Day 22, Level 2.5: Today's announcements, kauri doors, and a Eureka moment

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Today's announcements.

  • No new Covid cases. Yay.
  • Auckland will go to Level 2 as of Thursday. Yay.
  • The rest of NZ goes to Level 1 (pretty much normal life) as of tomorrow, Tuesday. Good news for them. We Aucklanders just have to wait it out a little longer and hope that nothing goes awry in the meantime. We are used to waiting longer - e.g. harbour bridge and traffic woes!
Apparently the bridge traffic was utterly awful today, as to be expected. Thankfully I didn't have to go anywhere near the chaos.

I spent the afternoon in my studio - well, working outside it in beautiful sunshine. I worked on the kauri doors. Sanding and painting. I'm adding wrought iron and other components. Not complete yet, will do finishing work tomorrow. Here's a pic of the doors cleaned, painted and ready for next stage. They're very cool as they are - but in rather a shocking state and need a bit of work to conceal flaws - although some of those flaws are part of the charm. One of the panes of glass is missing. 

The missing panels are the backdrop for my registration plate artworks!

My aim is to turn them into something more arty and practical. They're very nice to work with and it was so wonderful to be doing something with my hands rather than clicking keyboard letters!

Whilst I'm glad that summer and longer days are coming (our clocks go forward this coming weekend), I'm also going to miss drab winter days to a certain extent as those sort of days are okay when you have to be on the computer. Having said that, we haven't had very many such days all year. This has been the best weather year for a very long time, in the north at least.

SHARE-NOTE OF THE DAY:
My book ...

At one stage, in Level 4 lockdown in May, I sat down and began a rewrite of my children's fiction/fantasy novel that I started back in 2002! I got so far with the rewrite and then got stuck again once I got to a certain part in the story. There is a complex piece at this point that has always been a problem. When I originally drafted the story, I wasn't sure how to sort the issue and thought I'd work around it and wrote on in this vein, thinking it would be okay. But no, it needed sorting, so it all went on hold as I was never going to be happy until I'd sussed it.

After lots of thought through the years, I thought I'd cracked it, and started the Covid rewrite with gusto. But in actual fact, I realised I hadn't cracked it at all and, because I still couldn't work out what to do about this complex and very vital part of the story, I stopped. Again. It went into abeyance. Again. All that lockdown time and I just couldn't focus on writing the book because I just couldn't sort this pesky piece.

Hmmm, I knew for sure it was imperative that this piece got sorted and solved before I continued the rewrite. Thinking, thinking, always thinking about it.

Well, on my drive back from Cambridge on Saturday, I was working through it all in my mind - again. It was just a casual mulling of the concept - and then suddenly I had a Eureka moment and am pleased to report that I really do think I have actually cracked it! 

Hard to explain but let's just say it involves time zones and logistics. Without this piece being plausible, the story would always irk me. Readers may not care or even notice it, but I will. And thus I've always got writer's block because of it and can't progress.

And now I have a sense of how to get around it, I think I'm ready to proceed; I've just got to find solid writing time ...

I'm really hoping the storyline itself has even more appeal these days due to Covid and a topsy-turvy world. Perhaps the reason this book has had such a long incubation is because it was waiting for the right time to be born - and it definitely needed me to unlock the clunky bit that kept getting in the way of progression. I think the time is right and the clunk is sussed.

Begun in 2002, I'm determined to finish this book in 2020! I hope! Maybe. Hopefully. It's my aim. 

As Duke Ellington once said "I don't need time, I need a deadline." 

I am hereby giving myself a deadline of ... 31st December 2020! It's my aim ...!



 

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