Playing Catch Up

Wow!  What a week I had.  There is so much to talk about, I'm not sure where to start...

First off...go to your favorite search engine (I confess, I only tried google) and do a search for 'writing rampant.'  I'll wait...

See!  Hopefully it worked and my blog can now be searched.  It couldn't before, for some reason I only vaguely understand.  I had to take a general studies computer literacy class in college and while I am a crack-whiz at MS Word and Excel, html still escapes me.  Probably because class attendance wasn't required, so I never showed up and only turned in the homework.  Sorry, but Contemporary Music History was much more important at the time.

Still, today I fiddled around with some stuff called metatags and hopefully I'll get it all sorted out soon.  I need one of those dummies books.

Now to the meat of things.  I was in vacation in Idaho in a resort town called McCall.  It is GORGEOUS there.  It was perfectly warm and sunny, the lake was cold and crisp and everything was lovely.

We went hiking up to Boulder Reservoir and Lake.  The lower lake is kind of muddy and so-so.  But if you climb up to the higher lake - and I mean climb - it is the coolest thing I've ever seen.  It is not for the faint of heart, but the rewards are worth it.  Check this out: boulder lake panorama.  I don't know who those guys are, but he got a good picture.

The upper lake has been dammed and it fills up right to the very brim, like an enormous, mother nature infinity pool.  The waterfalls down from the lake are simply amazing.  There's alpine meadows for miles and miles behind it, with more lakes and streams and mountain perfection just waiting for some backpacking. 

So, you see my problem.  I had intended to use my vacation for some serious writing, like my own private writing retreat, just without the grant money.  But there was just so much to do.  And not do.

I probably spent a third of my time awake lying on the dock and reading books, soaking up some sun.  We went backpacking and took a bazillion pictures of wildflowers to identify in a field book.  We kayaked and threw sticks into the lake for the puppy to fetch until she was exhausted and fell asleep right on the beach.

We ate smores and super delicious burgers.  We saw tons of wildlife and the puppy was very cranky when a deer took a nap by the cabin and she was not allowed to go out and chase it away.  Overall, fantastic time was had by all.

Alas, not much writing.  And what I did do convinced me to change around the end of my novel.  Completely.  The end is still the same, but the penultimate adventure is all different.  So I technically made negative progress.  Crap.

That's one of the real frustrations of writing.  You work hard and get x thousand words down.  You read and re-read.  You edit and polish.  You adjust and add detail.  Then you decide that it's totally not what you wanted and have to start over.  I think anyone can write a novel.  It's this business about finishing a novel that's hard work.

Wish me luck....grumble

E.T.