Getting back in gear

For the last two quarters, I worked so intensely on "Nor the Battle to the Strong" that I kind of wore myself out. Occupational hazard of senior capstone. I wrote, re-wrote, created a presentation, listened to critiques, re-wrote some more, wrote more...and by the time I got done with the presentation, even though I still LOVE this novel, I had to take a break. My characters and I had spent waaaaay too much time together and were starting to get on each other's nerves. I promised them I'd be back soon and put it away for a while, so I could come back with a fresh perspective and not want to kill off every single one of my characters just because they were irritating me.

So over the last week or so, I've finally started turning back to my novel. It's been on my mind for the last several weeks, but I didn't feel I was ready to start writing in it again. A few days ago, I decided it was time, took my computer into the living room, broke out my old notebook of notes, and started reading through where I had left off. I started typing...my stupid computer went Blue Screen of Death. And my computer continued to do the BSD. At one moment I thought I had fixed it (the help screen told me to update my antivirus software, because that's apparently what caused one of the crashes). But, no, of course not, and it did it to me again...and again...and again. It got more determined. Finally, the help screen told me that the "latest" crash had been because of out-of-date drivers and some other computer jargon I don't understand. So I went, updated those...and in the process of fixing my computer, I actually managed to fix my Wireless connection too. Who knew that the way to get it to stop being so finiky was to update it? Huh.

Anyway, I've been writing off-and-on for the last couple days. It's been slow going, but it's going to take me a little while to get up to the amount of story I was able to crank out when I was in capstone. Yesterday I wrote three sentences...and I was okay with that. Every little bit counts and soon enough I'll be back up to the speed I like.