A Most Refreshing Bath Was Had By All

Boy was that an overly long soak. Five days spent in the bathtub and I is the pruniest prune that you'd even seen.

Anyways, it was a most refreshing break from the blogging world and since I need to fill up this space with excess verbiage, to quote Ralph Kiner, let's go to the happy recrap.

Christmas was interesting simply because I didn't get any clothes this year. What I did get was the following:

1} A ream of paper.
2} A webcam for my computer, which I'll probably have to wait on installing/using until I buy more memory for my computer.
3} A mini DVD player. This was the only thing that I'd specifically asked for Christmas, simply because long story short, I lost the ability to play DVD's on my computer.
4} The traditional roll of sausage.
5} A homemade bookmark that my daughter gave me that says "To My Writer Dad" and has a picture of a scroll and a quill pen on it.
6} A gift card from B&N and various music magazines, along with a Neil Diamond album.

I also got the usual sugar free candy in my Christmas stocking (you can never outgrow a Christmas stocking) as well.

On the blogging front, I spent the entire break lurking on your blogs. No commenting to speak of, but I did enjoy what everyone has written on their blogs since Saturday.

On the real world front, I spent a few hours at my aunts and got caught up on things with that side of the family. Talked to my cousin and inquired on how her husband's novel (military fantasy) was coming along. She said it's been released as an e-book (self-pubbed) and they're just wrapping up the audio version of it. So as a good relative and fellow newbie writer, I am more than happy to give it a little plug here:

John Blackport--Raingun (The Raingun Chronicles)

On the writing front, which was the main reason for the break to begin with, I dragged my muse kicking and screaming back from her well extended vacation and plopped her down on the floor next to the computer. I then plied her with drinks, food, good music, and anything else that she may have wanted/desired in order to stroke/pump up her ego.

It sort of worked as in between getting all of the last minute holiday stuff done and the residual stress of waiting for a potentially positive outcome of something, I managed to write another two pages of story. I know it sounds like squat and it might be to some of you, but for me, it does represent progress. I'm at the very end of the story and trying not only to write the final confrontation but write what I feel would be the proper ending is incredibly problematic.

Unlike the last novel I wrote, in which the main plot and subplots made sense from day one and I was able to complete the final chapter in about a week, this one is giving me one major league migraine. After writing the first chapter with relative ease, the remaining chapters have been like sitting in the dentist chair having multiple root canals.

I'm not sure if everyone else has experienced this issue from time to time while writing, but it's incredibly frustrating to have to perpetually re-read what you wrote to make sure that what you wrote is not only making sense but it's consistent as well.

Anyways, because I'm having such problems writing this schtuff, I decided to take a minor detour and start applying the 56 pages worth of editing notes to the book.

So with that being said, the update about what I did during my break is now complete and I leave you with this nifty little video of the song that was blasting through my headphones as I typed the last two paragraphs of this post.