Very antsy, having trouble settling in to write. Something doesn't feel right. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Let me think.

I think maybe it's that the part coming up is a long in-scene section that doesn't fit the style and tone of what's come before. It's all dialog-y and spread out--really, it's very normal prose, and maybe that's what's bothering me. So maybe what I need to do is think in snapshots rather than focusing on the flow of conversation? I often start scenes with this kind of bare-bones dialog and build up from there to a fully fleshed-out true scene. Maybe this time I need to go at it with a different mindset and build it in a different way, with a different goal in mind. Hmm. Not sure.

So...snapshots. Maybe I can look at what the characters are saying--and what I want to say--and tease out the main points and break them up and see if I can get one point per page.

At this rate, the book is going to be a thousand pages long.

I missed a day of Pepys, and when I went to catch up, there was this:

"...another neighbour of ours, Mr. Hollworthy, a very able man, is also dead by a fall in the country from his horse, his foot hanging in the stirrup, and his brains beat out."

This is in Pepys' usual mix of matter-of-fact commentary about how his day went. The "also dead" refers to a previous item about a neighbor dead of plague.

I wonder if Mr. Hollworthy got thrown while he was out alone, and later somebody found him dangling gruesomely. And now that very able man's entire life is one gruesome remark in the diary of somebody who's been dead for three hundred years.

But you know, that's more than most people get.

Anyhoo, off to write.