It’s Christmastime!

I won’t say “Bah! Humbug!” Though I’m tempted to.

We have only two Christmas parties scheduled this year. One was last Saturday, so we can check that one off. The other is next Tuesday. But my wife will be out of town, tending grandchildren, so I told the organizer I won’t be there. He asked why, and I said I didn’t want to leave my mother-in-law alone for all day and the evening. He said to bring her, but she won’t want to go, and won’t want me to miss it. So I haven’t said anything about it to her or my wife. It was fun last year, but I won’t miss it this year.

Our Christmas village is in place; the wreath is on the front door; a manger scene is out; and a few lights are showing in the front window. The Christmas tree is up and the lights are on, but not the ornaments. Maybe I’ll cart them upstairs tonight. I have two other decorations I want to put up. Then it’s get the string up to hang incoming cards on. The only other Christmas thing to do is write a short Christmas letter and do the twenty-five or so cards we do each year. I should have all that done by next weekend.

So Christmas is now manageable. On to other things, mainly writing. Yesterday, Sunday, after a great worship service, excellent but simple lunch, and a nap wrapped around reading, I went to The Dungeon for almost three hours of productive work. I had to re-read my last chapter and see where I’d left off writing two weeks ago. I did a few edits as I read, determined the chapter was complete, and plunged into the next one.

My goal was to write 1,500 words in three hours. That’s less than I can normally do in that time, but, given that I hadn’t written for two weeks I thought that was about what I could do. In fact, I added just shy of 2,000 words in a little less than that time. That brings the book up to over 53,000 words at present.

More than that, however, ideas came to me of how to develop the conflict in the second half of my sagging middle. I had most of the beginning of the book worked out before I started to write it, and I knew where I wanted the end to be, but I was clueless about the middle. How do I put the protagonist in enough conflict to keep the book interesting? Ways and means of doing that came to me yesterday as I was writing. Some of it had come to me during my two-week writing hiatus, but the rest came while I was writing.

Then, this morning, I started to jot down a few notes, and figured how to do some more conflict. It involves adding another antagonist, a trusted new “friend” who turns out not to be. Will it be enough? I’m not sure, but if the book comes in at 75,000 words instead of the 90,000 I originally thought it would be, maybe it will be enough.

In other writing progress, I finished re-reading Doctor Luke’s Assistant, and will soon work on correcting a few things and re-publishing that in advance of the sequel. I had two hours of reading in Civil War documents, which is for the book I’ll work on next: Documenting America: Civil War Edition. I also spent some time brainstorming in the series of which DLA and PTR are the first two (written, not chronologically), and see the potential for 12 books in this series. That would take me out over ten years to write.

So, I’m happier now with my writing productivity than I was last Friday. Oh, and my Thomas Carlyle bibliography is also moving right along.