I had another productive morning working over the novel, connecting the disconnected parts and working on some of my faulty internal logic for various character motivations. Fun fun. Seriously, I do enjoy this part of the process, now that I've got my head back in the game. I'm down to about seven or eight new scenes to put together, along with all the transitions and glue that goes along with that.

My goal is to finish all the heavy lifting before December 14th, which is Drew and Elizabeth's birthday(s), because Elizabeth and I are heading out of town the following day, to "the Bird."

That gives me two weeks. I can do that.

After we get back from our three-day weekend (woo hoo!), I hope to have the novel completely done by the end of the year. And nope, I ain't bringing any notes or laptops with me to the Bird.

The crazy thing is, I have absolutely nothing planned for 2007. No novel ideas. No story ideas (at all! Nothing!). I feel a little weird about this. I think I'm just going to chill out about it and not try to plan anything out. Just see what happens.

I'll have stuff to do next year, like copy-editing the 4 stories I have coming out in '07, along with a lot of editing for the Wannoshay novel, of course. But no plans for new stuff. Yikes. How'd that happen? I don't even have any stories ready to send out to editors (they've all been trunked or sold).

In the meantime, I'm going to keep blasting away at the rough edges of Sixteen Miles. Here's a snippet from today that I'm proud of:

Entering the kitchen through the back door, Melissa grabbed a clean glass from the cupboard and began filling it at the sink. She was glad to see her hands had stopped shaking, though the tips of all her fingers were coated with caps of black dirt. As the water dropped into her glass, she had a sudden flashing memory of the tiny figures and strange black spheres covering the counters and shelves of this same kitchen, almost six years ago. Strange treasures from the F-Ts. Just like her new carving, found an inch below the surface of the dirt floor in the machine shed.

Water poured over the rim of her glass in a tiny gusher. Melissa snapped off the faucet and smelled once more the fishy scent of algae. She set her full glass next the sink and watched as the caked dirt on her fingertips turned to mud, running down her fingers in black rivers.

She lifted her left hand and touched her muddy index finger to her tongue.

Before she could draw another breath, with the salty, muddy taste of earth in her mouth, she found herself in the middle of a dark forest.

I like that weird move she makes, tasting the mud on her finger. What can I say? I'm odd.

Finally, a Drew Story from Lizzie -- this morning, as she was getting ready , Drew got really quiet in the living room (always a danger sign). She looked over at him and he was standing next to the Xmas tree, smiling.

"I eat it!" he said, pointing at a string of popcorn-and-cranberries that was conspicuously missing some popcorn. "Want some?"

The kid has some great comedic timing, I tell ya. And he's got the holiday spirit, big-time!

Later!