Let’s just put it right out in the open. Writing-wise, May was not nearly as good a month as I hoped or needed it to be. In the last installment of Adventures with Writing, I said my goals for May were 20,000 words, 55 hours, and a 13% word increase in my individual writing sessions. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, I got 11,344 words, 33.70 hours, and a slight decrease in all my individual writing sessions.

On the other hand, I had a great time hanging at the Pub with friends, seeing The Sound of Music at Poultney High School, watching a movie with Paul Stuewe, getting robbed at the Maple Off, hosting Angie’s graduation, playing videogames with Elliot, and enjoying an awesome trip to Chicago.

My overall happiness for the month: 2.6. That sounds about right.

While June is only a week old, it’s been an interesting month so far. As you can tell from some of my comments earlier this week, I’ve been in a bit in a bad mood for a good part of the week. On Tuesday, for example, the notation in my little writer’s journal says, “Nothing. Bad day. Couldn’t write. Bad.” But here’s the thing, nothing bad happened to me that day (unless you call having a debate with Shawn and Justin a a “bad” thing, which I don’t). What made it so bad is that I have no idea what comes next in my novel.

None.

Take a look.

That’s pretty much my world right now. And every day that the “To Do” stamp on Chapter Eight doesn’t turn to “Still Writing: First Draft” — that’s a relatively bad day.

Thankfully, I decided on Wednesday that I wouldn’t sit around moping, waiting for Chapter Eight to pop into my head. So instead, for the last two nights, I’ve been going back and editing the earlier chapters. For example, on Wednesday morning, the Prologue had a stamp that said “Needs Complete Second Draft.” But after the work I put in, it now says, “Needs Final Draft.” Sure, the word count for Wednesday is only 181 words, but I put in 3.90 hours, and I probably deleted half as many words as I added.

I’ve also done a lot of “fact-finding” in the past two nights, by which I mean, I’ve been checking to make sure the objective world in the novel retains its verisimilitude. For example, there’s a village in my novel that, through most of writing process, I’ve envisioned (and written) as existing at the crest of a mountain. That’s fine, but I’ve also envisioned (and written) a river that demarcates the eastern border of the village.

That’s right: I somehow neglected to consider that rivers don’t flow over mountains. They flow around them, through them, and down them, but not over them. So, on Wednesday, I started the process of going through the entire novel and changing the location of my village (because the fact of the river is more important than the fact of the mountain).

And here’s the fun part: to make sure I remain consistent, I’ve started logging the settings of my novel into Google Earth.

Yep. Google Earth.

I now know where one of my main character’s home is in relation to the aforementioned village. Sure, I’ve had the general location in my head the whole time, but now I’ve mapped it out using satellite imagery. I now know how many hills stand between her home and the village, how many miles lay between her and her nearest neighbor, and even what stars she can see in the night sky (using a combination of the latitude and longitude provided by Google Earth and the SkyView Cafe, which lets you view the night sky for any date from any location).

So, yes, I won’t have a truly great day until I finally figure out what comes next in the novel, but the editing/revising I’ve been doing the last couple of days has felt pretty good.

And when you add in that Obama clinched the nomination, that the Celtics won last night, that my birthday is tomorrow, that my wife continues to amaze me, and that Adam and Sarah are coming to Poultney for the weekend, then a man’s gotta ask, “What the hell do I have to complain about?” And the answer, simply put, is nothing.

Not a damned thing.