August 2004

It's August 9th, and again, I must apologize for not writing recently. It's been one of those summers where I had very little extra time. Part of it is simply due to the fact that I have five children, and when they're all out of school, it takes a lot of effort to keep them busy. In addition, I've done quite a bit of traveling; I spent a week with Cathy's family in New Hampshire, three days in Los Angeles for the film premiere of The Notebook, another three days in Sacramento for my 20th high school reunion, and because my oldest son is now running track, I spent five three-day weekends out of town at various meets. My son, by the way, did fairly well, and qualified for the National Championships in the Junior Olympics in Eugene Oregon and finished with the 12th best time in the country.

In other words, I've been out of town for 32 of the last 60 days, and I probably spent a day or so catching up in the office after every trip. Any remaining spare time was devoted to the other kids or writing.

But, of course, you're probably most interested in my writing and wondering how it's going. As of today, I have 60,000 words done, and my best guess is that I'm 2/3 of the way complete. It's been a very challenging writing process, again because I'm doing something I've never done before. Yes, it's still a love story, but again, the structure, the characters and the plot are entirely new and it's been tough to get the right balance. My hope is that the novel will be complete in the next month or so; at least the first draft, anyway. This week and next will be largely the same; writing and editing, editing and writing. The difficulty of the novel makes for longer than normal days; when working on Three Weeks with my Brother, I could finish my work for the day in four hours. For this novel, it's about double the time for the same output. In the end, however, I think you'll be pleased with the book. In my opinion, it's one of the best, and the female character is one of the best I've ever created.

Thanks for tuning in and I'll try to be more prompt with the next update. Until next time. . .

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