In Which Reality Has Fully Returned

So, as you may be able to guess from the fact that my last true blog post was over two months ago, it was perhaps a bit premature of me to claim that reality was coming back 'slowly.' In fact, I have essentially been beaten over the head with a big fat stick of reality ever since Nationals. I've switched apartments, attended two out-of-town weddings, planned an 800-person conference for the cursed day job, and tried desperately to maintain the eight hours of sleep a night that I need to feel like a functional human being. But, the biggest focus has been on getting back into my writing. I adore the characters that I am currently working with (Madeleine and Ferguson, tentatively titled ONE NIGHT TO SCANDAL). But perhaps because I adore them so much, I feel honor-bound to write them the best book possible; and so while my first book was much more of a seat-of-the-pants ordeal, I'm attempting to be more of a plotter with this book. I started out without a strong roadmap and wrote around 40,000 words, but over the past couple of weeks I've taken a step back, outlined what I had, and brainstormed virtually every angle of what will come in the last half of the book. This will of course necessitate rewrites of what I already have, but since it was a first draft, that's to be expected.

Allow me to embrace my inner technology dork (while I may be a Regency writer, I have a fascination with shiny electronics) and recommend Scrivener if you are a writer using a Mac. I downloaded it a week or two ago, and it has revolutionized my writing process. It has this cool corkboard feature that you can use to essentially write out brief synopses of every scene, categorize them by whether they're done, partially drafted, or not written, and then move the 'index cards' around if you want to reshuffle the order of scenes. Best of all, moving the index card on the corkboard automatically moves the actual written scene to the right place in the manuscript. Score! For me, this is huge -- since I can visualize the progress I've made, the balance of scenes in the female POV vs. the male POV, and what's left to accomplish, I have a much clearer understanding of where I will take this work.

Okay, technology dork moment over. The gist of this post is that I'm back in the game, looking forward to finishing the first draft of Madeleine and Ferguson by the end of November, and hoping to get back into the blogosphere just a bit more than I have been. If you are anyone other than my mother and you're still reading, thank you! (and Mom, you're of course always welcome :)

[also, for the purposes of those ridiculous FTC regulations around recommendations on blogs - I bought and paid for Scrivener myself, so this is an unbiased review]