Saturday, January 30, 2010

Day 5. Shape Up and Ship Out

Today's mission is going to be totally lost on those of you who can't see the actual book I've been using. There's a blank in the shape of a sailboat. My goal was to write until the whole thing was filled in. As is often the case because of my freakishly large handwriting, I ran out of space in record time (and in mid-sentence) and was glad for the unlimited space that enables me to carry on here. Bonnie Neubauer, the author of the book I've been using, warned me that at some point I would probably latch onto one of the ideas that flowed out of a prompt and would want to run with it instead of carrying on with daily 10-minute exercises. I don't know if it was the power of suggestion or the natural progression of things, but I think that time has already come. I may take a break from the prompts for a while and work with this, but know that if I do, I will continue to blog/write daily because ultimately, that was the goal (sort of like Maureen Johnson's BEDA - Blog Every Day April - except instead of being 30 days long, it's going to hopefully be 365).

At first, I had every intention of posting a short story tonight, but it has gotten longer and more complex as I have played with it, developing a subplot and back story, and because it is far from finished or polished, and I actually have some attachment to the piece, I'm not quite ready to show it to the world just yet. It has no title; I have no idea how it's going to end; I haven't had a chance to do any fact-checks or background research to make sure it's accurate; I just know that I am kind of a little bit in love with the characters I just created, and I don't really want to go shoving them prematurely out into the wide open meadow that is the interwebs, like Bambi's mom on the first day of doe. I want to let them grow, mature, and develop naturally; I want to work out the kinks and turn this into something I can be truly proud of before setting it loose for your critique and/or enjoyment. For now, all I can tell you is this: I thought I was writing a brief, cheesy, Harlequin romance scene, and it has blossomed into something far sweeter and more romantic than some smutty Danielle Steele rip-off. So, I'm logging off for now, but not quitting writing. I'll keep you posted as things progress.

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