Above is the Santa Wheel, a way of giving between my siblings that produces no repeats for 9 successive years. I think it’s pretty brilliant. Add it to another flash application that I’ll build in the next million years, next to the Facebook app I haven’t built either, or contributing to an open source project.

So, the beat goes on. Writing was pretty easy yesterday, and that rolled into today. I reached my first slow-writing period an hour ago, (at 42+K!) and didn’t stress. Made the wheel above, and did some errands. Now going to light up the candle and start again. Wondering if it’s that I’m not wearing my lucky sweater*, or just that after I wrote Darcy’s (RC’s) letter, my momentum was gone? Hmmm. Denouments are notoriously hard.

* lucky sweater is this cast off I got from my Mom the other day that is super stylish, and since I’ve gotten it, I’ve worn it every day and it’s been good writing days, each and every one of them.

UPdate: 5 hours later. Just wanted to note that on the other side of that Wheel is the novel that I was trying to get published, Twinners, it’s been a source of amazing things since its death (or at least, since I stopped hawking it). I have written, about 3 thousand words, putting me in the home stretch of the 5K realm. Do-able, but still intimidating as I need to go to work and do some other stuff these next two days. But they will be 2K days, not the mammoth 5/7K days that I’ve pressured myself into doing over the last few days.

I back-wrote, that is, filled in a sparse section in the third chapter. I included a new character- Fitzwilliam- who reveals to Liz more of the Melanie & Johnny subplot. That’s necessary because that plot closes before the Liz & RC plot. I added the first proposal again- I know I did it in Chicago, but it’s more effective and charged up in London- so that’s a lot more insulting, as Liz has just found out how RC was the one to kill the love between Johnny & Melanie. Noticing (reaidng austen while writing) that she does a lot of good “response shots”- the movie term for showing other character’s responses to action. It’s a way of conveying the gravity of things, instead of using expository description or inner monologue (two of my crutches!). A lot of my writing style is bugging the f—k out of me, NAMELY: the use of “just”, the setup of a sentence as The sky is blue, but sometimes a bit red. (I think this is form made famous by the Brontes/gothic writing, called… euphisms I Think, but don’t quote me on it, I”m too lazy to look it up, but don’t want to look it up).