3:35 PM: Ok.  I feel like I can really get Gallo nailed down today.  There’s a major hanging plot thread from the last book that he needs wrapped up, as well as the things he’s got going on in this book.  Integrating these things will probably be my toughest challenge, planning-wise.

4: 38 PM: Argh, I am so distracted today!  Ok.  Seriously.  Gallo.

5:31 PM: Break for… uh, a meal.  What do you call a cross between lunch and dinner?

6:28 PM: Back.  So, what I have accomplished so far today is mostly… invisible work.  The sort of stuff that is necessary, but results in absolutely zero words on the page.  As much as I know this part needs to happen, I find it frustrating.  It leaves me feeling like I’ve done a big pile of nothing.

8:41 PM: All right.  That was not the best day of liveblogging.  But I think for better or worse, it’s over.

Can I just say, I am loving it? Here’s the thing about the Snowflake Method: it breaks your novel up into discrete chunks you can deal with. Trust me when I say that you cannot hold the plot of your entire novel in your head. I know it seems like you should be able to, because you can do it with books you’ve read. So why on Earth couldn’t you do it with a book you’re writing?

Well, because there is both more and less detail in your own proto-novel. There’s less detail: that whole muddy stretch where your protagonist Learns Something Crucial. You don’t know exactly what or why, but you know that it advances you to the next plot point. And there’s more detail: that part where the victim’s wife gets killed, except maybe it’s actually his ex-wife, or maybe it’s actually his mistress. And maybe she doesn’t get killed, she just gets beaten into a coma, which leads to that whole plot thread where your character wonders whether she’ll recover in time to name her attacker. There are tons of competing, incomplete plot threads that all exist in parallel in your head, and the whole effect is… well, murky.

Which is sort of what the Snowflake helps you cut through. Today I’ll be working on Step Five, Character Storylines. Basically, I’ll be writing a page that tells the story from the point of view of each of the main characters. This is going to be a hard step, because I have a lot of the story from Kitty’s perspective, but Gallo and Koko each have a strong subplot that is really pretty germinal right now. Also, I’ll need to work through the antagonists’ storylines and make sure everything they do makes sense from their perspectives. Should be fun!

2:59 PM: Having a hard time deciding who to start with. I guess it only makes sense to start with Kitty. She should come together fairly easily.

3:34 PM: Or not.

3:49 PM: Officially opening Excel to begin my first scene-by-scene spreadsheet for Book 2. Exciting!

4:32 PM: Ok, so Kitty’s storyline is done. I guess. It needs more detail, but that’s ok, it’s only supposed to be a one-page overview. Time to move on to Mr. Gallo. This one’s gonna be tough.

5:47 PM: Whoops. I got lost in a rat hole on the internet. Back now.

6:01 PM: Ok. Now I’m back.

6:04 PM: Whew. I just realized there’s a major plot thread that I need to deal with that I completely blanked on. Ok. That should make this harder.

7:40 PM: Ok. I’m in kind of a funk here. I need to find some way to refocus on this task. So, I will take ten minutes and just stream-of-consciousness write. Basically, what I’m working on here is a way to tie up lingering threads from Book One.

7:59 PM: Question: What is melodrama? Is it scenarios that are intended to be dramatic, but fail to resonate because the underlying work of building up the emotions has not been done? Or are there situations that are always melodramatic? Basically I’m asking, can I be all soap opera if I earn it?

8:09 PM: So, the stream-of-consciousness got me thinking about some of the major issues, but it didn’t actually land me anywhere. Stream-of-consciousness writing is basically my way of forcing myself to think. If I think inside my head, my thoughts range all over the place, but if I think with my fingers, I can stay on task. My fingers are easier to discipline.

But, as I said, I am still basically in Murkville. More stream-of-consciousness? Whew, here we go.

8:50 PM: Time for desperate measures.  I’m going to go think in the shower.  Which is another way of saying I’m going to relax for a half an hour.

9:34 PM: All right, nothing really got resolved during that shower, but it was nice all the same.  I think I’m done for the day.  See you next week.

The Snowflake appeals to me deep in my soul.  All the organization, all the clarity!  And when he gets to the end and starts talking about three-ring  binders and red pens?  Oooh, bliss.  Seriously.  Whenever I think of the Snowflake Method, I see that three-ring binder in my head.  It would contain everything I needed to know about my novel, all the decisions I needed to make.  (I can write a scene in a couple of hours, but I can spend any amount of time making a decision about it.)

But despite that, I’ve never used it to entirely plan out a novel.  Sometimes I futz around with it for a while, and then I get excited about some idea or other and just start writing.  For the rest of the book I’ll write a little, plan a little, write a little plan a little, write.  Which is absolutely fine, but it does leave you with that dreadful moment at three quarters in, when you’re certain nothing can be done to reconcile your plot.

I would like to avoid that moment this time around, if I could.  So, hi-ho, Snowflake!

12:23 PM: The first step of the Snowflake Method is to write your plot in a single sentence.  I think I should be able to accomplish that relatively quickly.

12: 25 PM: Yup, that was easy.  So, here’s the dilemma I’m always stuck with on this blog.  Not giving details about what I’m working on is obviously a little boring for you, the reader.  But giving you details would, in an awful lot of cases, spoil the plots of the novels I’m hoping to publish.  So, ok, here’s what I’ll do: I’ll split the difference.

Kitty and Mr. Gallo are hired to locate a missing man, only to learn that ____________________________________________.

Ok, that probably wasn’t too satisfying either, was it?

12:30 PM: Next step: same material, one whole paragraph.

12:36 PM: Ok, done.  I think.  It doesn’t feel perfect, but I think that the whole purpose of this system is to sort of go back and forth a little, perfecting the earlier steps based on what you’ve learned in the later ones.

12: 47 PM: So, the next step.  Character outlines, just the broad strokes.

1:16 PM: One character down, seven (eight?) to go.

1:45 PM: Ok, still working on Character #2.  But this is definitely helping to generate new ideas, and illuminate the places where the storyline is weak.

2:02 PM: Ok, Character #2 done.  Perhaps slightly messy.

2:04 PM: So, one thing keeps bugging me, which is the name of my missing man, Amos Wayne.  Actually, his surname.  I wanted something that suggested a somewhat impoverished, working class character, and I guess it does.  But that twang in the middle of “Wayne” just keeps saying Southern to me.  Which he isn’t.  So, I need a new name and I’ve been putting it off because it seemed like something that could be done at any old time.  But I guess I want to go ahead and take care of it.

2:21 PM: Amos Black?  Amos Pitt?  Amos Hogan? Amos Hodge? Amos Skinner?  Amos Orr? Amos Sears? Amos Best? Amos Barry? Amos Horne? Amos Peck? Amos Sykes? Amos Haines? Amos Heeney? Amos Hewatt?

2:22 PM: Amos Heeney.

2:23 PM: Does that still sound Southern?

2:33 PM: Three characters done.  One important plot point changed and now infinitely more resonant.

2:34 PM: Ok, I need another name.  This one for a corrupt cop.  At first I was thinking McGinty, but I dunno… it’s begun to sound sort of half-hearted to me.

2:36 PM: Sort of too cute, I think that’s the problem with it.  Also possibly too common.

2:37 PM: I do sort of want something Irish though.  Kennedy?  Burke? Flynn? Nolan? Maguire?  Cullen…. no, wait, that’s reserved for vampires… Bell?  Boyle?  Cassidy?  Dolan?  Keating?  Kirwan?  Killoran?  O’Dea?  O’Dowd?  O’Hagan?  Prendergast?  Quigley?

2:48 PM: Ok, I know it has a humorous bent, but I am really drawn to Quigley.  Which would of course require me to give up Heeney.  Dangnabit.

3:18 PM: Ok, we have two corrupt cops: young, bright Matthew Keating and his older, balding errand boy, Patrick Quigley.  Which means Thelma and Amos Heeney are now Thelma and Amos Hodge.  Ain’t planning grand?

3:33 PM: Four characters down.  One thing I really like about the Snowflake’s character sketches is that they ask you to find an epiphany for each character–AKA, what that character learns.  And while it’s easy to have your antagonist, or at least your secondary or tertiary antagonist learn nothing in a novel, I think it’s worthwhile to push yourself to write down an epiphany for every character.  You can always discard it later if it feels out of character or two touchy-feely.  But so far, coming up with characters’ epiphanies has been an excellent prompt for discovering new aspects of the novel.

3:36 PM: If you include Quigley, I actually have not just a secondary and tertiary antagonist, but also a quaternary antagonist in this book.

3:37 PM: Internet awesomeness: you can just type “what comes after tertiary” into Google.  Life is good.

3:49 PM: Five characters down.  Boom!

3:50 PM: Ok, Character #6.  Primary antagonist.  I have left him this long because I do NOT know what his goal is.  I mean, I know what he does, and what that action accomplishes for him.  But there’s a missing piece in his motivation:  what he does also significantly helps a rival.  That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.  That’s what I need to unravel.  That’s what’s been messing up all my plans for this novel thus far.

5:03 PM: All right, still not done with Fiore, but I’ve got to sign off.  A couple of guys are coming over here to whup my butt at bridge tonight, and I need to make up some of my famous chili so that I can still feel good about myself after I’m down 30 IMPs.

Two nights ago my writing group workshopped the first couple of scenes.  And we wound up having a long conversation about sex.

I have known for a long time that the chronic issue in Book 2 will be the resolution of Kitty and Gallo’s relationship.  It will be about them coming together in that final way that people do.  It will be about the transition from that youthful love that says “I want you” to that more mature love that says “I want you to be happy.”  It will be partially, but certainly not entirely, about sex.

As Book 2 opens, they have been dating for a year.  And they are not yet doing the nasty.  My writing group found this sort of implausible.    They thought it would be torture for my male lead, and just not reasonable.  They’re a great bunch, and I don’t intend to discount their collective opinion lightly.  But there’s a certain piling on that can take place in a workshop, where Reader A says something bothered him, and that sounds like a reasonable complaint to Reader B, who echoes it even though it didn’t actually bother him during his read-through.  And regardless of whether that happened in this case, it’s my name on the book.  And I’m just not sure I agree.

Here are my points:Point #1: We’re talking about 1929.  I’m sure people had normal sexual desires in the twenties, but I’m not entirely persuaded that their sexual expectations were similar to today’s.  I think women found sexual advances more threatening once upon a time.  Because they were more threatening.  Condoms weren’t really in popular use until WWII (they were widely distributed in an effort to keep down V.D. among the troops).  And yes, people always had ways of preventing pregnancy, but they weren’t necessarily as safe and reliable as today’s.

And Point #2: There’s real time, and then there’s story time, and the same rules don’t necessarily apply to both.  My readers will be aware, when they pick up Book 2, that a year has passed since Book 1.  But they won’t have felt it pass.  I think this makes a difference.  I don’t think the first three or four years of Ross and Rachel putting each other through the ringer on Friends bothered me, even though I found their inability to communicate maturely about their relationship at least as bizarre as my group found my characters’ sexual abstinence (and yes, after five or six years, it did get old).  The way I see it, it’s a story.  It really only exists when we’re observing it.  You can say that those first seasons of Friends took three years, or you can say that they took thirty-six hours.  The real answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

All of this is to say that I am not quite sure whether to follow my writing group’s advice and either (1) compress the timeline between books, or (2) move my characters into a sexual relationship before the start of Book 2.  Currently I am leaning toward No, but I would welcome any opinions on the matter.

4:41 PM: What I need, I think, is a good overview of Book 2.  I have 3 ideas for significant storylines, and bandwidth for about two.  Which means it’s time to flesh them all out and see which one to cut.

5:37 PM: A lot of what I do when I’m planning, or trying to work out problems in a story, is a kind of stream of consciousness writing.  It’s all stuff like, “Ok, so I no longer like the ending where she kills her husband, I need another twist.”  Basically, this is my way of forcing myself to think.  I try to keep it going as rapidly as possible, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last hour or so.  I am getting close to trying to shoehorn all three stories in.  If I do cut one, I think it’s going to be the one I introduced to my writing group on Tuesday.

6:02 PM: Distracting myself with chat.

6:05 PM: I now have a very good intersection for Plotlines #1 and #3.  Which means things aren’t looking so hot for plotline #2.

7:48 PM: Still mostly bits and pieces.  But time for dinner anyway.

The first sentence of Scene 2 is now the first sentence of the book.  And while it’s a perfectly serviceable sentence, it is frankly not worthy of that honor.  So, Liveblogging Thursday today will consist of Getting This Right.  My plan is to generate many first sentences, perhaps even several first paragraphs.  And then pick the one that is most stellar.

3:00 PM: A late start again.   Perhaps I should just start redefining 3:00 as the beginning of my work day.  There’s really nothing standing in the way of that.

3:04 PM: Eating a broccoli salad while I work.  I made a lot less dressing this time, reasoning that a broccoli salad dripping with mayo and sugar sort of ceases to be healthy.  It turns out a broccoli salad not dripping with mayo and sugar sort of ceases to be delicious.  So, that’s a disappointment.

3:11 PM: You know what everyone hates?  A blank page waiting for one perfect sentence to come down from on high and make it beautiful.

4:12 PM: Several imperfect sentences later, I am feeling a bit lost.  I’m going to chill for a bit.  Back in an hour.

5:20 PM: Back.  All right, it is time to muscle through.  Ten first sentences.  Doesn’t matter whether they’re crappy or great, they just need to get done.

6:19 PM: Eight and a half sentences.  Remembering fondly that hour, around four, when I didn’t work but instead watched an old episode of DS9.  That was a halcyon hour of my youth.

6:28 PM: Ten sentences.  Do they all suck?

1. I stepped onto the platform in Chicago’s Grand Central Station.
2. A day and a half of travel had given me time enough to read Uncle Owen’s letter another twenty times.
3. A day and a half of travel had taken some of the gleam out of my eyes, but the moment we pulled into Chicago’s Grand Central Station, it was back.
4. The train ride from St. Eliphas, Iowa, to Chicago took a day and a half.  That was time enough for me to make friends with all the porters, mend a hole in my left stocking, and reread Uncle Owen’s letter another twenty times.
5. Even before I stepped onto the platform I knew Chicago was everything I’d hoped it would be.
6. Chicago.
7. Chicago smelled like no other place I had ever smelled before.
8. The first thing that happened to me in Chicago was a new sensation that came over me—a sense of my own smallness and insignificance in the face of this, the first truly big place I’d ever seen.  The second thing was a purse snatching.
9. If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to make an appearance.
10. I stepped down onto the platform and tried to look like I belonged there.

Favorites are probably 4, 7, and 10.

8:12 PM: All right, I guess I have a beginning.  It’s a variant on sentence 10.  Needs to be polished up and such, but it’ll serve.

That’s ok, because today we have the new, better, extra special Liveblogging Thursday.  Today I’m going to be working on the sequel to my book.  It takes me about 45 scenes to make a book.  It might be 43, or 48, but it’ll be somewhere in that neighborhood.  It occurred to me a couple of days ago that if I managed to either write or edit one scene per work day for the rest of the year, I’d have time to write 90 scenes and edit 45.  That is, I’d have time to write a book, even accounting for a lot of missteps and discarded plot lines along the way.

If I managed this, it would be a significantly contracted schedule from that of my last book (which took about two years).  It would also be a schedule that would enable me, once published, to put two books on the shelf every year (or nearly two books, assuming that I needed to take some time for promotion and touring).  It would also be  a schedule that would enable me to flirt around with new ideas without feeling like I was abandoning this series.  In short, it’s a worthy goal.

Day One of the new regime went off very well, and I so I am presently on Scene #2 of Book #2: Home Sick Home.

3:42 PM: Got off to a late start today.  Still think I should be able to finish, though.  I have the idea for how the scene will roll out, I just need to get it down.

4:37 PM: I think last week I said that the thing I like best about writing is the scene making.  Well, the thing I like least is the decision making.  I know that sounds contradictory, and I guess it is.  But this is true:  I can spend any amount of time making a decision.

5:29 PM: Taking a break for an hour or two.  Back before too long.

6:34 PM: Back.

6:54 PM: One of my favorite sites: www.ssa.gov.  For all your historical baby naming needs.

7:45 PM: Meet Alice Wayne, AKA Plot Device.  (I’ll have to use her again later if I want to make sure that isn’t the case.)

8:03 PM: Ok, I know how I’m going to use her.  More or less.

8:07 PM: Getting close to the end of this scene.

8:16 PM: Out of power.  Gotta head home. 

10:10 PM: Home.  Ate dinner, watched a (sad) Deadliest Catch, and now I’m ready to finish off this scene.

10:53 PM: Done.  This scene is exactly the sort of scene that is the hardest for me to edit.  There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, except for the fact that it is not fantastic.  Oh, well.  That’s a task for another day.

Today I plan to start on a new book.  Not the sequel to my current book, but a whole new project, something Mark and I dreamed up during our what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to conversation last week.  I’m still mostly interested in a series following from The Big Life, but that is obviously predicated on… well, The Big Life selling.  I’m planning to work on the sequel soon, but it will do me no harm to tool around with another idea in the meantime.

What I Have: A strong hook, and half a dozen protean characters.

What I Need: Everything else.

4:45 PM: I have had the way this scene goes in my mind for days.  Some people say they like writing better than editing; some people say they like editing better than writing.  I know it sounds weird, but I am not huge on either.  What I like is… scene making.  I really don’t know how else to describe it.  Figuring out what will happen, how it will go down, what images and emotions will be central to a scene… that’s what I like.  The writing… sometimes, that can be hard.

I’m taking a quick break to read Outlander’s story for Writing Group tonight.

5:27 PM: Back.  Man, that was a sad story.

5:33 PM: Ok, that big moment I was writing to is done.  It went down pretty well, I think.

6:26 PM: And they find a body.  Dun dun dun!

6:30 PM: On page three.  Because I’m not messing around.

7:04 PM: Breaking again to read some more stuff for writing group.  Back before too long.

8:05 PM: All right, I think I’m done for the day.  Not a great day of liveblogging, but I have some good pages and some neat ideas.  Gotta make dinner and get ready for group.

But what I really, really want to write is a pan of Sex and the City 2.

So if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I promise we’ll get to the liveblogging in due course.  Spoilers in…

3

2

1

I used to love Sex and the City.  The writing for that show was scintillating, not only funny, but also often very interesting and moving.  The writing for the movie… uh, not so much.  They ditched the interesting, and the moving.  And the funny?  Well, they tried for it, but it didn’t really manifest, since most of the lines seemed forced.  Case in point:

Sexy Stranger: Lovely to meet you, Samatha.  I’m Rikard Spurt.

Samantha: Isn’t Rikard the same as Richard?

Rikard: Yes.

Samantha: So your name is Dick Spurt?

Rikard:  Could you be any more American?  I don’t think so.

Translation…

Samantha: So your name is A Name Obviously Constructed In Order To Give Me a Very Moderately Funny Joke?

Rikard:  Could you be any more carelessly written?  I don’t think so.

Samantha was a complete disaster in this movie.  She used to be lewd in a way that was downright erotic in its frankness and confidence.  But in this movie she was gratuitously, pointlessly lewd in a way that was, frankly, a little bit gross.  Even Samantha ought to have had more class than to scream “labia” while surrounded by Muslim men.

Samantha annoyed me a lot in this movie, but the character who really got under my skin was Carrie.  Sadly, this is the one thing that did remain consistent from television to movie:  Carrie can be the most unbelievably selfish brat.

On the show, she was constantly doing things that shocked me (most of them to Aidan).  But I put them aside and loved her anyway, because she was so interesting, and I really did want her story to have a happy ending.

But, man.

If you kiss your old flame, and feel you have to tell your husband (and I’m frankly not sure you should), by all means do not call him in the middle of the night while he is in New York and you are in Abu Dhabi.  It’s like, “Hi, sweetheart, I’d like you to know I kissed the One Who Got Away.  While you’re home alone for the next few days and I’m completely out of your reach (but just a short walk away from that other dude), have fun thinking about that.  I’ve obviously been thinking about it a lot, because I’m calling you about it at 2:30 in the morning.  So, you know, clearly it meant a great deal to me.”

But even that wouldn’t bother me so much if Carrie’s lines during the scene where she debates confessing weren’t all about her.  “I don’t want the secret.”  I, I, I.  No “Don’t I owe him my honesty?” No “Should I really hurt him that way?”  Nope, it’s all about Carrie.  She’s perfectly willing to indulge in any sort of flight of fancy if she thinks it’s something she needs.  But she never makes the mental leap to thinking about what her man needs.

Ok, enough.  I knew going in that SATC 2 was going to be, you know, mediocre.  Really, after the first movie I stopped considering these films to be canon.  But yeesh.  What a way to kill a franchise.

And now, on with the liveblogging:

2:51 PM: I am thinking about amping up my query letter today.  The way I see it, the query letter exists for two purposes:  (1) To sell the aspects of your book that don’t appear in the first five pages and (2) To sell yourself—if not your publishing credentials, at least your professionalism.  I think my query does a decent job of both, but it could maybe be slightly better at #1.  That’s the goal for the first part of today.

3:49 PM: Ok, yugh.  Mark dragged me out of the Barnes and Noble where I was working, and then we lost about an hour to Atlanta’s craptastic traffic.  So, starting now, I am really liveblogging.

4:15 PM: Ok, first change: Replacing “It is the first in a proposed series that looks at the hard-boiled world of guns and gangsters from a feminine point of view” with “It is a spin on the classic hard-boiled detective novel—from the secretary’s point of view.  Although it could function as a standalone, it could also anchor a series.”  Essentially the same information, except (1) stated in a more “hook-y” way, and (2) I left open the option for a standalone (even though I don’t think this is actually a major deal; these types of books tend to sell as series).

4:33 PM: Considering the possibility of one of those “This Book is a wild romp full of X, X, and X.” kind of sentences.  So, what is my book full of?  Making a list… I won’t include this sentence unless it can sparkle with specificity and interest.

4:58 PM: Ok, scrapping that idea.  Here is what I really want to do: I want to inform agents that there is a strong romantic aspect to my book.  Because that’s a significant selling point, and it’s not yet obvious from either the query or the first five pages.  So maybe I just need a new paragraph related to the romantic subplot.

5:45 PM: How can it take so long to write something so short?

5:47 PM: How?  Because I agonize over every phrase, that’s how.

6:06 PM: And because I get distracted.

6:53 PM: At dinner now.  Actually, here is the real problem.  The real problem is that I am having trouble, emotionally, letting go of my last query letter, which I liked, and which got about a 1-in-3 hit rate in partial requests.  The plot summary went a little something like this:

It’s 1928, and farm girl Kitty Carmichael arrives in Chicago determined to reinvent herself—and to mooch off her rich uncle as long as possible.  Instead she discovers that her uncle has been murdered, his fortune is missing, and his half-Japanese daughter, Koko, has been left in her care.

It’s a responsibility she shoulders less than gracefully.  But as she works to solve her uncle’s murder—and more importantly, get her hands on his cash—Kitty discovers a simple truth: you can’t live the Big Life without a big heart.

I thought—I still think—this has a certain elegance.  It encapsulates the core emotional story—selfish young woman grows up—succinctly, and I think with a touch of flare.  But it’s also tight.  Each sentence depends upon the last one.  It doesn’t easily admit the insertion of another line about “ZOMG, also, she meets this handsome dude.”

And yet that is what I have been trying to get it to do.  So I think my job now is to try looking at this query completely afresh.  I’m going to start from scratch with it, even though I’m hoping to later integrate some of the language from Query #1.  But hopefully a blank slate will give me a fresh eye.

7:57 PM: Slowly getting somewhere…

9:15 PM: One sentence left…

And I’ve found this to be a plus and minus of liveblogging as well.  I’d like to do it again in the future, but I don’t think I’m going to commit to seeing a whole project through with it again.

Here’s where I am with Harold’s story: About one scene farther that I was when last we spoke of it.  Can I just say: What a difference a scene makes!  I am currently deep into The Scene, the scene I first envisioned when I started this story, the scene I’ve been writing toward the whole time.  It’s the scene where Harold reaches out and makes a connection.  Right now, the words are flying (which is good, because I have a Writing Group Deadline I’m already pushing).

2:39 PM: Getting in some good voice-y bits for Harold.  In a later draft, I’ll need to make sure these are more present throughout.

3:07 PM: Inventing a richer history for Harold.

3:21 PM: Done with The Scene, and it wasn’t too bad if I do say so myself.  I thought there’d only be one more to write after this, but it turns out there’s two.

3:29 PM: Argh, not a plot snafu!  Not now!

3:34 PM: Solved.

3:44 PM: Penultimate scene down.  Ultimate scene: engage!

4:26 PM: One last big emotional moment.  Come on.  Get there.

4:50 PM: Hallelujah.  It’s done.

So, let me wrap this up.  That story took an insanely long time to write.  In-sane-ly.  Part of the trouble was that it’s been a while since I wrote a short story; I’ve been an exclusively novel girl for four or so years now.  It’s just sort of a different thing.

And part of it is that is was just an inherently challenging story.  At any rate, I am very happy to have a draft of it complete.  I’ll see what my writing group has to say about it tomorrow.  Despite the fact that this first draft is slightly rough, I have high hopes for the final version.

Harold’s story has been a very difficult one for me to write.  Dude is seriously the hardest protagonist I’ve ever worked with.  Here are a few of the reasons:

1. Harold is male, elderly, and severely handicapped.  I cannot claim a lot of experience with any of these conditions.
2. Harold’s handicaps make him extremely inactive.  This is not, generally, a good quality in a protagonist.
3. Harold is intended to be bitingly witty.  I am not bitingly witty.
4. Harold really cares more about his past than his present.  Which means lots of backstory, flashbacks, and other things that are tough to handle well

Add to this the fact that this is my first short story in years, and my first in the mystery genre, period.  I know plenty about mystery novels, but mystery stories are kinda different.  They’re often limited to one, maybe two twists, and some of them are really more crime stories than actual mysteries.  I am having to feel my way a little bit

Now, here’s what the story has going for it:

1. I have both a good acute issue (plot) and a good chronic issue (emotional story).  And they relate well to each other.
2. I really do like Harold very much.
3. I have a strong sense of exactly what each scene should entail.  (Though that doesn’t mean that getting the specifics down is necessarily easy.)

And so, once more into the breach…

2:21 PM: Ensconced in a corner of the office, ready to start.

2:54 PM: Just having a hard time concentrating today.  Mark keeps talking about going out to see Iron Man 2.  So tempting…

2:58 PM: Ok, I am going back to the drawing board on Scene 3.  Right now it’s just a conversation Harold overhears.  I need to find a way to make his voice a part of it.

3:44 PM: Laundry’s done.   Break for folding.

4:18 PM: Back.  But honestly, this is going nowhere fast.  I think I’m going to try not liveblogging this story for a while, and see if I can get some traction on it.