Good afternoon!

I think I'm up for some serious writing this afternoon. Diving bell scene, here I come!

Also, I'm going to have to dig up some Barbershop music for my grade 4 class. I taught them "Bicycle Built for Two", today, and a bunch of the boys started swaying in time to it. So I explained about barbershop quartets and how that style of music worked. I promised to get them a recording or two for next week. I wonder if rainwolf has any on that amazing ipod collection of his? *makes mental note to page/e-mail rainwolf*

The boys were not happy with me when I got the girls to do the second verse - Daisy's answer to Henry. They love that verse. I made them sing it through a few times properly, then the last time I let them just belt it out at a yell. It was hard on my ears, but i didn't have to sing, and they loved it.

I'm off to write a long chapter involving lots of fear on the part of one little weasel. She's easy to write - it should be a good scene.

Battle with the Dreamcarver

I'm not posting it yet - probably won't for a few days, because there are touch-ups to do and an intermediate scene that I mostly skipped. I did about five hundred words of the diving bell scene, then got bored. So I switched to the final confrontation with the Dreamcarver, the true climax of the book. I wrote three thousand words again, really fast, though some of them were borrowed from the character journal last fall. It's a good scene. I'm probably going to add to the combat a little bit - I did it in two paragraphs, and it could easily take two more without being overdone.

I have to write the diving bell scenes - first Rianna alone, then all four of them, and maybe a scene where Kharaba goes down alone. I have to write the dolphin-warrior combat scene, and the descent into the tower. All of that will take a while, because it's mostly filler. Some of it is fun filler (Rianna, in particular, is easy to write) but it's filler nonetheless, and those scenes haven't been pulling at me. I also have a conclusion to write, which I'm considering doing in the form of letters between the characters when they get back to Calabria, as an epilogue.

All of that is at least fifteen thousand words.

And yet, it's wrap-up stuff. The big scenes, the ones that grabbed hold of my imagination and didn't let go for nearly five months - those are written. The bulk of the book is done.

I never would have thought I'd say that about a work where I admitted to having fifteen thousand words still to write.

So if the rest of it takes a while, that's fine. If I have to fit it in around Piet's hectic contract-writing schedule, that's fine too. I'm not happy with it yet, and it's not finished-done, but the important stuff is done. For now, that's enough.

At least it won't be pulling at me over the next week or so while I do report cards. I could shelve it until I handed those in, without much trouble.

What am I going to do with myself when I don't have this creative drive anymore? What kind of dragon have I awakened here?