A Day in a Life

Our Alhambra place, one of a stretch of duplexes, is like a hut, small, old, and cozy. There's plenty of other things to do but I'm choosing to do this. Varying feelings and sensations flow through me. If I don't label them they're merely visitors.

It's Sunday. My husband has the game on. The Saints could move up to second or first place if they win today's game and another team from another game loses. Brianna of Outlander just arrived two hundred years into the past to find her mother. Mirabelle of Shopgirl is entering upon a Tuesday when she will receive her mysterious gloves. Marina contemplates what to do with the rest of her morning. She is not so much contemplating as waiting for whatever it is to become obvious.

Five minutes later and she had read the Tuesday chapter from Shopgirl. The obviousness is still hiding somewhere behind her like a skittish cat. Maybe she should write in her blog. She thinks that she should write what she knows without an agenda. Just her life—simple and uneventful. The best way to start a story is right in the middle.

The Saints are whooping Panthers's booty. Marina read a chapter of What the Wind Knows, a recommendation made by her sister. It's supposed to be about time travel. She can feel it coming but it hasn't happened yet.

Two hours later after some cleaning up, a trip to CVS to get a one-year wedding anniversary card for her husband, scanning some second chance lottery tickets into the new phone app, she finds herself going back to Shopgirl. It's the part when Steve Martin describes the main character's monotonous life. Marina can relate. She is the sub girl to the shop girl. She too watches the clock tick away when she is at her post as temporary teacher. She too finds her job "immaterial" to her artist's lifestyle. She too gets satisfaction from having done her work, her small contribution to society while she whittles away at some book or other or a musical project with her husband.

The Saints won. The other game, however, is more questionable.

A minute later, the wrong team won by a hair. Marina feels her husband's disappointment although he thinks she doesn't care. They are now looking at places to stay for their one year wedding anniversary. Their aim is to go to Sierra Nevada, which will take them on a picturesque drive to find some worthy hot springs.

CREATING MARINA

NaNoWriMo Draft Completed

I am pleased to announce that I completed the first draft of a new novel through NaNoWriMo November challenge. In fact, I finished my 51,199 words a week and a half earlier. Getting back to novel writing was like immersing myself in warm bath water, it felt good and familiar. It did what I was hoping it would do, renewed my desire for writing fiction. It was all there, everything I've learned over the years, coupled with new found instincts that developed over time.

The next step is to let the draft rest for a couple of weeks before doing a read-through. While it's resting, I am working on story development involving character work, plot, and research. Writing the first draft tends to be the heart and feel of the story. The drafts that follow it are to develop what's already there without losing its feel and essence.

For development, I'm working with Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. She's a proponent of short assignments, and now, so am I. That means that you never have to take on the entire project all at once. With short assignments all you ever have to do is take a scene, a moment, an image, a character, or whathaveyou, and just work on that. What is a novel if not a compilation of small moments strung together by theme and feel?

Every day I feel like exploring a different aspect of the story. I've learned that I don't have to work on it linearly. Once the rough draft has been put down, whatever wants to be developed is up for grabs. I believe that eventually it will all come together. If I'm only working on what I feel good about at the moment then I never have to risk losing the feel through the surgical process of writing many drafts.

CREATING MARINA