The Hawk Wakes

Ok.  So, yeah.  School year is pretty much over.  I have two finals to administer today, then tomorrow I just give the kids their grades and have an unauthorized Nerf War with them.  Friday I come in to clean and pack up my room.

I still hate that.  I’m going to be here next year; I’ll even be in the same room–so why in the Nine Hells do I need to pack everything?  Well, actually, I get it.  My room is used for several things over the summer, for example the summer program… and I have some pretty valuable (at least, to me) books and so forth here.  So locking them up in my cabinets is a good idea, really.  it’s just a tedious and irritating task.

After that’s done on Friday, my wife and I will be heading off to Guerneville, a sleepy little river town a few hours’ drive away, to celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary.  As of July 2013 we’ve been together 10 years and married for 8 of them.  Nice work, if you can get it.  My daughter will be staying with one of her grandmother’s for the weekend on her first extended stay–previously she’s only done a night at a time.

Next week, I have two main goals:

1.  Get the watering system under control.  

Seriously, our stupid sprinkler system is all kinds of messed up.  Partly it’s just wear and tear; the system is old, and the control box is outdated.   But there are other issues as well.

2. Get the WiP fully plotted

I’ve (at least temporarily) set The Remembrance War aside; there are just too many plot points that are increasingly not making sense to me–in the “why in the Nine would any race DO that?” way.  Plot points the whole book hinges on just don’t make a lot of sense when I really think about it.

But the fantasy WiP, Warden’s Call (title very likely to change) is making more sense ever since I realized one of the relationships in the story wasn’t working because the characters are, unknown to them until the middle of the book, brothers.  Once I’d figured that out, the rest of the plot pretty much fell into place.  I’ve got nearly the entire thing plotted out, and now it’s down to chapter-by-chapter plotting and scene writing.  My preferred workflow is to plot the book chapter-by-chapter in a “treatment” style, then scene break and write each chapter, then move on to the next chapter.  I’ve got Chapter 1 done, and chapter two plotted.  So I’ll be writing at least 500 words a day on this sucker.

Published by Michael R. Johnston

Father of an eighth grader, high school English teacher, writer. Fifty years old and feeling almost every bit of it on some days, and not a bit of it on others. Based in Sacramento, California, USA

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.