Novel - THE BIG FREEZE

Anyone who was unlucky enough to make contact with me over the last few days either by phone or email, has already had to listen to all my woes about life and novel writing  through the current big freeze!!! 

My Life
Due to a series of errors we ended up running out of heating oil on Saturday morning once the BIG FREEZE had taken hold.  Coincidentally as it happens the power also went on Saturday, meaning that along with no heat (other than the good old fashioned fire), we had no electricity, and of course no phone.  Then later that day the water went, and yes I know it is my own fault for choosing to live up in the mountains!!!  Anyhow by Saturday evening the power was back on, so Xfactor could be watched on tv, then on Sunday morning, the water too decided to be kind, which meant we could at least have showers even if the bathroom was in Siberia. 

Just to extend the suffering, the oil company didn't deliver the 'failed oil delivery' from Friday on Monday either, as the 'Man' went home without making 3 deliveries.  Now I know the real reason why the 'Man' went home was that he just did not want to drive up the hill in the snow!  Even though the roads were fine.

After more snow last night, any chance of an oil delivery in the foreseeable future was well and truly put to bed, which means that we are going to be without heating in one of the coldest spells ever recorded for November, and yes you have guessed it, in one of the coldest part of the country, the east, which is especially cold on high ground!!!

The Novel
The Novel has been a bit like the oil story in its rather trying failure at delivery.  Don't get me wrong, I worked hard last week, and despite being told by many to ignore the revised plot line and just keep moving forward, I did the very opposite.  It was really tough spending hours on chapter after chapter with words falling off the page instead of on to it.  We also had a family birthday which meant I was forced to do some food shopping, (just as well with the snow making us housebound), cooking and baking, safe in the knowledge that after the weekend, Monday would soon be here and my word mountain would rise again.  This did not happen!  Firstly I had lost nearly 1,000 words with plot revision over the previous days, then I had a miscalculation, reducing the word count by another 300 words.  When I finally did write on Monday, I spent 3 hours fixing an opening paragraph that I still hate, so I was devastated.

I moaned to anyone that wanted to listen and even those that didn't want to listen, because basically all I wanted to do was moan.  I was giving up, I had enough.  Sane people told me to walk away, to get a real life, with real people and real things, something nothing to do with murder, or madness, or whatever else is on the pages of my 'would be novel'. 

But did I take the advice?  Of course not!  So I went back to fixing the blasted thing and finally I got to a place this evening that I had completely forgotten about, being so long since I had last been there. 'A NEW CHAPTER' finally got started, and the words came out.  Some good, some bad, but all of them NEW!!!

Anyhow after about 6 days of whatever it was that I had been through, I managed to add in an extra couple of hundred words, which is pretty amazing seeing as how I lost 1,300 on rewrites and miscalculations.

So like the power and water going and eventually coming back, so too did the words, however temporary it might be.  Maybe the novel, like the oil will arrive sometime in the foreseeable future.  And just maybe, I might get to live a normal life again!!!