I reached my goals, mostly, but I should be doing better. However, weather is time consuming. (Just putting on four or five layers of clothing makes so many minor tasks take way way longer than usual.) Yes, the year of the Snake is lashing us with a pretty fierce ending.
The picture here is looking out my back door about halfway through the storm -- 9-10 inches of snow. (The posts are 4x4.)
Also, though this storm was nowhere NEAR the intensity of the great storms of 1967 and 1978 (39" and 33" inches storm totals), Michigan State University did close down for a day and a half -- and that qualifies this year's storm as a certified Snowpocalypse.
And yes, we are still snowed in. The car is dead of hypothermia, and we don't wish to join it. Tomorrow, as you read this, we will attempt to dig ourselves the rest of the way out. We are out of butter and Cheerios.
As for my A Round of words in 80 Days update:
The goals for the first quarter of 2014 are to write on the WIP for at least Four 10-minute writing sprints/bouts/sessions. That makes for about 800-1200 words. I should be doing at least twice that much, but I've got a lot of other things on my plate. (Aside from weather.)
Sunday Day 0 - 2 sessions, managed before I realized that I was too tired out from shoveling snow to stay awake. Stayed awake anyway and drew some very boring pictures.
Monday Day 1 - 4 sessions, plus some new brainstorming, and a new cover for Self-pub Book Covers (non-fiction this time.) All of today's words were from Reef's point of view. I think that this will work out better and faster if I do switch back and forth from heroine to hero. This would allow me to get information to the audience more easily for one.
Also -- I got to bring Chef more directly into it. He was deeply concerned that the heroine did not eat her pain au chocolat. He is my favorite character, and I'm wondering if he has a certain detective quality, and if I should decide this story needs a cavalry... maybe Chef should show up with a 9" boning knife.
Tuesday Day 2 - 4.5 sessions. (I was in the middle of a session when I came to the end of a scene and realized that I needed to stop and replot some things. Is Reef going to find anything if he goes to check on Angela's apartment? If not, it's not a scene, just a summary. If he finds something, is it just a puzzling clue or is it a whole scene -- like a chase through an alley or something?)
(Other participants reporting in on the Linky page here: ROW80 First Midweek Checkin)
A Little About The Story
In Flight could end up a novel rather than a novella. It still feels like a movie. I thought this was going to be just from the heroine's point of view, but the guys have horned their way in.
I like Reef and Chef as classic helper/impact characters. They're just background characters at the heroine's place of work. (Well, Reef is the leading man -- he rolled up as "authority figure; boss" in The Game.) So....
I'm going to tell you about the story from the wrong point of view:
Chef is the boss of a catering company owned by a hotel chain. Reef is the suit from corporate who is supposedly running the place, but he's really just a useless excess manager who is trotted out to fire people when they displease Chef. Reef wants to open a detective agency one day. (And by the end of the story, I think Chef will consider adding detection to the menu of services offered by the catering company.)
Into this milieu comes Angela, an apparently shy and secretive young woman hired as clerk and menu designer, who proves indispensable with her creative and willing hard work. But a soon as Chef decides to promote her to a more responsible position... Angela's past catches up with her, and she flees without explanation, leaving her pain au chocolat untouched.
Chef is concerned.
He sends Reef after her, equipped with eclairs.
The actual story -- and pitch -- will be from Angela's point of view. But the above just seemed like fun (and it is Reef's point of view I'm working on right now).
In the meantime I'm mad at Chef, because this story is beginning to sound like a whacky Camille LaGuire adventure, and less like a classic Woman-in-Jeopardy Romantic Suspense.
Anyway, on Friday we'll get on with the Story Game - Plotting, and talk about the first act of a four-act story.
See you in the funny papers.
6 comments:
Gah. That's a lot of snow. Good luck getting the words and the shoveling both done!
Down here in Southwestern Ohio, we didn't get much in the way of snow -- or at least, not here in my tiny piece of the region -- but we got the cold like WHAM! I learned that I can comfortably wear three pairs of pants.
Chef and Reef sound like fun characters and I like the idea of an amateur detective adding that to their day-job services. Good luck with getting the characters to behave themselves!
We just got word that we will still be stuck for a few more days at least. It's so cold, everybody's cars are dying, and the road service folks a booked up for days in advance.
I really feel for those folks who haven't had power since before Xmas, though.
We don't have any snow here in Virginia (thankfully), but it did get cold (twenty below zero with wind chill). I was a little worried that my car wouldn't start yesterday, but, after a dramatic pause, it did.
Good luck with your #ROW80 goals. Stay warm out there!
I could never be mad that your voice is showing in your fiction. That's WHY we read you.
A forty or fifty degree drop at any temperature will be a shock. (Did you hear that Toronto had an "IceQuake"? The ground water froze so fast that the expansion caused shaking and popping like an earthquake.)
Liana: Thank you! :-)
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