This was another difficult one to write, actually. I seem to have spent the last 9 hours working on it. Not all of that time was spent writing or, as it were, staring at the bottom of the document, trying to figure out what to write next. Some of the time was spent on Twitter, quite a few times I stopped to eat and/or to cook. I’d meant to write chapter 10 in a couple/few hours, then write an essay about the price of books, and then work on writing chapter 11 today, as well. I’ve only just finished writing the even-more-difficult paragraphs featuring Frances at the end of chapter 10.
It shouldn’t have been this difficult, I’d thought, since there were multiple people in this chapter. And at the beginning and end of the main part of the chapter, that was reasonably true. I spent some time here and there making sure my characters’ wanderings around downtown Denver were both plausible and accurate. Google Maps and Street View make this a lot easier and more accurate than simply relying on my memories of my one visit to the city. I mean, the story was designed and developed and laid out in the Denver I remembered, and I haven’t had to re-arrange anything or even change the directions people drove/wandered, but all the street names, driving directions, walking durations, et cetera are accurate/verified. It was really neat when, after having described that that’s what Melvin would be seeing, I walked through on Street View and discovered that they’d driven that road at the same time of day/year and the sun was in the sky directly over the road in front of him.
Then there was the middle of the chapter, a long, introspective section where Melvin is walking around alone again, thinking. And then there’s the vignette with Frances at the end. She’s so far beyond real speech, surrounded only by the walking dead and the dead dead, operating beyond conscious thought or motivation, that trying to come up with 500 words to describe her situation was a challenge. So right now chapter 10 is the shortest of the chapters, by a few dozen words. And chapter 11 will be difficult for … other reasons. Someone dies. Someone else gets bitten. And then I have to explain why Max and Stacy didn’t notice the Sergeant’s people when they drove right through Civic Center park – they must not have been there, yet. Right?
Sigh. And I’ve just corrected the spelling of the word “awesome” toward the end. Let me know if you find other things that need correction. I need a nap, and I’ve already waited for the Smashwords conversion queue twice (since I forgot to give chapter 10 a subtitle, at first). I’m into my 3rd litre of Diet Mountain Dew today; I shouldn’t need a nap.
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