Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

OK, I admit that I wrote that in advance. Work is really busy and I barely have time to blog. And weekends are busy because I'm finishing up the novel. My goal for more than a year was to finish it by late October 2004, and I'm going to meet that, but I have to keep working steadily to do that.

It seems like there are two phases of novel-writing: creation, and telling the story. Sometimes they go on at the same time, but the first one -- making up everything about the characters and their world and their story and history -- has to be thought about constantly, not only while writing. Once everything is finally nailed down (sometimes after a few revisions even), you then get to finally look at it some more and just figure out where you're doing a good job of telling it and where you need to take a scythe and start carving and shaping.

It was only after three years of work on this one that I know everything that has happened to these characters. And yes -- as the cliche goes -- I know what they ate for breakfast today. Some of the details will not make the final cut, but I know it's in their history. Maybe it will be re-added somewhere. Maybe just as a line. But I know it, so I can focus on how to tell the story.

Was that boring? Sorry.

Actually, there was a point to all this...my first two novels took place in New York, so there was a little less research and creation involved. They were about women close to my age, so I also was able to do a little less imagining, even though the main plot twists never happened to me. This new novel is harder because I was doing more research. I'm glad I'm finally able to focus on honing the "telling" of it.

In other news...yes, there's another hurricane, and I was too busy to even mention it here. Plus, even I'm getting a little jaded by them. In a few months we can move on to blizzards.

Finally, I've been wanting to mention that asking trivia questions shows the transition among generations. A few weeks ago, I helped host bar trivia and I did an audio round of songs that mentioned school in the title or lyrics. They included Beatles ("Getting Better"), Hall & Oates ("Adult Education"), and Steely Dan ("My Old School"). By the third song, a pair of players at one of the front tables said, "These are all OLD!"

I guess it happens...an '80s song like Adult Education is considered "old" to kids who are 21 or 22. It's still odd, though. I always try to mix up my audio rounds so no generation is slighted (there was an Eminem song in there too), but I found the reaction interesting. No one complained about our question about the Battle of 1812...and that was before their time, too! Audio rounds should be age-diverse, but it's still up to people to learn songs that were on the radio before they were born. It's cultural history. Besides, that's why it's trivia!

Okay, so I got to ramble a bit. I hope everyone has a happy Monday.