Tuesday, November 27, 2007

NaNoWriMo: Day 26

Well, it's after midnight, but just barely. I've been steadily catching up, writing more than 12,000 words between Saturday night and Sunday night, and now another couple thousand tonight, meaning just over 13,000 words to go, in four days, in order to make the goal I set out for. Attainable, but barely. There's a night meeting in there. That could cause trouble, but likely not much more than the children who tonight enjoyed running in every half hour to tell me they weren't asleep or this or that. We won't talk about the raisins all over the floor. I did take time out to enjoy dinner with them, and hear about the letters to Santa they're writing. Next week things will return a bit more to sanity, though I'm hoping to at least somewhat keep the writing thing up, though perhaps not with quite the output expectation this last month has meant. Besides, next month I'll be needing to grab some index card and start writing down all the bits and pieces I've written up and try to put them in some sort of sensical order. While writing this, I've truly solidified my membership card in the Right Brain Club. My structure is definitely not lineal. And as much as I think some of it's pure crap as I write it, more and more seems better as I glance back. But there's definitely some plot stumpage that requires me to sleep on it to move forward as quickly as I hope. And with that in mind, I wrap this up and go to sleep.

Day 26 excerpt:

Therese sat on the couch. Unmoving. Her face was a bit gray. Liz wasn’t quite sure what to say to her friend. Therese was obviously in a different world, her eyes distant. Her mouth still, not edging up or down. Just still. Therese had just gotten home from the hospital. She’d miscarried 6 months into her pregnancy. Six months into a pregnancy that was 10 years in the making. And she hadn’t been old when she started. A mere 25. ... It should have been easy. It should have been a no-brainer. In Therese’s family, it was a well-known joke that her parents had conceived her and her six brothers and sisters on every kind of birth control known to mankind. She was a condom baby. Two of her sisters were conceived on the pill. Her youngest brother was brought into the world while her mother was on Depo. Another two brothers … IUD. And the eldest, of course, was a present from the rhythm method. But of Therese and her six siblings, only one had been able to conceive. The other six, all married by 25 and trying by 30 hadn’t been able to seal the deal no matter how many methods and interventions they tried. Adoption was definitely an option, but somehow, slowly, quietly, the adoption world was no longer clamoring for parents.

Now I really have you confused, don't I. Really, this is the same story. Just wait. You'll see. Maybe. If I ever finish ... off to dreamland, hoping to dream of some plot bridges.

Afterthought: I take little comfort in the fact that if I added up all my blogging on this novel writing, that I'd probably be over 50,000 words. Add in the procrastinating e-mails while I should have been noveling. The messaging. The stupid Facebook pirate game. ... I don't want to think about it. Ok. Sleep. Really, will go sleep now ...

2 comments:

rg said...

Is it an english pronunciation or French (for therese)?

Alicia said...

Good question. I'm hedging toward the French I believe. But honestly, when writing, I hate naming. Trying to ponder a name that doesn't bring up all kinds of predisposed notions due to the real-life people I know who are connected with said names is hard. Odds are I'll change all the names when I go through the editing process. I try not to think about the names at this point. It slows me down.