Song of the day: “Our life is gonna change” by Simona Barbeiri. Beautiful! Now, if only I knew the complete lyrics, it would have actually sounded good. Hah.
So, let’s skip the morning rituals (as appears to be par for the course, I’m way behind again, aaargh) breakfast, laundry etc. etc. and jump right into the edit: I completed the new scene for “Saving Nina” which is turning out very well, if I do say so myself.
The one page I was aiming for did turn into four, however, so now the total word count of the manuscript has reached an approximate of 100.000 words (260 pages). This means that it has turned from the standard novel length to a full length, with still twelve pages to edit and thus earning itself another page or two in the process…if I restrain myself, that is.
No matter though: The book won’t be too long until I reach 120K, so I’m safe. Hah. It’s a good scene. It will need an edit…or three, but then it’ll fit into the story just fine. Some technical terms get treated in it, explaining some more about the MPD (or technically correct term DID) patient, and the main protagonist to boot. Good stuff.
We didn’t do any building today, what with our friend coming for a visit. Instead, both sisters and I drove her back home to Puerto Banus and spent an hour walking the beach while we waited for our tenant to finish her rehab.
It was a wonderful day for a stroll on the beach. The water was a bright blue today, the sky clear, the sun warm and the breeze cool. Can’t get any better than that. We walked a mile or two (lots of tourists catching a sunbath) had ice cream and skipped stones on the waves. Considering that it’s been at least ten years since we last walked the beach, it was a rather novel experience.
Our tenant was delighted for the pick-up, in particular because it meant that she wouldn’t have to sit in her uncomfortable wheelchair for hours until the ambulance finally delivered her home.
Since the drive to and from Marbella is rather long, we had a road trip to boot, and we enjoyed the sights of a places we used to visit back in the days when we still vacationed in that particular area. We even passed our old camping, where we spent plenty of winters, living our lives in a trailer. Little sister was actually amazed at how well she remembered everything.
Once back home, little brother is making dinner while big brother and grandpa are putting up the fence on the wall that was built in the past couple of weeks…not the big wall, but the one the younger sibs worked on instead.
It’s a small miracle, but the fence that is taken off the old one, is the exact size they need. Talk about serendipity.
I hang some more laundry, still thrilled at the ease of the washing machine being right there beside the lines, help big brother and grandpa a bit and then head out with them to get a quick load of rocks for today’s gathering session.
We find a particularly nice spot again; lot’s of rocks dismissed in a messy pile that fills up the truck bed really fast. They get added to the large selection at home, at which time we head inside to have dinner: A simple dish of macaroni with sauce and veggies on the side that goes down remarkably well.
Dinner over and done with, big brother and I do a short edit on the new scene…a page and a half at most…and then decide to do a Spanish test, just to see what our level is. Not bad, considering we hardly ever speak the language but still, a little practice won’t go amiss.
I head on up to my cabin where we spent a couple of hours checking books for semi-colons and colons. The “Eats, shoots and leaves” book confused us both, so we go over a massive amount of books to see what they’re really used for.
Like we already figured out from several author sites, they are hardly ever used anymore…which is strange, since colons and the semis add flavor to a story, more than anything.
Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but now that I think about it, I do miss them and it makes me wonder about something…Could the lack of using these two very distinct symbols explain why stories are becoming rather bland these days? Food for thought.
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