Noteworthy Words

My childhood training to save dessert for last is so deeply ingrained that I always force myself to schedule the more enjoyable activities on my schedule at the end of the day, after I've taken care of the necessary but more tedious tasks.

Saturday is the day I do my almost-the-end-of-the-week accounting work--entering sales in the spreadsheet, entering checks (both those that I've written and automatic billpay payments) into the ledger, etc. I try to do that for Monday through Saturday so that the bulk of the work is done when I sit down on Sunday evening to enter the last day's data, write paychecks, and place my hefty Friday-Saturday-Sunday reorder with Diamond Comics Distribution.

Tonight, I was able to wrap all that up by 9pm or so, which meant that I had almost three solid hours to do what I really wanted to do: get back to the novel in progress. I was able to rework on section that I had written some notes on, then add 3000 more words to the manuscript before calling it quits for the night. Even better, as I'm nearing the end, all the various loose threads are resolving themselves quite satisfactorily, and now everything is right in line with the detailed outline I had already prepared for the last two major sequences. 

I called it quits tonight just as I wrote the last scene prior to the segment I've outlined. That means that, the next time I sit down to write, I will scroll to the beginning of the outline and begin fleshing it out in novel form.

Sometimes I think I must feel the same way as did the classical musicians that the Beatles brought in to fill in the chaotic orchestral sequence of "A Day in the Life." They were told that they were to play for 24 bars; they were to start on this low note; and they were to end on this high note. In between... well, that was up to them.  The resultant organized chaos is one of my favorite parts of the song, almost a musical metaphor for the two discordant lives depicted in the Lennon and McCartney segments of the song.

I knew where I was; I knew where I needed to be. I had to find the way to bridge the gap and get from point A to point B. Tonight, I hit the note.