Labor Day: Writer at Work

Full carafe of coffee and fresh ice in water glass. Check.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C Minor in full trumpet on Pandora. Check.

Braver Deeds prepped and ready on Scrivener. Check.

An empty day. Check.

Enthusiasm, motivation, determination. Check, check, and check.

On this Labor Day, I have time off from the Day Job and a reasonable stretch of hours in front of me. I also have the closing chapters of my work-in-progress (the aforementioned novel Braver Deeds) waiting to be written. And that’s exactly what I intend to do. FINISH THIS BOOK. Today.

Oh sure, the day will be peppered with interruptions: mowing the lawn, making lunch and dinner, helping my wife move some finished furniture projects to her store, The Backyard Bungalow, feeding the cats, etc.

But at the end of the day, when my labor is through, I hope to send an email to my agent, telling him this first draft of the novel is done, Amen and Hallelujah!

There remains quite a bit more work to be done, of course--everything from slash-and-burn to tiny tinkering--but the bulk of the job is over.

Finis. The Frickin’ End.

UPDATE (5:30 p.m., MST):  Done! Oh, it's not perfect--not by any stretch of the imagination--but the bones are there, and now the fun part begins: sculpting the flesh to drape across the bones.