It's still not in a linear fashion, though I do have a master plan for five parts of this book (Prologue, Parts 1-3, Epilogue). I am having flashes of scenes that happen, and so I write those and then stick them in the section they will go in later. That's the beauty of Scrivener, the software I'm using. It can hold all these bits, you can storyboard/corkboard them, and still keep them all in one big editable pile. But there is also room for research. So when I go to the web and look up something, like "sheep in sweaters," I can cut and paste an image or a link, or text from that page, into my notebook under the research section. And it doesn't become part of my word count, but it's right there at my finger tips.

I just wrote this bit:

It seemed that one of the parents was concerned that live animals at the nativity scene might scare smaller children in addition to posing a public relations problem for animal cruelty. Another complaint had been rumored but not yet surfaced to either minister that the Blessed Virgin was allergic to wool, and therefore, they needed to put up some kind of barrier between her and the sheep, or perhaps, as the rumor went, fashion some kind of sweater for the sheep.

And yes, there are sweaters for sheep. There are certain breeds and varieties of sheep that are shearless. Either they are combed for their fiber, or big chunks are harvested off by hand, or they are given drugs which cause the fleece to fall off in one massive piece. Hence the sweater to keep it on until it can be retrieved. The nativity sheep aren't any kind of special sheep, but the idea of a sheep in a sweater is just too much.

I like having little inane moments and thought pictures in my work.