Or lack thereof. As I reported before on this blog, I wrote the first chapter in three different novels, trying to see which inspired me most, and which didn’t inspire me at all, or at least not much. In this way I could perhaps determine which one to work on next, given that none stood out to me before actually writing.

I did that beginning last weekend (that is, Oct 12-14) and during the next week. It was last Wednesday, I think, that I finished the third of the first chapters. Thursday I did little more than re-read and maybe tweak one of them a little. Or, I could be off by a day. It may have been Thursday that I finished the last of the first chapters. One thing I did this time was to start a writing diary for each of these, so I have the exact dates recorded. Alas, the diaries are home and I’m at work as I type this.

Friday I decided to write the first chapter on one more book. I have always intended to write additional volumes of Documenting America. It’s been set aside for more than a year as I wrote other things, but that was always my intent. Given that it is, right now, the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, I thought that would be the best next volume to do.

I had also figured out where to start on that volume: with a speech before the US Senate in 1850 by John C. Calhoun, staunch defender of slavery. After that I would move forward nine or ten years, into the immediate lead up to the war and then the war years themselves.

So Friday I dusted off some old notes, grabbed the right volume of The Annals of America, and read the speech, which is actually a long excerpt in that book. Then I went on-line and found the complete speech, and read most of the parts left out in the Annals. This took all Friday evening, a shortened evening as I had a few other things to do as well as writing.

So Saturday, after my normal Saturday routine (which included cutting down a small, dead tree and cutting it to firewood lengths, as well as a good walk), I went to work on the chapter. And I didn’t get it finished. I worked on it for over three hours, finding concentration impossible. I managed to get together a long excerpt from the book (about 1250 words), which is longer than I used in the first volume. But writing my commentary on it was most difficult. By the end of those three hours, after shifting back and forth from the chapter to rereading parts of the speech to wasting time because I couldn’t concentrate, I think I had only 500 words of commentary done, short of a full chapter.

It didn’t help that I was feeling poorly. I’m not sure if it was something I ate, or having done too much strenuous exercise earlier in the day, but I didn’t feel good all Saturday afternoon and evening. When you body isn’t well, it’s tough to ge the mind in gear.

So where does this leave me? I can safely say that the time is not right for me to work on Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. Of the three novels, the one that seemed to flow best to the page was China Tour, the one that was most difficult was Headshots. Preserve The Revelation flowed fairly well.

What I think I will do is take a few more days to think about it. I have a lot of non-writing things that have piled up over the last few weeks, things like my budget spreadsheet, filing, and some cleaning. It’s those things that a married bachelor takes time to get to when his wife is away helping with the grandkids. Then Thursday I head to Oklahoma City to help said wife with said grandkids, returning next Sunday. So I don’t think I’ll do much writing till then. Although, tonight and tomorrow, if I have a spare hour, I might try my hand at chapter 2 in one of them.