It's New Chapter Time

I am writing this on Wednesday morning. On Saturday, I finished a really important chapter an I am very pleased with it. I decided to take a couple of days off for the holiday. Yesterday, the plan was to get up early and just dive right in. However, I was exhausted from Memorial Day hijinks. Then, as I was procrastinating with my coffee, I stepped down hard on a wedge a glass. In short yesterday was a bust.

However, I have to wonder if I would have taken my Tylenol, propped my poor foot on a pillow and continued writing if I have been in the middle of a chapter, instead of facing the challenge of beginning anew. This is the hardest part of writing a novel and also the easiest time to walk away. I am not in media res, so the characters are not rattling around my head, begging me to finish what I started. I walked away Saturday feeling rather satisfied.

So, today, I am looking at my notebook. I kind of think I know what I want this chapter to be like. It's something really crazy. I think I may have written that earlier in the novel, I let my girls narrate their parents courtship stories with a certain authority. I think the reader assumes she heard these stories from their mothers. Now I am going to let Chaurisse narrate *with authority*, though not as much as before, a story that has been twice removed. She is going to tell us what her father told her mother when he was caught in a major affair. So this is tricky because we assume the dad is going to lie to the mom and the mom, of course, will lie to the daughter. And the daughter may add her own spin as she tell it to us.

So, okay. I am going to try and I will report back.