The New Hardest Part

Thanksgiving Week 2020. Safe to say, it's a  strange time for everyone. Between the pandemic, the election and the usual craziness of the holiday season, it's still an exciting time for me. And as always, I am thankful for the friends and family who make me and my life and my writing better.

I've had a couple days off and made significant progress on editing/polishing book two- American Storm and outlining book three- American Dawn. And for different reasons, both were quite challenging. 

Editing/Polishing- man, whatever the kids tell you about their computers, there is no substitute for smart, human eyes when proofreading. How do I know this? Silly question! Because I've been fortunate to have smart, human eyes point out (gently, of course) my mistakes! And they're things that machines won't catch.

Examples-

- Clothes hang on a hanger (with an 'e'). Planes park in a hangar (with an 'a'). 
- "Oh" is an expression of surprise. "Ohm" is a measurement of electrical resistance.
- A windmill is a cute building found in pictures of Holland. A wind turbine generates electricity. 

These (and many more) were caught by humans after the machines missed them. We won't go into the number of times I changed my train of thought in the middle of a sentence and forgot to remove a word or five. 

Writing- I found a new level of hell in my new work, one (of many) I didn't anticipate four years ago when I started. Jenn and the ALM folks encounter other groups of rebels. And as we know, not all of them have the same motives/drives. Will our group of wholesome rebels will get to interact with white supremacists? Religious fanatics? Black separatists? I don't know, I haven't gotten that far yet.

But one thing that struck me was odd. I have to name these groups and that's difficult because there are a lot of these types of groups out there already! I won't speak to their manifestos, but several times I thought I had a great name, only to have the internet tell me it's already taken by some group. Legal issues aside, I just don't want to go down that road. So wish me luck as I try to move on this one.

But it brings to me a bigger point, one at the root of my writing the American Revolution series. 330 Million or so people reside in the United States. There's no way we can agree on everything. But can we find some compromises? Maybe find ways to be kinder to one another? Listen more and talk less? And talk with less us vs. them? 

We all live here. We all deserve to be healthy and happy. When we the people forgot that idea and our elected officials played on those divisions, America took a turn for the worse. We need to find that feeling of mutual need/want again or at least stop fighting with one another. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all!