So, two major things are gaining momentum at this moment (today in particular, in fact).

First, I’m driving a lot more. So far I’ve driven in four different cars with four different passengers (by coincidence they were mutually exclusive). So far, driving is both much easier and harder than I expected. First, when you don’t know how to drive, you’d think that it would be a lot harder to keep track of your speed, the people ahead of and around you, your physical destination and relative position, and all of the various buttons, levers, and meters cars have. But that isn’t actually the hard part. You don’t have to worry about all of those things simultaneously, so basically it becomes natural.

The real hard thing, at least the thing that I’m having the most difficulty with, is learning and becoming one with the car. (Having driven four different ones spread out probably doesn’t help.) Every car feels different. If you’re on the computer as often as I am, it’s the same thing as going to a friend’s house and trying to type on their keyboard. It’s like “None of these keys are correctly spaced apart!” Am I the only one that thinks that? Oh. Nevermind, then.

Every car has a different level of sensitivity of their brake and gas pedal, as well as their steering wheel and turning capabilities (not to even bring up line of sight at all here). When a light turns green I’ll think “Okay, easy on the gas so it doesn’t accelerate too quickly and consequently waste gas” and the car will think “Whoa, you’re gassing that way too hard, bro,” and say so. I remember my family telling me that it was the hardest part about learning how to drive, but it’s hard to imagine that the concept of decelerating at a constant rate to end at the right spot is nigh impossible when you have no experience. But as I said even these things aren’t “difficult” per se, it’s simply a matter of growing comfortable with the car you’re in.

In other news, I’ve written the first draft to Chapter Two of Dreamscape. I think the first part of the chapter panned out perfectly to my vision, which feels amazing. The rest wasn’t as great, but oh well. I’m still working on initial edits for the first two chapters, but I’m actually going out of my way to not reread the chapters because I don’t want to fall into the trap that writers find where they are endlessly revising the first chapter without moving on to the second. My plan right now is to edit each chapter once and once only before moving on, though I reserve the right to move on without editing, also. Of the two types (endless revision or nonexistent revision) I’ve found myself to me far more inclined to endless revisions, so I’m not worried about not editing something that needs editing.

One trick I’ve learned is that when you’re using Google Docs you can add a comment to certain sections for the sole purpose of drawing attention to things for later use without actually altering the text. As in I won’t have to bold a specific statement to draw my personal attention to the fact that it is foreshadowing when I can throw a comment there. Much easier that way, which makes me not have to worry about adding small details like that.

And unfortunately my work schedule gets a lot thicker from here on out, so I won’t have the time to practice driving or writing as much as I did this week. I literally had more free time this week than I knew what to do with, (over six hours a day, usually!) but I realize that that was a luxury I won’t have a chance to grow accustomed to.