Yesterday, I posted once here and once on my "regular" blog. I went back and ran a word-count on the 2 posts and found that I had managed to write 1.5 times as much as I had set as a (small, easily manageable) daily goal for myself. Today, I just posted on my regular blog and managed almost double my daily goal, without even having made it over here yet. But for me, the point isn't just that I write over a certain number of words every day, but that I (1) think about my writing on a regular basis, and (2) reach out to my friends and family through my blog more often.

Our grandmother passed away in March. She was the only person I exchanged letters with any more. Toward the end, I was sending her weekly (or so) postcards, just so she would now I was thinking about her. That's not really the format for long descriptions of what we have been up to, but it was still contact with someone I love. After she passed and I got back home, I realized that my blog would have to be my mode of writing chatty letters back home--not really saying much about anything, but just giving tidbits of our daily lives that our family couldn't experience directly. Like I used to write to Grandma. It took me a while to do it, though. There was a reluctance to overcome. I don't know why, but now I seem to have reached a place where I can try to be a better "correspondent" via my blog(s). So that is one thing that is driving me to be more wordy.

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Yesterday, after writing here about my little insight on writing, I went back to LNR, and I figured out how to do it, how to start it. I wrote 1K. I stopped when I couldn't see what was happening anymore in my mind's eye. And then I got a little nervous, because there was a (what felt to me like a) long-ish section that was mostly dialogue, with little narrative in there. So I did what I always do when I am uncertain--I looked to see what other people have done. (As an editor and some-time teacher, my motto is You don't have to reinvent the wheel.) I looked at Alexander McCall Smith's The Sunday Philosophy Club and Haddon's Spot again. I realized two things. First, my section of dialogue was not too different from some of theirs. Check. Second, it is ok for me to add bits of my main character's mental responses and mental digressions, and even a few bits of info from the narrator. I don't have to stick so closely to what can be seen from the outside, like a little film of the action. I haven't had time today to go back and consider where I could apply this new-found knowledge, but I am really excited about doing it, whenever I finally do get the chance.