Inbetweens and arounds

The weather has been predictably unpredictable, which combined with a minor illness and the school holidays has seen to it that time in the water has been non-existent for the last couple of weeks.  I did find a 24 hour window of less-than-awful weather to load the bus up with children and head down to Taeri Mouth for a night away.  The temperatures still weren't kind, but we warmed up with beach cricket (with associated disputes about one-hand-one-bounce and quality fast bowling) and dog-chasing before sundown brought a cold night.  Drove back along the coast road the next morning, and needless to say - as I didn't have a board, and had children - the whole coast was pumping.  I saw people out at places that I'd only wondered might work - they do.

Still, surf or not, it was good to get away...

River water, almost as brown as the naki's...

Taeri rivermouth

Parked up and ready for the kids to have another argument.

On the writing front, the second draft is proving to be fun - even more than I hoped for.  I know it's not what some might call a towering work of literary genius - whatever, frankly - but a book I've always aspired to have written something like is The Road to Gandolfo, by Robert Ludlum.  It's utter tripe, really - but throughout the book there's just a wonderful sense of the author having fun, and it's contagious.   If I can catch a similar cold I'll be very happy.

Falling in again...

Even though my non-fiction project boasts the magnificent word count (thus far) of a mere 340 words, it's done the job.  By taking my mind off the story completely, in the last couple of days I've been able to go back to it afresh - reinvigorated and full of insight.

How I go about it from here is a matter of some slight concern.  Do I reread the whole thing, mark it up and then trawl through my notes in a thorough, scholarly fashion?  That doesn't sound very like me at all.  Do I throw the whole first draft in the bin and launch into writing the whole thing again from memory, the point of the first draft being only to help me understand the story more deeply?  I know there are writers that do this, but it seems to me that by doing so I'd be in danger of forgetting those rare passages of prose in the first draft that stand tall. 

For now, I'm settling on rewriting each chapter one at a time.  I haven't marked it up because I know the major changes I want to make.  Marks on paper seem to set things in stone, and I'm curious to find where else this story goes in the rewriting.  It's a curious mixture of refining and further exploration.