Day 3: No Rest for the Wicked. Or for Novel Writers.

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 (I started the day drinking fancy tea from our honeymoon)

What I’ve learned on Day Three of writing a novel: Don’t rest on Day Two and write nothing on that day just because you have a girls' night with your friend Erica. Resting just makes Day Three that much more daunting.

There is progress though! I’m at 4,594 words and need to get to 6,708 by tomorrow. Good thing it’s the weekend. I’m going to have to schedule time for writing this week or I won’t be able to keep up.

The shape of a plot is coming together already, which is thrilling because that’s the part of novel writing I’ve always feared the most. What do I want to happen? Will I be able to figure it out, or will very interesting characters just roam aimlessly through beautiful places? There’s probably an audience for that too, but it sounds kind of boring.

As I get older, writing about people and places seems less daunting. There’s a lot to draw on, hopefully not in a Deconstructing Harry type of way, but yeah sort of. I mean, it’s hard to write what you don’t know. And it’s more fun anyway to aggregate the most interesting parts of people anyway. So there’s no being sued if I smoosh my aunt, my college friend Cory and the mail guy from my old job into a character who’s a 30-year-old woman. Unrecognizable, so don’t even try. The things I remember about you are not the things you would recognize about yourself.

The very unexpected part of this so far is how much sci-fi is going into this plot. Not like space aliens, but things that are certainly inspired by writing I loved like Never Let Me Go, and a short story by Jennifer Egan, Tom Perotta’s The Leftovers, and Neil Gaiman’s writing, all of it. Fun. I didn’t think that would happen.

So who’s reading this and trying to write a novel (or has ever tried?) Any tips? Please share!

(I finished the day by drinking a Dynamo that my amiga Jess left in our fridge. MMmm. See that book on my table about sewing? Lolz that's not happening this month. )