Here in the upper Midwest, we’re suffering through an arctic blast of cold weather, with wind chills reaching dangerous lows of -30 degrees Fahrenheit (-34 degrees Celsius).  I wish I could say I was holed up all day writing, but to be honest, I spent a little while staring at the supposed rewrite of the first chapter again, felt too stuck, and walked away.  It’s frustrating, but it also clarified something for me:  I need to move on.

I made a plan, and I need to stick with it if I’m going to reach my goal of — and here’s the important bit — finishing the FIRST DRAFT of this novel this year.  It’s just a first draft, it’s going to need rewriting, reworking, hell I may not even recognize the final product as having come from this first draft eventually, so there’s no use agonizing over one chapter when it may not matter six months from now.

So tomorrow, I move on to chapter four.  I’m going to follow my chapter-by-chapter outline, and work on the next step, and leave the rewrite until it’s really time to start rewriting, which will be next year.

I wanted another dragon picture for this post, and I found this beautiful Winter Dragon by Michelle Albert.  Michelle has other art pieces available on the site, including some pretty horned horses (someday I’ll subject you to my rant about “real” unicorns that don’t have horse tails), so check them out.  I hope you’re warm, wherever you are!