Novel Diet

I crossed 18,300 words on Sunday, and while that’s progress, I’m a good 7,000 words (or 25 pages) off pace. Not good. I made far less progress over the weekend than I had hoped. My plot is developing quite well, which is both good and bad. The first 15,000 or so words was more of a discovery process; the plot was being crafted spontaneously, which was exciting. Now I have an idea as to where it’s going and doubt has set in. I think the story is good, that’s not the problem. The problem is that the story is known, and because of that I feel like I’m writing something everyone else already knows as well. The iterative process of crafting a novel is not the most appealing, but if I can make it through the entire story from start to finish without too much rereading or rewriting, I think the editing process will be much more enjoyable than it seems now.

After eating very poorly this weekend I realized I hadn’t provided an update on The Engine 2 Diet my wife and I committed to a few months ago. The good news is that we’ve incorporated some of the features of the diet into our daily lives. The bad news is that I’ve faltered on the thoroughness of my commitment, and therefor have gained back about half of the weight I lost during the 30-day experiment. We’re going to eat some leftover take out from this past weekend tonight but hop back on the horse starting tomorrow. I need to do this not only to lose weight but also manage my cholesterol. I’ve said this before, and even though it seems inevitable given my genetic disposition to high cholesterol, I really, really, really do not want to take statins. More evidence that some statins don’t work well, and may even cause more harm than good, is being presented today at a medical conference sponsored by the New England Journal of Medicine.