Late summer evening, a photo by DameBoudicca on Flickr.

Sweden at its finest. I took a trip to the country with a friend a couple of days ago, escaping the early summer heat!

Last year when I was in France I had the opportunity to visit Verdun, and there the fort of Douaumont. The view from top was quite breathtaking, and the sun was shining in a very tourist-friendly manner:



This view did not in any way make you prepared for what you would seen once you've entered...

( Entering another world )

The southern transept, a photo by DameBoudicca on Flickr.

No, no France for me this year - but I'm having fond memories from last year's trip. This is the cathedral in Soissons, the southern transept (and the oldest part of the church since the rest was later rebuilt - later during the Middle Ages, that is, so the rest is still very old too) in the early Gothic style. Light, bright and airy and at its finest!

One week - 17 000 words (and during that week I had a massive migraine AND attended a wedding). This new story coming along nicely!

Let's just hope it lasts....

In need of support, a photo by DameBoudicca on Flickr.

That's permanent support in the cathedral of Beauvais to keep the church from totally collapsing!

I continue with the planning of my new story. I used to avoid planning too much, but if I do the right sort of planning it's worth my while and can enhance the story quite well. 

So for now I've picked the main characters a wardrobe (or a suitcase to be more precise - the story is set when they're travelling), and I've made a short summary of each chapter (so I know what they'll be doing in their relationship to each other, what they'll be doing and such, where they'll be doing it - and what they'll be wearing while doing it, so that the female lead won't adjust her golden necklace if I two paragraphs earlier made her stand in front of the mirror and putting on a silver necklace), so now there's a beginning, an end and a middle. 

After doing the summary I came up with the names. Normal persons (I guess) would do it the other way around, but you can't force a name to pop up, not if it's to be successful and feel right. You have to wait for it to show up in your head and you just know that it's right. (And yes, the summary contained many "she" and "he", but that's just notes for my own sake so it isn't a problem.) And after the names came the back story. 

So what's left now is working out what they look like. That is always the hardest. So since this is a slow Sunday I've been wandering around Internet looking for photos of people who might be suitable. Not actors or other famous people - because they rarely look like anything that would pop up in my writing, and when they do I still don't remember their names so that's no help either. 

So what else might be left before sinking my teeth into the actually writing?

From text to book, a photo by DameBoudicca on Flickr.

My husband's doctoral dissertation fresh from the printer's press - and on the computer the original text file that took him four and a half years to write.

The title is Drought, Death and the Sun in Ugarit and Ancient Israel - A Philological and Comparative Study.

(And it's dedicated to me!)

I've tried writing a new story, and after some 5 chapters I decided on it being boring beyond redemption and trashed it. My husband and I spent some time late one night then going through ideas for something new - brain storming to be more precise (I seldom do that, I should do it more often, you can come up with some great ideas then!). So now I've landed with a story about a man and a woman going to Tokyo on a holiday while in the middle of a relationship crisis. Could be entertaining. 

At the moment I'm putting together a plan for what happens to them - places for them to visit, things to do, things that happens - and the characters (that's the most fun), including making collages with suitable clothes for them. It ended up like this:

( Pictures )

Now it's just the writing left....

I finished a novel. I did it yesterday (or more precisely last night, when waiting for my husband to get back from work where he is writing the finishing touches on his dissertation, it's to be finished tomorrow). I do not feel very accomplished by this. It's probably because I write two kinds of novels, those that are just being written to pass the time and those that are written because they are interesting and this one belonged to the first category. AND finishing this one once more underlines the need to do some actually editing on the ones worth the time and effort for that. That is actually quite scary!

But the biggest problem now is what do I write now? I hate being between books, and even if I write something just for my own amusement which I won't even look at once it's finished I need an idea strong enough to at least entertain me...  

The bride and groom, a photo by DameBoudicca (away) on Flickr.

So now we're married...