Yikes. I'm working on a scene in the book that is emotionally charged like crazy. A man and a boy are discussing things they've lost, and finding some comfort in the voids in one another's lives. It's been an interesting look into the differences in the emotional states and dynamics of children and adults. Knowing what I know of myself, and what I know of my own daughter has helped figure out the right things to say.

One thing I've discovered is that the emotions of adults have more inertia than those of children. They don't swing as freely as the hyper-temporary, soup-bubble feelings of kids. Children can feel the most intense loss and the most profound joy before any adult can even begin to figure out what's going on in their own head. Adults' emotions are ships at sea; kids' are leaves in splashed puddles.

Writing about it makes me yearn for that emotional impermanence again. How great it would be to be able to pull oneself out of something dark so quickly, even considering that one could be right back down there in a blink.

I miss being young. I miss that ignorance, that ant-sized perspective.

Ugh. This is a difficult one, especially since I know where the scene is going.

Back to work.

I stand atop a pile of words. 54,528 of them, to be precise.

That is the most recent count, the most recent clump of language and raw ore pulled from the earth, that I've generated for The Footsteps of Cain. Good, bad, and everything in between.

Of my estimation, I believe I'm about half-way to a...deep breath here...finished piece! Since I've been able to focus full-timeish (at least as full time as I can with my 7 year old at school and a perpetual mountain of house work and keep-my-family-alive food preparation that I SUPPOSE I should commit to), I've been able to crank out 20,000 words, or thereabouts. For me, that's about a month and a half of work.

I've passed in and out of a couple different types of certainty on the journey; certainty that part of what I've generated is good, and certainty that part of it sucks in the most cringe-worthy sense. I feel like I have too many one-dimensional puppets, and I know that in my second run through I'm going to try to breathe more life and blood into them...take felt and make it flesh. The view from inside a story, especially for someone like me with little experience, can be a very constricting one; I wonder and fear what fresh eyes will reveal about it when they see it.

Walk forward with fear, old man, and let it keep your eyes open.

Back to work.