A Work in Progress

Yes, it’s that time of year again.

Snow has begun to fall (well, in some places, not yet here in California), the leaves have changed to autumn colors, and there is a brisk feeling in the air that wasn’t there a mere few weeks ago. The winter holidays approach all too quickly. The thoughts of writers everywhere (okay, maybe not everywhere, but in lots of places throughout the world) turn to . . . National Novel Writing Month!

For those of you unfamiliar with the event, it’s an annual form of madness that overtakes the fiction writing community during that time when the last of the Halloween candy has been handed out (although not necessarily eaten) and the last of the leftovers from Thanksgiving are gone from the refrigerator (depending, of course, on the size of your turkey—your poultry mileage might vary).

This year’s effort is planned as a sequel to the story I wrote in screenplay form for Script Frenzy in 2008. At first, I didn’t think the story concept, while a sound one, had enough substance to support the goal of 50,000 words. Over the past few weeks, though, as I’ve given it some thought, more details and other pieces are beginning to fall into place. I’m feeling more confident that’s an achievable goal with this idea now.

From the “As If That’s Not Challenging Enough” Department:
I half-joking told a waitress at a local restaurant that if she didn’t behave that I’d put in her in my novel next month. (She was actually doing her usual top-notch job. She’s one of our favorite employees there and one of the reasons that we keep going back.) Rather than react with either appropriate chagrin or that look of “Uh huh, no more Hefeweizen for you”, she just gave me a characteristically impish smile and said that she was looking forward to reading it. I do believe that she was completely serious. Yikes. We’ll see how this works out . . .

As usual, you can follow the statistics for my daily progress here and whatever I’ve written for the day here.

Write on!