However, after a largely unproductive yesterday* and this morning**, I had a break in the afternoon and I’ve made it past the final start***!

Here’s hoping things pick up steam from here on out.

* Apart from building an unwieldy grape arbor and a bird-house that no bird will use, anyway.

** Wherein I spent close to an hour trying to come up with a title — big mistake.

*** Is that an oxymoron?

Nothing new there.

Anyway, I’ve got the new story/book/thing in a better outline form. It’s not complete, but I’m taking it section by section so I can start writing and get a feel for the flow. Again, this really isn’t like anything I’ve done before, but it’s as intriguing as it is unnerving, so no complaints.

I needn’t have worried.

This morning’s work was entirely focused on the current story*. It was solid, strong and invigorating, easily matching the intensity of yesterday’s idea, which shows either:

1. Yesterday’s idea was not nearly so interesting as first seemed, or
2. The current story is really pretty fantastic itself

While I can’t prove or disprove #1 yet, I now know for a fact that #2 is true, and that’s pretty awesome.

* I really need to come up with a title, even a working one.

Must . . . resist . . .

It looks more and more like this will not be an exhaustive narrative, but rather a collection of specifically chosen pieces. There will be gaps aplenty, but these, I think may actually serve purposes of their own, leading the reader to possibly fill these places with his or her own thoughts.

Or not.

Still, I think it’s worth a try!

Whichever way finally wins out, however, this story itself is very different than what I’m used to writing — about as far from TDYK as could be — and while I have some additional research to do and some definite challenges on the horizon, now that I’ve (finally) commit myself, I’m getting excited about the possibilities.

* Of course, it’s an almost contradictory approach to the piece, which was a bit of a surprise, but in hindsight I suppose it shouldn’t have been.

As for the guilt, that actually isn’t about the Nutella (though perhaps I should add that to the list). Instead, it’s about a promise I made — a story I owe to someone very dear to me — and have failed to follow through on. It’s a very different story than anything I’ve written so far and the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t think I could do it justice.

Basically, I chickened out and I’ve been chickening out repeatedly for a few years now.

Yes, years.

But no more. My excuses (new baby, TDYK, et cetera) no longer hold up***, and I need to make good on this.

So, armed with a healthy slather of Nutella, I’m back in. I even tried composing at the keyboard to help speed things along, but an hour and change of writing time has resulted in a whopping 3 paragraphs, each of which has been repeatedly revised and none of which feels quite right yet.

So, back to pencil and paper, but that’s fine by me. The door is open at last and I’ve stepped through. Even these few paragraphs are a start and the story is already blooming in front of me.

* For which I must thank Frank, my German flatmate during my time studying in Ireland. This was the first time I’d seen or heard of such a thing, and as far as I could tell, he subsisted nearly entirely on the stuff, but never suffered any ill effects. Amazing constitution he had.

** Danger! Danger!

*** Not that they ever really did. Thanks also to my brother and sister-in-law for their help in getting me in gear, too.****

**** With deep apologies to my wife, who did not say ‘I told you so’, much though I deserved it.

That being said, and not to minimize it in the least but rather to point out my own weakness of character, even Lillian’s relatively minor, transitory illness is enough to remind me that these words I’ve been filling my extra minutes with are just words. The truly important things are the people we touch.

And with draft 2 done, I may be away from the blog for a bit, thinking of other things entirely (with any luck).