Weekends, rain - and edits!

Now it is Tasmania's turn. Rain plus rain equals floods.
This has to be a brief post today - even though it is raining still and cosy inside! Just wanted to share how blessed Ray and I are - well we are always blessed but some days it is just more obvious than others. Ever feel like that too?
Last weekend Ray and I had a busy but relaxing weekend.

We had an early start on Saturday because we went to the Launceston's library book sale. Last year over $10,000 was raised by this annual event by the Friends of the Library. As soon as the doors were opened at 9am the crowd of people swarmed in and the piles of books rapidly disappeared from the many tables in the large hall.

Local published authors are invited to display and hopefully sell their books also. This certainly makes many readers realise we do exist!
My fellow members and friends of the Socity Women Writers Tasmania had the table next to myself and another friend - whose photo I do not have - sorry Margaret Muir, whose beautiful books are multi-published by Robert Hale!


After the book sale Ray and I drove over to the east coast of Tasmania to St Helens where we have not until now been able to visit. The churches where Ray had been invited to speak do not currently have a minister so we stayed in their comfortable manse for two nights. This was a very relaxing, cosy time for us as it has been really busy in recent weeks. I am so sorry I don't have photos to share with you this time of the awesome forests, the beautiful coast line, but we do highly recommend a visit tp this beautiful area.
Ray preached at a church at St Helens and at Fingal on the Sunday morning and when we were leaving St Helens late on Monday morning it was just starting to rain. And it is still raining and raining and raining!

It was a slow drive along the winding, mountainous road from St Helens to Scottsdale. We had one special "blessed" few moments when a vehicle coming towards us did not manage a bend and slid on the slippery road across into our lane, tilted over so the front and back wheels were off the bitumen. Even as Ray hit our brakes and we both said, "it's going over," the front drivers side anchored into a soft mound of dirt only inches from the forest and they jolted to a stop on all four wheels. Another foot or so and they would have slammed into some of those huge tree trunks we had been admiring! No one was hurt and they managed to back off the mound and went on their way. "If" they had been going faster, "if" we had been going faster, "if" we had left St Helens a few minutes earlier it could have been a very nasty accident for both of us. Good is God!
On the news this morning we are hearing of several towns like Fingal we drove through being cut off yesterday by flooded roads. This morning we are very grateful to be home safely - even if it is still raining and the visitors from Sydney we are expecting will need to take extra care on the roads. A fellow published author, Jo-Anne Berthelsen, and her husband arrived on the Bass Strait ferry yesterday morning and we haven't heard yet if it was a very rough crossing. Jo-Anne is the main speaker at the Baptist Women's Ministry conference Friday evening and Saturday. I am also involved at the conference so another busy weekend - but not as relaxing for me this time

And what about those edits? Late last Friday evening the edits I have been waiting and waiting for my Justice at Baragula arrived back from the publisher so now I am hard at work on them. This morning was a frustrating one because our landline phone is not working. Telstra, our phone company, says there is a fault on the line. They have diverted all calls to our mobile phone and no serviceman can come until next Monday!

And just as I typed that the mobile phone rang and Jo-Anne and her husband have car problems and had to return to Launceston with the help of the RACT!
My, what a few days! Hoping your day is not the same!

Burnt peaches, Rewrites - and wasting time

It had taken me ages to prepare that second saucepan of peaches. I poured the small amount of water over the sugar and stirred until it started to boil. I turned the stove plate down and thought I’d wouldn’t start writing this blog post before it had finished cooking. Just a few minutes to check my email inbox before stirring it all again. After all, there could be that email from my publisher about the cover for my new book, Justice at Baragula coming out in a few months.

Well, there was that blog post from a writer friend I’d missed responding to for several days. Just a few lines should do it. Then I saw there were a few posts on that American Christian Fiction writers digest that interested me. A few minutes later – or I thought it was ‘a few’ – I went to check the peaches.

Horror. Froth had oozed up, tumbling over, down the sides of the saucepan, onto the plate, the stove. . .and the peaches were the wrong colour. Brown! Burnt. Ruined? A waste of time?

***

It had taken me hours, even days to decide on the plot for my next book. I took many hours to get to know my hero and heroine’s characters. Even after filling out those basic character questionnaire sheets they still had to let me get to know them when I started writing down their story in those first few chapters. Oh no, too much back-story! But the reader needs to know what happened all those years ago to understand why they are reacting the way I need them to. Would a prologue help?

I took more hours writing and re-writing that prologue. Mmm, much better, and now to change those other chapters. Rewriting took a lot of time. Then I re-read that prologue again. But what about the dialogue through those headphones? Had better check if the passenger and pilot can talk to each other like that in a small one engine plane. My brother once owned a Cessna the same as the one I’ve invented for this scene. A phone call to him should do it.

Horror. Headphones not needed at all except for perhaps the pilot to hear air traffic-control through them! Prologue ruined? A waste of time? Manuscript been put aside and is still waiting. . .waiting. . .

***

Now I have a burnt saucepan soaking – a very burnt saucepan! The peaches are in a clean one until they cool down. A taste? Hmm. . .doesn’t really taste burnt but does have a certain "tang". Perhaps I won’t have to throw them all out after all?

Now I have about three-quarters of that first draft written but no prologue that will work. Now my angst with myself has cooled down, now I’ve had more time to think about the characters, the conflict that separates them, breaking their hearts. Do I really have to throw out all those words no longer needed?

I taste the peaches. Mmm. . .not too burnt?. Perhaps just caramelised sugar? And there are still more on the tree waiting to be picked!

I re-read the manuscript. Mmm. . .not too bad. Perhaps just some more depth of emotion needed, some more showing instead of telling, more dialogue, and then of course that satisfying conclusion still to write!

No time wasted after all? Just a learning experience:-

1. Don’t check emails – or blogs - while cooking.

2..Don’t expect that first draft will not need rewriting, revising, rewriting, re. . .everything!

( But perhaps I did have the same expression today as my grand-daughter on her bad day?)