Busy Writing Day

Well, this has been exciting for me. Got to go and spend a day at Canandaigua Lake with the family today. Took the laptop in lieu of a book, and in the hours under the sun, when I wasn't in the water, I worked steadily on The Autographs (note the new title. I'll explain in a minute). The net result is I finished chapter fourteen and made substantial progress on chapter fifteen, such that I am about a third done. I put in a little more than 1500 words today. Wow. If I did that consistently, I could write a complete novel in two and a half months (taking time off for weekends, of course) ;)

So, the new title: A few weeks ago, while driving south to visit Stony Brook State Park near Dansville, NY, I was thinking about the storyline behind Autograph. Essentially it has revolved around what happens when someone discovers the autograph of St. Paul's letter to the Galatians. Most of the story takes place in Turkey (it's kinda fun, if a little hard, to write about a place I've never been to. Thank God for Google). But I've wanted to develop the story more, see if it couldn't take me to other places as well.

Then the epiphany. What if the scroll they discover in Turkey isn't the autograph itself, but rather a map, or rather a letter or list of some kind that tells of the location of the autographs. The mythology behind this is drawn from 2 Timothy, where Paul tells Timothy, in verse 13, "When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments." I want to suggest Paul himself was compiling a canon, and the scrolls and parchments were the original autographs of what he and possibly some others had written.

Anyway, now I have my characters hopping all over Turkey, Syria, and possibly Lebanon, before coming back to the United States. It's pretty exciting. Additionally, they're taking on their own lives and beginning to do some rather unexpected stuff.

I'm feeling pretty good about this story. I'm looking forward to having the finished draft in my hands.