Hart To Hart

I keep writing and rewriting my gothic psychological romantic noir thriller novel Hart, and it has occurred to me that one reason why I'm writing it is to avoid all reality in my life.

Now you might legitimately wonder what reality I am choosing to avoid, given that I never leave my apartment because it's either snowed or is going to snow or is threatening to think about going to snow, and while I'm in my apartment, all I do is watch Australian Open tennis on TV (Rafa lost- now there's a tragic reality for me) and skating online (US Nationals last night, Europeans this morning). This is not what you call a low quality life, although I do have to say in defense of my January blues that Scooter has proven to be unusually sensitive to the lengthening of the days, and wakes me up each morning a minute earlier than the day before. By April, there'll probably be no point in going to sleep at all.

Because I've been writing Hart in sections, and thus having to rewrite it endlessly when I change the action in an earlier (or later) section, it's been hard to get a sense of what I've actually accomplished. So this morning, in between men's short programs, I did the third and I trust final chapter outline. It seems to have a lot of chapters, but that's because the chapters are very short. The little dashes indicate I haven't written that chapter (very few and mostly in the beginning). I don't seem to remember if I've written Chapter 7 (I definitely wrote Chapter 5 many times over). One chapter remains a question mark, and at the top right I put Glory Calls (?) because I have written a chapter where Glory calls, but it'll have to be rewritten in its entirety and I don't seem to know where it goes.

Hart is actually a lot of fun to write, which is a good thing since I have absolutely no idea if it will ever be published. I've given myself permission again to go bouncety bounce over the top, which I just love doing. And it's a book where things don't get explained right away, so I'm constantly shifting the revelations to try and improve their dramatic impact. Yesterday, for example, I put a big reveal in the dinner party scene, but this morning I thought I should move the reveal to the as yet unwritten announcement of dinner party scene.

I think some of these endless rewrites will come in handy when I actually put the first draft together and begin to polish it. My hope is some sections are close to where they need to be, just because I've rewritten them so often. You'd think by accident at least I'd have gotten some of the material right.

So here, using up two more sheets from the Speech Language Pathologist notepad, is the final chapter outline for Hart. Don't worry about being spoilered. Even I can't figure out what half my scribbles mean!