Crossing the River

The good news is that I haven't ditched my wip. I nearly did. Until last Sunday I had completed nineteen thousand words. From Monday to Friday I managed a grand total of three thousand (actually I probably wrote double that but I kept ditching chunks). My problem, at the time, was what I often refer to as the 'river crossing' - I can see the other side of the river, I need to cross it, but there's no bridge in sight. In this case, I had completed the first section of the story and I knew what my characters needed to do next but - and here's the big but - they needed to get there in as natural a fashion as possible. It's like the river analogy: in an imaginary world I could have a giant bird offer me a lift to the other side but, because I want to keep my fiction as plausible if not realistic as I can, that would be cheating. So I spent the week tapping out random words and far-fetched scenarios whilst waiting for the bridge to show itself. And guess what? It did. In fact, the bridge had been there all along, right beneath my eyes. I could kick myself. It involved having to rewrite parts of the first completed section (and ditching another couple of thousand words) but I am much happier for it. Now I can plough on into the 'other side' and see where the journey takes me.
So I suppose you're waiting impatiently for me tell you my bad news. Well there isn't any (yet). A week ago last Friday the ed with my full had emailed in response to me chasing to say she would be in touch 'next week'. She never actually clarified which next week so I tried to keep my disappointment to a minimum when Friday came and went with an empty inbox. I say empty but the spammers were having a wonderful time bombarding it. I say tried to keep my disappointment to a minimum and I really did try. And I really did try not checking my inbox every couple of minutes. I know she will get back to me as soon as she can and all I can do is be patient. Unfortunately, as I tweeted just a few days ago, if patience is a virtue then my virtue must be shot!
Take care all xxx