Tuesday, July 23

This morning was very windy, but the sun was out and the air was warm. I got up at 7:30, had breakfast, and then went to write. Somewhere between falling asleep and waking up several ideas had come together, and I knew what I wanted to write. Moreover I did it. By midday I had 5,000 completely new words, including 2,000 that form a one paragraph synopsis of each chapter: a plot outline.

This will serve as a road map but writing it also forced me to think about the blockages from a more productive point of view. If something is not in the plot synopsis then perhaps it doesn’t need to be in the thesis; or if it does, then it should be there as supplementary material and not as part of the main plot. I therefore spent a long time reading and rereading the synopsis to make sure it is an outline of the story I really want to tell.

I have done this before, with previous drafts, but I have never had the ending right. Now I have. The ending relates directly to the starting point, and everything in between forms a step-by-step argument in which each chapter builds on the previous ones.

At 12:30 I finished this and decided to step outside. I decided to take the rubbish to Tirmo to give myself a break, and on the way back I notice some reflections on the sea from Sundö.

When I will get back I will vacuum clean, before returning to the sauna to juggle words.