It’s happening in my Mindy novel: novel boring times. The run up to the storm and the storm had happenings every day. Now comes the clean up.
Mindy is all alone. The road is washed out. The phone and electricity are out. Water is in short supply. The fences are down and need to be repaired.
So Mindy’s days become much alike: checking for the road crew repairing the road and repairing fences. After one description, this is boring.
I suppose I could toss in a few snakes, broken posts, snapping chain. It’s still the same old stuff over and over. Clear the debris off the fence, back the tractor to the post, attach the chain, ease the tractor forward to pull the post back up, tap the post with the sledge hammer to secure it, release the chain and move on to the next post.
Novel boring times. They bore the writer. They bore the reader.
This is an important time. Mindy has lots of decisions to think about and make. Thinking is really hard when a person is bone tired.
There is the livestock. Most of the routines were written about already. Little is changing other than not doing chores in the rain.
Up until now the novel has gone one day at a time. In these novel boring times, do I continue to do a day-by-day account, only hitting a few highlights? Or do I lump several days together?
And right after these pages comes lots of happenings. Writing advice sometimes says to write these events first and fill in the other later. It’s tempting.
My problem is me. If I write the end of the book, it will be that much harder to come back and fill in these novel boring times. I will be impatient and skimp.
Boring as these days are, they are important. Skimping will break the flow of the novel. Off to do the drudgery writing telling myself the novel will be worth it.
