Sunrise this morning will be at 8:54 am – still well after I get up – and the sun will set at 4:14 this evening. (Which means I have to arrange transportation to my OLLI classes with Van Tran, since I cannot drive home in the dark.) We’ll have just 7 hours 19 minutes of alleged daylight, but this time of year the sun never gets much more than 9° above the horizon.
Time for SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) to kick in. (Personally, I think SAD’s an urge to hibernation triggered by the long nights, and makes perfectly good sense.) I use full-spectrum bulbs in most of my lights, especially the plant lights, which seems to help. Having something growing and blooming also gets me through the winter.
The weather remains cold, with nights below 0°F and days above. Some snow showers, but no heavy accumulation. I’ll check the snow stake as soon as it’s light enough; when it got too dark to see last night it was at 5″.
It’s a check-in month for #writemotivation, and I’m going to try to get at least the first round of edits for Rescue Operation back to my editor this month. She wants more of a story arc, and I realized that keeping the reader in the dark about Zhaim’s machinations behind the scenes isn’t working, even though the POV characters are in the dark. So I have to let readers know what’s going on behind Roi’s back. This will involve:
Rearranging some chapters. (done)
Write several bits from Zhaim’s POV. (2 written so far, 3 to go)
Rewrite several pieces to give more showing, less telling. (Started.)
Put in Jacyn’s POV and actually show the hijacking, instead of letting him tell Tod. (Decided where to put it, but not written yet.)
More of the grief over two former characters’ deaths, even after 50 years. (Thought about.)
The way I have it split up for writing purposes, there are 63 chapters of widely varying lengths. I’m working on Ch 21, which is a reasonable progression toward my goal.
This is the first volume of a trilogy, so there are definitely some loose ends!
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