Now for the scary part

OK, so it’s two days to NaNo. Well, at this exact moment it is 30.5 hours to NaNo. I have the idea, I have the plot, I kind of know my characters (last minute plans are to do some character sketches/worksheets to firm up those details) – the story is coming together in my head.

Now for the scary part.

Now I have to write.

Not just talk about writing, or hell, even write about writing, but actually write. I’ve always been a writer, since I was a very small girl. I’ve never wanted to do anything else. I used to write constantly – short stories, journal entries, everything – but the past few years, it hasn’t come as easily.

There are lots of theories on why writing has become difficult for me. Maybe I’m afraid of putting myself out there to fail (or to succeed). Maybe the bout of writer’s block brought on by my ex-husband is still hanging on. (If this is the case, I could even pin point the time and place of the demise of my muse.)

Maybe it’s something else entirely.

What ever it is, I’m not going to let it hold me back anymore. I’ve decided. It’s official. I am going to get in the habit of writing – for NaNo and beyond – and quit talking about it. I’m tired of sitting around with other writers and feeling like a fraud because, while I do write, I never finish anything. What makes someone a writer? Writers write. So, damn it, if you want to call yourself a writer, let’s get writing.

Here we go – let’s get to 50,000!

Research

I have spent most of my afternoon doing research for my story, carefully logging interesting details that will help me to create realism in my characters even as I spin them off into something totally fictional and my own.

I now have a lovely little manilla folder sitting on my desk labeled “research” which contains a stack of interesting news stories about the case, along with some details about the place in Venezuela where my characters will be from.

My MC, Elena, and her daughter Dulcea (though I’m not hooked on that name yet, because something about it doesn’t quite fit perfectly) are from Sierra De Coro, in Venezuela. So they have names, and a home, and I know some things about their home. All very good steps!

I have quite the urge to start crafting now, but forcing myself to spend that creative energy researching and doing pre-writing exercises is probably much more helpful.

Our local NaNo group is meeting on Saturday, and I have a three-page plot ready to share there. Then on Sunday I’m trekking to Bismarck to visit with the group there, meet Pookel and say hello. Oh yeah, and go shopping... *wink* On Monday I’m thinking a massage, not thinking about writing, and taking a long afternoon nap so that at midnight I can jump right into writing.

Ambitious, probably, but it’s all about pushing myself to get the writing done. It will be a very busy, busy month, and I’ll need all the incentive and push I can get.

Short story idea...

I know, I know, I'm supposed to be working on NaNoWrimo. Not sure why I can’t concentrate on one story at a time, but I’m hoping if I get this out of my head, I won’t have to deal with it for a while.

I went to a thing at a local high school yesterday called a “ghost out.” Students were pulled from their classrooms, their faces were painted white and they pretended to be dead. A student was pulled every 15 minutes, representing how often people are killed in alcohol and drug-related car crashes.

Then they had a guest speaker, and this boy told his story, about how he had been the drunk driver who killed his best friend. It was very emotional and touching, and reminded me of something that happened in a community I lived in a few years ago.

It would certainly make an interesting short story, I think, and I always struggle with short stories, so I may like to have the idea later. (AFTER NaNo!)

This account isn’t the total truth of how it happened, because my memories are a bit fuzzy and some of it is disconnected. But it’s some details I recalled that would be interesting to include.

Two men in their 20s and two teenage girls were out joyriding in the middle of the night. (So far as I know, no one really knows what the girls were doing there in that car, would be an interesting part of the story.)
Everyone had been drinking, they were probably on that gravel road in the country to smoke a bowl or have a beer, or who knows what else. (Not likely sexual, knowing the characters, but you never know.)
Maybe they were going too fast, maybe the driver got distracted, but what ever happened, they got into a wreck. The two men in the front seat were thrown from the vehicle, the girls were tossed around the cab.
The girls, thinking only of what was going to happen to them if they got caught, got out of the car and took off running. They got back to the main road and hitchhiked back into town.
One girl, we’ll call her Jenny, had just crawled into bed when her mother, an EMT, was called out to the scene of an accident.
Back at the truck, the driver woke from unconsciousness, blood running into his eyes, and found his friend, lying on the ground. My understanding is he held him in his arms while he died. Perhaps that’s an embellishment, perhaps not.
Then, panicking, he turned to find the girls. They were nowhere in sight, he was terrified. When emergency crews arrived he was frantic, asked them to find the girls.
The EMT knew right where to look.
Jenny had a broken arm, both girls had a few cuts and scrapes, but everyone was okay, except the front passenger, who they were not able to save.
He left behind a girlfriend, a four-year-old step daughter and a new baby.
The girls, with their total disregard for human life and absolute selfishness, always really shocked me about this story. How could they just go home, and not think twice about it? How could they go crawl into bed and not tell anyone what had happened, get help for their friends?

I don’t recall any criminal charges, though that doesn’t mean there weren’t any. It seems like there probably should have been, but it’s a small town, and maybe it was never pursued?

Anyway, the scene would make for an interesting short story I think, and hopefully it will get it out of my head so I can concentrate on my novel. I’m so *@#@#$ ADD sometimes about my writing!

15 minute fiction

The wind whipped at Andrea’s long black hair as she slowly made her way down the boardwalk. She wasn’t in any hurry – it would be hours before anyone wondered where she was, and the cold sea air was really helping to clear her mind.

So she strolled, breathing deeply, letting her hair fly, letting the wind envelope her. She was a million miles away, staring out over the waves as the water splashed against the rocks in the cove. The sound had always been a comfort, since she was a small girl.

All at once, Andrea’s breath was knocked free of her chest and she found herself sprawled on the hard ground. Dazed, she looked around to see what had sent her flying to the boardwalk. Then there was a warm, wet tongue in her face.

“Chocolate! No!”

The enormous dog was pulled away, with some struggle, and Andrea caught her breath, wiping slobber from her eyes, her nose, her mouth. Finally she looked up, prepared to rip this beast’s owner a new one, and her eyes met his. Her heart stopped, then sped to life again in her throat, making it impossible to speak.

“I’m so sorry about my dog,” the blonde Adonis said, hauling her to her feet with one strong arm.

She shook her head, tried to speak, looked from the man to the huge brown dog at the end of the leash he held.

“Bad Chocolate, bad,” he said, as if to reinforce just how sorry he was.

Still Andrea was speechless, a highly unusual occasion.

He frowned at her. “Are you okay? I’m really sorry about my dog, she’s just a little over-excited sometimes.”

“I’m fine,” she finally sputtered. Her voice sounded unusually high to her ears, forced and tight in her throat.

Still looking unsure, he took her by the arm and turned her around, looking her over, as she stood in bewilderment at why she was letting this strange man touch her like a familiar friend. His frown deepened as he noticed the blood running down her leg, coming from what looked to be a deep cut in her knee. “No, you’re not, you’re bleeding,” he said. “Let me help you, it’s all because of my stupid dog.”

Before she knew what was happening, he was sweeping her up into his arms and carrying her down the boardwalk, Chocolate trailing along behind. She didn’t even have time to argue.

Writing exercise

I am always looking for new and interesting free-writes, and I’ve taken to blog surfing lately. Sooner or later, the two things had to meet up. I was poking around today and came across this livejournal that has a weekly (I think?) challenge they call a “Ficlet,” where they give you a word and you spin it into a story in 15 minutes.

Here is a link to the blog:

http://www.livejournal.com/community/15minuteficlets/

So I thought I would give it a try.
By the way, I entered a writing contest with a similar topic, and for some reason, I can’t really get that out of my head. So I started out with a little brainstorm, then wrote this, which is completely unrelated because it doesn’t fit the “fiction” requirement:

Some days, you just gotta have it. Nothing you can do to control it, nothing you can do to change your mind or divert the course, you absolutely have to have chocolate.

So you get in your car (walking to the store for chocolate certainly seems counter-productive), you drive to the store, and you find that magic aisle, where they keep all of the sweet, sticky, chocolatey goodness.
For a moment, your heart catches in your chest, and it gets hard to breathe. What to choose, what to choose?

After several minutes of brainstorming, here is what I wrote based on today’s word...

Chomping at the bit

Work is crazy busy right now, and life is equally insane, so I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and blog (or write much, for that matter), but there's one thing for sure - I can hardly wait to get started on this novel. It is running through my head all the time. The story is telling itself, developing itself, preparing to be written. It's a very exciting time in the process of noveling!

Noveling, is that a word? Lol.

At any rate, this Saturday we had the first meeting of our local NaNoWriMo group, and in my opinion it went quite well. There were six of us there, including several writers of different abilities and experience levels, it seemed (not that we have shared anything yet to know that for sure!), and I'm very excited to work with all of them. Having a support system is really important for me, and having people to kick me in the butt and tell me to write something is even more important!

We will be getting together every Saturday through the NaNo process, and who knows, maybe continue after that on occasion. High hopes, that's me. :)

Pesky forums

Well, I've spent a lot more time hanging out on the NaNo forums than I have plotting or developing my story...sigh, the total lack of self control that is me procrastinating!

At any rate, at 8 p.m. on Sunday I'm finally sitting here in front of this computer, thinking on my story, and trying to sort through issues that have presented themselves with plot and believability (for instance - is the mother a legal resident of the US? if so, what sort? if not, does this change the way the police investigate?).

None of the names I found during my research are really jumping out at me at this point, so perhaps I need to keep searching on that, as well.

This story is very emotional, and that's my focus at this point. Conveying the emotions properly, drawing the reader in and making them really care for this girl, her mother, the entire scene. An abandoned child draws on the heart strings naturally, but the reader has to really want to find out what happened to her, how she ended up that way.

It's an interesting challenge, and one I'm kind of excited to take on.

Names

On the great search for the perfect name for my characters. Starting with the ladies - pretty, Spanish names, for two pretty girls.

Doing some searching, thought I'd mull over these ideas:

Mother
Elena, means the bright one
Grazia, the Spanish form of grace
Lareina, the queen
Mirabel, of uncommon beauty or Mirabelle, beautiful to look upon
Novia, means girlfriend
Reyna, peaceful or queen
Rosalind, pretty rose
Salma, ambitious
Zarita, princess

Daughter
Damita, means baby princess
Dulcea, sweet
Paloma, dove
Senalda, a sign or symbol
Verda, truth
Tulia, destined for glory

Hmmm...not sure any of these strike me. But maybe if I set them aside and look at them later. :)

Input is certainly welcome!

And the plotting begins

The new idea is one pulled from the headlines, but changed for my own purposes.

A basic outline of the plot...

A woman finds a four-year-old girl, wandering alone in the wee hours of the morning. She is crying, wearing her pajamas, barefoot and cold. The woman takes her in, calls the police, and a search begins for the mother of the little girl.

Then we go to two years earlier, in a South American country. (I haven't started my research on this yet - my initial thought is Venezuela, but it's a bit random, so will firm up with time.)

We meet our characters, a beautiful Latina woman, young (25-ish?), and her husband are having difficulties. She's unhappy, he's unhappy, they fight, though they try not to fight in front of their daughter.

The woman works in a cafe, where she meets an older American man who sweeps her off her feet. He is charming, and promises her the world, which she believes he will give her. Quite suddenly, she takes her small daughter and disappears with the man, leaving behind nearly all of her belongings and just a simple note to say good-bye. She doesn't even call her mother.

The man takes the woman and her child back to the States with him (not sure where he lives yet, but a city of some sort), where the honeymoon period is quickly over.

The man is far less loving and affectionate than the woman had hoped. She feels trapped and alone, far from the passionate excitement she was expecting.

But she is resolved to make it work, so she puts on her best face, and starts to make herself a part of the community. She joins clubs and makes friends, and seems to settle in and become a lot happier.

But the love continues to be cold and distant, and she ends up turning to the arms of another man. It's not intentional, just sort of happens...

The woman continues to live with the man who brought her to the country, but she no longer feels anything for him, and she stops trying to get him to feel something for her.

He knows something is wrong, gets jealous, follows her one day to find out what she is doing. He watches through a window as she and her lover make love, and anger rages within him.

He follows her when she leaves, and catches up with her in their apartment, where he confronts her about her relationship. I'm not totally sure of the details of how this part will go yet, but he kills her, and dumps her body.

Calmly, he goes and picks the little girl up from the friend's home where her mother had left her for her date, and takes her home, tucks her into her bed.

((What happens in his head right here, what he does and what he thinks, I'm going to have to work out a little. Do some research, see what the real man says about this time.))

Hours later, in the middle of the night, he wakes the girl from her bed. She is crying, because he doesn't let her get dressed, but he tells her he is taking her to her mother, so she calms down.

He stops on the side of the street, tells her her mother is in the nearest house, and gets her out of the car. She is crying again as he drives away.

Which brings us back to where we started...

Police, social workers, everyone comes to the girl's aid, trying to figure out who she is and where she came from. They ask her about her mother, she describes her as looking like "a princess," but can give little other description.

Then they put the little girl's face on the television news, and that band of friends her mother has built steps forward. They know who she is, who she belongs to, and her mother is missing.

The man is tracked down (some rising tension here, as they look for him - it was a little too *easy* in the real story for fiction, I think!), and tells the police how he lost his temper because his live-in girlfriend was cheating on him. He tries to play himself as the victim, but no one is buying that, especially considering the small child he abandoned along the way.

(((In the real story, there is a big custody battle, involving grandparents on both sides, and both countries...I am going to have to do some thinking on how I will handle this part. Some research, some thought, and I'll work it out.)))

What happens with the custody issue will determine how my story ends -- this is pretty much where I am at this point.

No one has names yet, I'm going to have to find some pretty Spanish names that fit the girl and her mother appropriately. :)

Ok, scratch that, u-turn

After all the noodling I've been doing on the other story idea, something fell into my lap today that I think is the thing. And with three weeks to go before November 1, it better be the thing!

I came across a story today, a real-life, not fiction story, that screamed at me to tell it. It begged me. And I couldn't look away.

So, here I go, off to research a country in South America.

More to come.

Idea I'm tinkering with

Here is the main idea I am tinkering with, though I do have two others that are being persistent, so I haven't totally decided on one yet.

It's definitely evolving as I write, and each time I think about it, it changes a little, moves a little, grows a little.

I’m thinking of a semi-political piece of modern fiction. This is the one really sticking in my head, the one really eating at me at night, which might mean it’s the right choice, but might mean something entirely different...

The main character I have in mind is a guy (not something I’ve really tried to do before, write a character-driven story, getting inside a guy’s head, rather than a gal’s), in his early 20s. Not sure where he lives yet, but middle America seems appropriate.

His name hasn’t presented itself to me yet, but I'm thinking Ethan?

The plot is sort of secondary to the characters in the idea, but will need to be strengthened a lot if its what I go with. I have threads, though...

For starters, everything in his life seems so freaking NORMAL, he can barely stand it. He’s all middle class, all good guy from a good family. Over the course of the story, though, normal takes some twists for him as he figures out that the people surrounding him aren’t really what he’s always taken them for.

I’m picturing a very strong relationship with a best friend, who is called up to serve in Iraq. He’s gone for a long time, leaving his friend on his own, searching for someone to share life with, to talk to, to hang out with, what ever. But it gets even worse when his friend comes back, and everything is all changed. He’s not the same guy who left, he’s been to war. He’s new and different. The friendship, which had been a crutch his entire life, is all but gone.

I’m not really seeing a romantic relationship for the main character, but I do have in mind sort of an “almost” relationship. A girl he admires, appreciates, even longs for at times, and she shares the same feelings, but they never seem to line up. He’s thinking on her when she’s not thinking of him, and the other way around. A few near misses sprinkled through out the story...

An important thing I want to incorporate here is some political aspects of his life, living as a young American in 2005. Things like his feelings on the war, the president, etc. will all be important. I’m thinking his views are a little more well thought out than those of the people around him, those who consider themselves "conservatives" in the heartland. He has thoughtful and intelligent things to say, though he doesn't always have the nerve to say them out loud. At times he does, though, even if it seems like he shouldn't.

Another character who has come to mind who might help to develop the main character a bit and bring out some of his other sides is an older sister. She’s married with kids, lives a few blocks away, and is a place for him to vent a bit at times. He hangs out in her kitchen while she cooks dinner, and they talk about the world, the family, girls, school, etc. She spends some time wishing she was in her brother’s position, young and ready to take on the world, but doesn’t admit it much.

A plot thread that sort of weaved its way into my head (and could easily weave its way out) was that his dad is having an affair. He knows, but doesn’t let on that he knows, until he accidentally walks in on the two of them (or maybe something more subtle, not sure). Struggling with no one to talk to about it, culminates in a big explosion.

I think the main character wants to be a writer – to go to NY and write plays, or find a quiet place and write a novel. At one point he disappears to his dad’s hunting cabin with his lap top – maybe this is where he stumbles onto the affair.

Being in his early 20s and single, sexuality is of course a part of his life, and probably a part of his struggle. An idea popped into my head yesterday for a scene involving interaction with a hooker. (Not THAT sort of interaction!)

He just left a bar - maybe he was supposed to meet his best friend and he didn't show up, maybe he showed up, but got caught up with his military buddies and didn't notice our hero leaving. At any rate, he is standing outside the bar, leaning against the cold brick exterior of the building, smoking a cigarette and feeling a little sorry for himself. A girl walks up, and asks him if he needs a date.

Now, Ethan is a good boy, and would never consider actually taking her up on her offer - he politely declines, she pushes a little, he almost half considers it, but declines again and leaves. On the drive home, he's beating himself up over it. Why couldn't he just live a little and go with the girl? Then again, why would he ever want to? Think of all the things that could happen...disease, arrest...dear lord, what would he tell his mother if he got arrested for picking up a HOOKER?

Snow on Oct. 5

Okay, so it's snowing, and has been all day. I could let that be incredibly depressing (oh boy, am I ever tempted), or I could look at it as an opportunity... just think how much time I'll have to stay in and write if the weather is horrible in November!

That was depressing in itself.

At any rate, I'm here at the computer, trying to work out some planning and plotting, which is the plan for the next few weeks before November 1. Actually, at this point the best idea is to decide which of my ideas I'm going with, but I suppose there is time for that.

Um...right?