Pluggin' away

I finished chapter 25, for the most part, on the 30th, doing about 2000 words all told. Then yesterday I spent the day at the library, reading the L.A. Times for the period leading up to and including the Democratic Convention in 1960. There were a number of details I needed. It was tedious, and I felt at the end of the day that I hadn’t found out that much. But writing today on 26a and 26b, I put in little bits I’d found out, so it was valuable to do. I hadn’t done much research on the convention and here I was writing about it for the last week.

Today I’m writing another one of my long-awaited scenes, the one where Bobby and Peter go to the Mississippi delegation to try to talk them into supporting Kennedy, even though they were the ones booing Sammy on the first night of the convention. (It used to be Alabama, but I found that more sources said it was the Mississippi delegation. The L.A. Times didn’t mention the incident at all, that I could see. But I’m going with Mississippi.) I did more than 1400 words today, not only in ch. 26 but by putting in words here and there in the previous two chapters as well.

The writing is coming pretty easily. There’s little to worry about in terms of plot points in these chapters. The next ones will be tougher.

And I’m also conscious of the need to go back and rewrite like the whole of Part 2 -- smoothing it out and making it seem less aimless, while at the same time putting in more details of setting and characterization. I almost don’t want to show it to Sara in its present state even when I finish the first draft, because I’m am so conscious of what needs to be done next. But I’ll print it out and give it to her anyway. Her and Katia and Christine and Cris, my readers.