Ophelia and Me

I had an absolutely marvelous tropical storm over the weekend. Gentle Ophelia flooded us with four to five inches of rain, half of it falling in an intense 12-hour period but the rest spread out across four days. It was a blessing for Maryland, after a dry winter, a very dry spring, and an average summer left us eight inches behind normal rainfall for this year, and just before Ophelia blew in the state posted drought warnings for five counties.

It was especially delightful for me because I am writing a new book. With the rain pattering on the windows behind me I pounded out 8,000 words bewteen Friday afternoon and bedtime on Sunday. If I can keep going at this pace I will have a 100,000-word draft by Thanksgiving, and maybe a shareable text by Christmas. This is genre fantasy story, first of a projected three or four book series. 

I mention this because blogging is likely to be on the light side this Fall. The explosion in blogging over the summer was born partly from being stalled on all my other writing projects. This fantasy novel had reached 20,000 words by January but then languished untouched until August, and my attempts to start a sequel to The Raven and the Crown never got very far. Then in August I found new inspiration for this book and got back into it. 

I find that when it won't come writing is thoroughly frustrating and miserable, but when it flows it is as much fun for me as anything ever has been. So I had a very good weekend indeed.