What's Up with my WIP

Those who know me best know me to be very chatty. I love meeting new folks and talking with old friends. 

I'm just not so crazy about talking about what I'm working on. But I learn so much from  generous friends such as Karen Cushman, Cynthia Lord and Barbara O'Connor when they talk about their WIPs that I decided I could share, too. A little bit, anyway.

So here goes: First the huge surprise part. I'm working on another historical novel. (What? You already guess that?) Second, I am using Scrivener, with which I had great success on the chapter book I spent last summer writing. Third, I am writing as fast as I can to meet an August deadline.

After hitting a wall, so to speak, I got a brilliant idea*. I went back to see how many chapters were in Hattie Big Sky (23). I thought I'd cut myself some slack and guesstimate this new novel at 21 chapters. So I created 21 note cards on Scrivener's virtual corkboard and began to write a sentence or so on each card. Those of you with very sharp eyes will notice that SOME CARDS ARE BLANK.

As weird as this sounds, a blank index card seems far less intimidating than a blank page. So I am sallying forth, doing my best to fill in each card, and to write a corresponding chapter.

I'll do occasional posts to let you know how it's all working!

*Thank you to Barbara for introducing me to Scrivener and talking me down off the roof when I thought I'd lost 3 chapters (note to self: do not delete cards from corkboard unless you want the related chapters to end up in the trash) and to Cindy for inspiring me to tackle a chapter a day.