I’m in a happy place regarding the novel, and still enjoying the whole NaNoWriMo experience. This week I took some time to contact some of my “writing buddies” and really enjoyed hearing about their processes. One has already gotten past 50,000 words. She is in South Africa, a woman my age who is writing a sailing adventure/midlife journey novel. She reports that she is nowhere near done, and doesn’t like her “goody two shoes” main characters. She was hoping the character would be more like her!
Another buddy, one of my former students from the 1990s, is writing a horror/fantasy novel. And, despite his outline, his characters are misbehaving and causing him all sorts of trouble. He’s going to have to go back just to take care of some of their unruly actions. And maybe do some research at the local police department to figure out what to charge them with!
A third buddy, in Santa Barbara, is writing a romance. She writes erotica professionally, and it’s been a blast reading her stories (all revolving around suede shoes of different colors) online.
My novel is shaping up nicely. I hit a point in the story where someone said something so devastating to my main character that I couldn’t really face it. So I went back and started writing the backstory, which sailed along beautifully. Now I’ve caught up to the “present” (only 22,000 words written, but it felt great to hit that 20,000 mark). I have a tricky romance to manage, and am still looking for a solution to my crime.
I for one think it’s a very good thing to have characters taking things into their own hands. I even had the experience this week of going to bed with a scene written one way and realizing that a little kid and a questionable parenting reaction could really turn it around. It took something rather pedestrian and revealed a lot about one of the characters. And it opened the door for a relationship between the kid and my main character I wasn’t expecting.
I’m looking forward to the romance, and have been thinking the past two days about secret meeting places for them, and just seeing them in my head together. And it has become clear, though I don’t know what the secret reason is for the crime yet, that I have a very good reason now for it to stay secret once my main character discovers the truth.