the tree with the lights in it

I almost met my word count goal for today.  I am about 150 words short.  I suppose I still have time to write them, and I might.  I've gotten into a groove of doing my last bit of writing for the night by hand, from bed.  It's sort of nice.

It is also nice that there is a fire going in my fireplace right now.  I cheated and used a fire log.  I justify it because I wanted ambiance rather than heat, and a fire with actual logs generates quite a bit.  Plus, a fire log is made of recycled materials.  I'll pretend that material usage and general impact of the manufacturing, packaging and shipping don't more than negate that.

I got 1100 words written at my parents this afternoon and then typed in what I'd handwritten last night.  I didn't write a whole ton besides that, but word-count-wise it still worked out.  I do think i have a bit of a better handle on my story and characters now, though.

I love learning things about the plot and the characters as I write.  I think it's the best thing about writing.  The surprises.  It would sound ridiculous to someone who doesn't write, I think, that you discover what the story is as you write it.  I didn't know that my FMC worked at a social services agency or that she had a best friend named Alana and I didn't know that she generally considered herself practical and realistic rather than imaginative or artistic.

I also learned that my MMC isn't going to make an appearance for a bit longer because his sister is currently representing him in his contact with my FMC.  My MMC is a lot more vulnerable than I realized and my FMC therefore needs to be a lot stronger, which she can be, she just doesn't know it yet.

Anyway, I could go on forever about my discoveries and what I've learned about my characters.  I love it.  And as I've said before, I'm far more into my characters than my plot.  The plot, to me, always ends up being a vehicle for the reader to get to know the characters and for the characters to get to know each other and themselves.  Now, when I say reader, it's purely hypothetical, as there is no reader besides myself.  So perhaps I should say writer instead.

I also learned that another one of my real-life friends is doing nanowrimo, so now there are four people I actually know who I also know are doing nanowrimo.  For all I am aware of there could be many more.  Two of them are actually in my area, which is cool.  And one is a state away and one is on another continent!

I am hoping work goes quickly tomorrow and somehow I'm done early so I can write.  I want to go out somewhere and write because it's generally more pleasant to me.  At the very least I have a library book to return in [childhood hometown], so maybe I'll write somewhere in the vicinity.  If there's anywhere with outlets.  It's not exactly the sort of town where people go out with their laptops to do work or 'surf the web' or have business meetings.  It's more of a meet up with the 'good old boys' or play some quick-draw sort of place.

And I'm getting sick of the available establishments in CP(current town where I life). Starbucks doesn't have much atmosphere, Panera has poor outlet placement, Borders is always full or the only seats available are in the middle of the room, which I dislike, [local coffee shop] is good, but i spent most of nano '09 there, and [other local coffee shop] is too fancy and staying-for-a-meal oriented for lengthy loitering of the writing type.  Oh, and the library has a strange ringing noise that no one else seems to notice but i find terribly distracting and headache-precipitating.

So i'm still looking for a place.  I'll keep you updated.

 

I have met my goal for day one, which was 2500 words.  But I want to keep writing.  I'm not though, because I have some other things to do, like post here and write an email to my boss, which I am really putting off doing.  I may just talk to her in person.

I teach music at a Christian School.  We just started the program this year, and I designed it entirely myself.  After two months, it needs a little tweaking though.  I just hope she goes for it, and implements the changes quickly.  I'm also pretty sure my supplies were never ordered.

But anyway, I've reaffirmed my previous conclusion that plot is totally secondary to me compared with character development.  I never meant that to be the case, and I'd like to be better at writing action, but It just hasn't happened.  

I'm also a lot better at writing in the first person than the third person, which I never expected.  I was pretty against first person for a long time, reading and writing-wise.  But, obviously, I've gotten over that.  I might end up switching this year's NaNo novel to first person eventually.  I switched last year's back and forth a few times and then settled on a combo of first person for current day and third person for dream/vision/back-story scenes. 

Last year's novel, Octaves was totally fictional and the story was not inspired by my own life.  This year's however, Finding You, was inspired by my own life events, although it's not at all autobiographical.  

My own experience of having spent time in a psychiatric hospital and meeting someone there who I connected with and then lost touch with is the inspiration for Finding You.  The main characters are totally themselves, however, and their reasons for being in the hospital, their personalities and their families are not based on myself or the person I used to know.

Another difference between Octaves and Finding You is that Octaves took place in fictional cities, towns, etc.  Finding You, on the other hand, takes place in real-life settings, and it takes place in the area I live in.

So, between these two things, I worry that people I know (If I ever let them read any of it, after many, many drafts) will think the FMC (female main character) is a fictionalization of me and that her significant other is a fictionalization of my husband, and on and on it goes.  But, as I said, they're not.

One might say this is pointless worry, but I'm also a songwriter, and people like to read into my lyrics all the time.  In the end, I've only written 2500 words so far, probably no one will ever read it, and I know it's fiction, so I'm going to stop worrying for the moment.

And now i'm going to go see if the NaNoWriMo site is working.