Thursday, July 14, 2011

Countdown 24 Days (The "B" Beta Deadline)... Belated Again

Oops.  I got so caught up with writing that I completely lost track of time.  I'm not done for the night, but I figured I'd pop in and notate today's update for The "B" Beta Deadline.

While my imagination was the thing that drove me today and while I had the lovely treat of a stormy ambiance--all whipping winds and rapids bursts of rain--this evening, I also had a set back.

I burnt the hell out of one of my fingertips this morning while cooking breakfast.  It was an idiotic mistake performed while preparing a meal I'd pretty much mastered to our tastes, say, I don't know, about a hundred instances ago or more.  I got butter sizzling in the pan.  I tossed in two slices of bread and I tapped them repeatedly, lightly, with my fingertips to make sure they were fully connecting with the bottom of the pan.  I don't use the spatula for this because it isn't as thorough as this method.  I use this tactic every time and have, at most, gotten a tiny sting or two from an occasional pop of the butter.  No big deal.  Not even worth running it under the tap.  

However, all last night and through until now, my story has been dominating my thoughts at a feverish pace and intensity.  It's stampeding everything else in its way.  I must've woken up a dozen times last night with very specific lines and actions and descriptions that I just couldn't chance losing in my sleep.  Since I use my phone as my alarm clock, I grabbed it, and emailed these lines to myself so that I could apply them today.  Ideas pinged with the same fervor this morning while I was cooking.  And with the distraction, I didn't notice the small, but relatively gaping holes in the bread slice.  My fingers landed in them, in the sizzling butter, and did I even notice at first?  No.  I brushed it off as one of those occasional and ignorable pops.  I didn't pay attention to it until the pain sent me scrambling for the sink and a cold rush of water.

My husband got out of the shower, saw me, and correctly guessed that I'd burned myself.  He asked to see it, so I showed it to him.  Pitifully, I whined, "It's where my typing goes!"

I then let him finish making the toast and eggs while I soaked my fingertips in a cup of ice with a little bit of water in it.

Two hours later and many change-outs of ice, and I finally could pull my fingers out enough that my nerve endings weren't screaming at me for making so ridiculous an error.  

There was a nice puffy blister right on the pad of my middle finger on my right hand.  The two adjacent finger tips were red and sore, but not blistered.  I have since alternated from trying to ignore the painful sting every time I hit a key with that finger to getting distracted by the squishy sensation of the thick skinned blister as it rubs against the keys.  

I know, I can be a little weird (mildly sadistic?) sometimes.

Anyways, I've obviously managed to well, manage, despite the annoyance of the blister.  But, like I said, it did set me back a little bit.  Not as much as I feared back when it first occurred, but enough to be somewhat irritating.

Thankfully, the ideas are still riding me, goading me to hurry up and type, type, type before they get too far ahead of me and I lose track of them.  More than once I had to jump to the next chapter to script out some bit of a scene or scrap of dialogue because the story was coming at such a rush and I was afraid I'd forget.

That, ladies and gentlemen, makes today a very happy day.  Divine, even, in this little writer's most humble opinion.

So, with that, I will present my update.

Current status includes:
24 days remaining until deadline
22 chapters completed
(chapter 23 mostly done & 24 partially done)
86,303 words
223 pages

I wish I could bottle and share this feeling with everyone.  

Thank you for indulging... (me).

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