Post Its, Pulling Teeth and Protective Daddies

For details about how this works, visit Rachel Vincent’s blog.

I hit a plot bump around chapter nine on my WIP, so I decided to give Rachel’s plot board a try.  It’s intense work, but strangely fun and satisfying as well.

Okay, it freaking rocks!

I’m visual.  Out-of-sight, out-of-mind is how it works in the Rinda brain.  I put veggies in the crisper and I remember them after they’ve gone soft.  I have to leave research books out or I forget I have them. 

It’s pathetic.

But I had all these ‘Novel Notes’ files in my computer and actually taking them out, categorizing them and putting them in order has done wonders for opening my eyes to what the story needs.  I can see where I”ve ignored one subplot too long, see where an action scene or introspective scene needs to go.  It’s great.  I’ve added a couple of things to what she’s doing.  For instance, I added a color for secondary characters so I can remember to trickle in important clues about them.  I’m also putting it in order chapter by chapter. 

This, my friends, is only half the book.

The hubby keeps eyeing this monstrosity.  He finally asked, “Do you think it’s possible to overdo the little colored things?”  heh heh

In other news, I’m having a little trouble concentrating today.  It’s a combination of cabin fever and the knowledge that when I do brave the roads today, it’s to take my little one to have four teeth pulled. 

Four. 

His baby teeth never get loose and the adult teeth just hover underneath, completely formed.  Since the laughing gas made him sick last time, he’s refusing to do it this time.  I’m not looking forward to this at all.  I asked the hubby to take him he gave me the look.  You see, he hasn’t done a doctor’s visit for the kids since the very first time we took daughter #1 in for her shots.

He was the one who leaned over the smiling, kicking three-month old, he was the one with his finger wrapped in her tiny fingers when they put that first needle in.  She was looking right at him and he felt her hand squeeze and that was all she wrote.  In the parking lot, he told me he would never, ever do that again. 

You should have seen him snatch our second one out of a nurses’ hands in the hospital.  The boy was a very big baby so they pricked his feet every couple of hours to check for diabetes.  When he’d had enough of that, my husband just took the baby away from her, gave her his scary frown and shook his head.  They didn’t come back.