It’s been an incredibly exhausting, exciting, novel “Novel” writing experience.

I am so tired I haven’t slept well for about 3 weeks.  I will not do second books at this kind of pace — nope.

It’s been a fun and charming tale to unfold — truly.

I had written many short stories before, and many are published in the web — but this was a new foray and I loved it.  Writing a book for children allows you to remember childhood.  How fab.

I’m soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo tired!

But, I have the end in sight, this morning.

I posted segments of the tale here in the blog and  on my page in NaNoWriMo!

(that was my initial synopsis!) — looking to rewrite that one soon… but, how can I write a synopsis before I’ve written the work?  I don’t work that way!  Also, will need a proper outline et al.  I entered the first 250 words to a contest…

The novel is about a lot of things — love is the key motif — am thinking of the synopsis this am before I start writing to the finish.  I like it and I think it has cross generational appeal not just for moms and daughters but for dads and sons?  Its core mythos is about love for the planet, too — and people and animals.

Okay.  Enough.  To the end we go…..

excerpt from today — the chapter is “sweet lives”

The sky was the palest blue that day, as Devlin threaded his fingers into hers.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“What do you want to be?”
“I don’t know either.”
The two of them laughed a little at their lack of plans.  “I think I might be the kind of person who sees where life takes me without too many plans, Teenie.”
“Me too,” she said.
“I want to see a lot of things around the world though.”
“Me too.  I want to learn a lot of different languages too.”
“I want to have adventures.”
“I want to ride on a camel sometime.”
“I want to go deep inside the heart of a cave.”
“I want to swim in the deepest ocean.”
“I want to climb the highest mountain.”
“I want to plant the tiniest tree.”
“I want to find a road no one has ever been on.”
“I want to see all the stars over the desert at night.”
“I want to ride every kind of horse.”
“I want to drive every kind of car.”
“I want to travel to every country on earth.”
“I want to write poems.”
“I want to create maps of things.”
“I want to look through telescopes.”
“I want to dress up in costumes.”
“I want to bake pies with you.”
Teenie laughed and squeezed Devlin’s hand as he said that last one.
“I want to run to the ends of the earth,” he continued.
“I want to hide in the treetops.”
“Which trees?”
“Old redwoods.  My dad taught me about them.”
“I want to fly a plane over the trees you will be hiding in.”
“I want to decorate the castles you build.”
“Like the driftwood hut?”
“Oh, all the different ones,” she said.
“I want to build a wooden boat and sail the seven seas.”
“I will be the pirate who comes aboard.”
Teenie started to laugh again, just looking at the clouds.  It felt nice to be making all kinds of plans with Devlin Underwood at her side.  It felt nice the way he was holding her hand too — not too tightly but warm and happy, under the sun and the bluest sky she’d
ever remembered seeing.
“I want to make you a crown of flowers,” he said.
And then he was off, running across the meadow in search of them with Melloman at his heels.  Brownie had been sleeping by her side and she picked him up and cradled him against her.  Teenie watched Devlin as he soared across the meadow like a bird almost.  His arms were outstretched like wings.  He was off to find the last of the flowers that had carpeted the meadow all spring.

That doesn’t mean they are easy though, because I feel very — dunno — sort of attached to this whole magical little story that I have written.  I made the mistake of going back and reading the first 22 pages last night — shouldn’t have.

One thing I did notice though, was that I had set up the theme for the novel in those pages — I really had?

Part of me loves it, part of me knows it needs edits like mad, and part of me is ready to let go of it — soon — I’m exhausted from writing it over this last month.

Also?

It’s for sale…

xxoo!

It’s good — and it’s a novel with a ton of ecopsychology in it that addresses real issues in a way that an audience would understand — plus it is a heartwarming tearjerker too!

Remember this children’s classic? Yep.  Same genre.

I’m going to the coffee meet up again today — hopefully can write at least half of the end before that — cannot believe it is at the end!  It is! — it really is.

back later

HUGE struggle with the antagonist today. HUGE — I don’t think there is going to be a sugar-sweet ending in a way — but more ambivalence — can’t resolve the character of the mother in this by end of tale….

what a drag.

HUGE block at this…

juncture.  —- maybe stop at the 1333 words I just got in — so frustrating dealing with the antag –she is the mother in the piece and so hard right now….writing this.

rather be back in a dream sequence with TUT & Co. — very much like my own childhood this mother is….

pushed past antagonist — okay! 5500+ or a few and I’m done.

Today was 2021 — now at 44,478 and 50,000 is upon me!

ending on a party note with this book — and Teenie and Dev will share a tender first kiss on the last page!

OVER SOON!

excerpt!

Devlin had never really thought of having a girlfriend before — not until he saw Teenie Alexander on the beach that very first day.
It was more than just a girlfriend he wanted though.  What he wanted most was a friend, but, there was more than that — every time he thought of her.  It had felt really nice holding her hand and even he hadn’t realized that he was going to kiss her cheek before he did it.  It just kind of happened, before he even knew it.
The thing that Dev liked best about Teenie was that she was so natural looking.  She didn’t seem preoccupied with shopping and makeup and he had never heard her say any mean things — like the girls at his old school had.
When he woke up with little Brownie snuggled at his side, Teenie was the first thing on his mind.  He could still see her as she’d looked sitting in the sand dunes in that leaf green T-shirt.  It was almost the color of the ocean when the light hit the waves in a certain way.  Because it was Saturday, he stayed in bed a little longer than usual — watching Brownie sleeping beside him.
“You up, son?” his grandfather asked at the door, softly knocking.  “Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
Devlin’s grandfather was wearing his plaid bathrobe and slippers — he’d just gotten up himself — and he let himself in and closed the door quietly behind him.
“Your grandmother’s still asleep,” he said.
“Did you see your little friend again, Devlin?”
“She loved Brownie, grandpa.”
“I thought she might, son.”
Devlin’s grandfather reached over and stroked the tiny brown ball of fur — the puppy stretched out and rolled over on his back and then Dev’s grandpa cuddled him to his chest.
“Grandpa, do you think I could ask Teenie and her mom over for dinner?”
“Why sure, son.”
“Do you know somebody named Mr. Honeygarten?”
“Honeygarten?”  Dev’s grandfather looked like he was puzzling through the name.  “I’m not sure I do, son.”
“Teenie was telling me about him yesterday.”
“Don’t think I know him, Devlin.”
“I wanted to ask him too.”

10,000.

the magic number — my hands hurt from typing! (that was yesterday) — this morning after 700+ words I will be there — hard to believe.  These are the last pages of the book.

If I did this one?  I can do others.  I just won’t ever go past about 2,000 a day — that’s enough!

3050? — your hands! OMG.

xxoo!

back later

boy, I can’t really even believe I have written this book but I have and I’m almost done, too..

excerpt! (Teenie and Devlin at the beach!)

“When I saw you crying that day I knew you had a heart,” he said.  “Because only people who have hearts cry.”
“Do you know what happened that day, Dev?”
“I was looking at the little journal my dad left me and the pen he gave me right before he left the village.  He told me I had a heart made out of clouds and that I should never forget that.”
“That’s really beautiful, Teenie.”
“And then I was looking up in the sky at the clouds and it was like it was magic or something because all of a sudden I saw a heart-shaped cloud up in the sky.  It was like my dad sent it to me or something.  I just really felt that.”
“I bet he did send that cloud to you,” Devlin said.
“I bet he knew how much you missed him.”
And then Devlin leaned over until he was really close to Teenie.  He did something that she had never had anyone do in her whole life, well, maybe except her parents.  He kissed her on the cheek.
“The girl with the heart made of clouds,” he said.
“That’s how I’m going to think of you too.”

Teenie just sat there in stunned silence the minute after he did it.  Her heart stared to race inside her chest.  Devlin Underwood had just kissed her.  He kissed me, he kissed me, he kissed me, she thought.
A boy named Devlin Underwood just kissed me.
“You know which note was my favorite one so far,” he asked her.
Teenie just shook her head back and forth.
Devlin looked right into her eyes as he spoke.
“The one with the little heart and the clouds.”

I think this book is the most beautiful thing I have ever written, no kidding.

As she drifted off to sleep, Teenie had the strangest dream.  In the dream she was looking out the door of the sea hut when a very large cloud came right to the door where the seaweed curtain hung.  Standing in front of her right on the sand was the largest turtle she had ever, ever seen.  In his mouth he held a very large red heart, almost like a valentine would look.  Teenie couldn’t tell what it was made out of though.  It must have been carved from some kind of shell in the sea.  She had never seen anything like it before.  Just behind the turtle were two dolphins, and they were pushing what looked like a very large book before them.
How can that be, Teenie thought.
A book would get all wet if it were in the ocean.
The dolphins pushed the book right into the wave that was about to break and it washed right up to shore behind the turtle.  it looked like it was completely dry!
The turtle flipped it up onto his shell and walked it to the door of the sea hut where he placed it at Teenie’s feet.  The he dropped the little seaheart on top of it.  He looked at Teenie Alexander for a very long long time, and, he had a look of great happiness on his face.  Teenie really wanted to ask him who he was but she did not know how to speak the language of the ocean.  And so, in the dream
they just communicated with their eyes.  The book looked like it had been in the sea for a very long time.   It seemed as old as time itself, in a way.   Teenie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do next, but it seemed like the turtle wanted her to look inside of it.  He was motioning her with his flipper so that she would come near to it.
As she approached it, it opened magically to the very first page but not before Teenie had looked for a long time at the beautiful cover.  It seemed to be made of all sorts of shells that had been inlaid into a kind of very dark and shiny hardwood.  It looked like someone had written words but they were the strangest words Teenie had ever seen.  She just didn’t know how to understand that language and so she had no idea what the words said.  Whoever had written it must have done so at the very beginning of time, she thought, as she looked at the very first page.
The turtle just stayed motionless watching her and smiling.  Little did she know that the turtle in her dream was Tut, the king of the sea, and what he had brought to her was the very book that his grandfather had shown him at the bottom of the sea so many years ago.  You see, the book contained a page for every living creature on the earth and it was like a book of the heart in a way.  It explained that everything on the earth had a heart inside.  From the littlest crab to the biggest bird to the fiercest lion.  And it explained that
everything on the face of the earth knew how to speak the language of the heart, but they had just forgotten.
As the book’s pages magically turned before Teenie Alexander’s eyes she saw every species on earth.  There was a page for each one and a special drawing of each as well.
If only I could read this, she thought.
If only I could understand this language I would know how to talk to anyone and anything on the face of the earth itself.
“Everything on earth has a heart,” the turtle said.
He spoke to Teenie Alexander in a language he knew that she could understand because he said it only with his eyes.  She noticed that his were filled with tears just as Devlin’s had been.
As suddenly as the dream had come, it was gone again and the images faded back into the mists of the place where all dreams begin and end, for every living thing on earth.

I wrote upwards of 3000 today and I’m on page 192

That’s 42,457 words! — not far to go, now — !

This is day 20 and thee are basically 14,000 words to go.  The middle was the hardest part and this is one of those days that I’m in a phase of doubt — but, got to press through to the end of this book, somehow.

Mostly, because I did this?  I really did, and finishing matters.

So, this is the part where the whole thing comes to a conclusion.

Today Teenie and Devlin will be going to the beach and she meets Brownie! the puppy — I hope.

This is the image I saw in the web that was the inspiration for this book:

http://www.pattirondolino.com/images/399_heart_20in_20clouds.jpg

!

xxoo!

back later.

excerpt from today’s whew — ran with like 3,040 words now at 39,277 –

chapter today is “puppy love”  — Brownie and Teenie and Devlin at the beach –

“Teenie Alexander, I think my little girl is growing up.”
“I am, mom.”
“Tell me about Devlin some more.”
“Only if you tell me about Delos and Charles.”
“You go first!”
“Okay,” Teenie said but she wasn’t exactly sure where to start.
“He left this really beautiful abalone shell in that driftwood castle he built and I thought he might have left it there for me so I left him a note.  I hid it up in the beams, mom.”
“And then he left me a note back.”
“What did he say?”
“That his mom died, and so he had come here to live with his grandparents.  I don’t think he really knows anybody here yet.”
“Teenie, that’s so sad.”
“I know mom.  I don’t know what I would do if I ever lost you.”
“Honey,” she said.  “I love you Teenie.”
“I love you too mom.”
“Mom, was Delos your friend?”
“He was honey, that summer.”
“Now that I think of it Teenie, he asked me to kiss him but I didn’t.”
“He did?”
“He said that Susie had kissed Paul.”
“Well, I just thought about it, but, I didn’t want to so I didn’t.”
“Did you kiss Charles?”
“Yes, honey I did.”
“Was it when he gave you that ring?”
“It might have been.  He designed that ring himself because we were both taking a jewelry class together.”
“Did he like you?”
“I think he did, honey.”
“We were reading a book called The Hobbit when we took that class and he made a ring that looked like it came out of that book.”
“Did you wear it?”
“Well, it seemed like if I wore it it would mean something and I wasn’t sure about that, so I kept it in my jewelry box instead.”
“What did it look like?”
“It was silver with a dragon swirling all around it.”
“Wow.”
“Mom, what was kissing like?”
“Well, when I was fourteen I didn’t kiss boys often Teenie.  So Charles and I might have only kissed on the cheek when he gave me that ring.”
Teenie didn’t really want to tell her mother about that invisible kiss that she’d already put on Devlin’s note.  It just meant that she really liked him.
“Mom, can a boy and a girl be friends without kissing?”

dialogue about first kiss with T’s mom…..

exhaustion… but somehow 40,000 is a magic number I want to cross either tonight or first thing in the morning…..

I am on page 182 — this means I have 40 pages left.

That means 20 pages in a trade paperback? double sided pages….

whew.

can’t believe it.

can’t.

I like it too, a lot!  Will need to edit though — but, I think it might be good… I do.

This has been a really hard day for me.  Mostly because i am not going to be able to use the internet for research anymore.  I just found out that this white thing that allows me to connect charges in the hundreds if you go over alloted time.  Apparently I did, and I’m not even sure how I did?  I guess whatever you do on the internet costs — text is the least of that — pictures and movies like the ones on youtube are way more.  How sad.

Anyway, what I learned was if you leave a lot of windows open at once — if they are running graphics and you aren’t even looking at the page — you are being charged.  So, dunno.

I managed to have a really beautiful connection in a scene between Teenie my character and her mom when she tries to wake her up — here is a piece of that:

“Mom, wake up,” Teenie whispered in her mother’s ear.
“Mom.”
“Mom, please wake up, please.”
Teenie began by holding her mother’s hand.  She held it in both of hers, and she was rubbing it between them, as if she could warm it — that’s how cold it felt.   The more Teenie looked at her mother’s hand, the more she realized how much she loved her.  Mostly it was a tiny little freckle right in the center of her mother’s

hand that Teenie focused on.  She couldn’t remember ever having seen it before.
“Mom, wake up.  Please.”
“Please mom.”
But it wasn’t doing any good.  Teenie’s mom was barely breathing at all it was so shallow.  Teenie began to cry, just little tears at first but, soon she was really crying and the tears fell on her mother’s hand.
“Mommy, please.”
“Please, mommy, please,” Teenie cried, her tears were falling faster and faster now, so many it was almost like rain.
Something was wrong and Teenie began to realize that, because her mother had always woken up before when Teenie had asked her to, but today it just wasn’t working at all.  She began to shake her mother’s shoulder back and forth, starting off just softly at first.
“Please, mommy, don’t leave me alone,” she cried.
“Mommy, please.”
Suddenly Teenie remembered something that her father had told her once — well he had shown her how to do something actually — that had to do with having something called a heart-to-heart.  They’d always called it that whenever they had gone out on a walk together, when she’d been littler, and he had still been home.  Except, they had both been awake.  How could she have a heart to heart talk with her mother if she was asleep like this?
Teenie came up with an idea and it was one of the best ideas she had ever had.  She put one of her hands on her chest and she could feel her heartbeat.
“Heart, I need you to speak to Mommy,” she said.
And then she took her other hand and put it on her mother’s heart.  She could feel it just barely beating under her mom’s thin bathrobe.
“I need your heart to talk to my heart, mom,” she said.
“Please talk to my heart, Mom.”

and then, I had a great scene about Devlin and Brownie his puppy, as well…

When they all sat down to breakfast together with little Brownie asleep on Devlin’s foot, Devlin decided to tell his grandparents about Teenie Alexander.
“I met a girl on the beach the other day,” he said.
“A really special girl.”
“I can’t wait to show Brownie to her because I think she will love him too.”
“Why, Devlin, that’s wonderful,” his grandmother said.
“What’s she like, son?”
“I think she might be a writer,” he said.
“Or an artist.”
“She was crying the first day I saw her.”
“Do you know why?”
“Sort of.”
“She sort of told me how sad she was since her dad had gone.”
“Where did he go?”
“She said he had to leave the village to search for a job.”
“He used to be a reporter for the paper,” Grandpa.
Devlin’s grandfather just shook his head and let out a sigh.  He looked over at the paper on the table next to him.
“I’m surprised that place is still in business,” he said.
“After what they’ve done to all those poor people.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, son.”
“Making a little girl cry because her father had to leave town to go and find another job.”
He just shook his head back and forth really slowly.
“I’m glad you met a new friend, Devlin,” said his grandmother.  “What else have you found out about her?”
“Not too many things, so far.”
“She has beautiful hair though.”
“You should see the way it looks when the sun shines on it.”
Jess just looked over at Devlin’s grandmother and he was smiling the biggest smile.  It seemed like he was grinning from ear to ear.  He didn’t say anything else except, “It sounds like the day I first saw your grandmother Devlin.”
“I had my harmonica with me that day though.”
“I thought she had the prettiest smile I’d ever seen.”

I really want to be able to put the logo for NaNoWrMo in this post and that little sig I made for Heart of Clouds but I have no idea how much it will cost to do that and I can’t afford another bill like that one that just came.

I think I’m writing a really great book.

I need an agent for this book, too.

Really fast.

xxoo!

It’s a book for children that will change a lot of people’s lives in good ways because of the themes in it.  And, I’d like enough money to not care about worrying about how many things I wanted to see in the internet too.

So far so good, but, what I learned was that I have to limit my usage?

No extra windows open, don’t watch any films, barely do anything with art.  How fun is that?

Bye, till tomorrow!  Geez.

I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to be writing when I decided to do NaNoWriMo — but,  I liked the fact that it was a 50,000 word challenge.  To do a novel in one month.  We are on day 19 now.  It has been an unbelievable thing to be part of this.  It really has.  So, there were two really hard parts in the novel that I had to write in order to show conflict/pathos — these ended up being in Teenie’s mother.  I realized I didn’t like making her the antagonist — but, her character has been that.  Yesterday was the second hardest part on that.

Anyway, what has emerged is the core theme of LOVE and how that looks?  There are actually two big triangles at work — like trines that overlap.  I am so proud of that, I can’t tell you.  Also, I have read parts to a dear old friend and she says things about it that I would never, ever have expected — so, I think it has generational appeal — now I’m sure it does.  I never thought I could do this, but I have!  I’m on page 152 this morning.  50,000 words is about 175-200 pages in a book?  Whew.  That means I am down to about 50 pages left.

I never thought I’d be here! (at day 19) — I’m looking at the end, now — the home stretch!

I have written a book!  Quite a feat for a short story writer…

xxoo!

So, I’m sure that the block I had today is because I knew I had to tie in the character of Teenie Alexander’s mom — and I knew that would be hard to do because she has been like an antagonist in the background?

I could have lead with the puppy Devlin just got, but? –

what showed up was T’s mom and more backstory

today @ 1380 w/c and total is 33,325 right now…

an excerpt on Teenie’s mom and her depression here:

*
sleepytime
*

It seemed to Teenie that ever since her dad had gone her mom had just closed up like a book that somebody had finished reading.
They almost never talked anymore at all, and her mother looked so
grey.  Most of the time she looked like a day full of rain, as if all the life was just gone from her.  Teenie wished she could have told her about Devlin Underwood but as usual she’d been curled in that little ball asleep on the sofa so Teenie had gone to Mr. Honeygarten’s instead.  She’d just really wanted to tell somebody about Devlin because it was really important.  But at her house, it was so quiet all the time.  Teenie looked up at her old house on the hill and remembered all the parties her parents used to have.
All the people who worked at the newspaper in the village used to come over and everyone brought big platters of food and she thought about her parents and how happy they had looked when they were dancing.  When everyone was dancing.
Teenie had just slipped out of the house quietly when she saw her mother asleep.  Had she known what her mother was going to do though?  Teenie would never have gone at all.

* * *

Jax, why did you have to leave me? Teenie’s mother thought as she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror.  Her face was pasty and too pale in the early morning light that came through the white cotton curtains.  She’d taken a very long bath that morning.  Teenie
had gone out and so she had plenty of time to think and cry because Teenie was gone.  She’d had to put on a very strong face for her daughter even when she was falling apart on the inside.
Why is my life so hard? she’d thought, as she slipped into the water.  Jax, why did you leave?
It made Teenie’s mom both sad and angry that he was gone.  “My nerves are like glass,” she’d told the doctor.  “Let me give you some of these, he’d said.  “And these.”
The pill bottles were all over the house.  She’d been given so many different types that even she couldn’t get them straight.  Most of the time she floated around as if she were a zombie.  It was really hard to focus on anything.
The doctor hadn’t really bothered asking her why she was so sad.  He’d just called it a depression as he made some notes on a little piece of paper and wrote out her prescriptions.
If there were a way to describe what a depression felt like it had to be gray.  It had to be where there was no color at all to see anywhere in the world.  Some days she felt that she was in the center of a storm like when a hurricane blows through a town and leaves everything just devastated.  Some days she felt as if she were being hurled and tossed about at the edges of things — those days felt like tornadoes in her soul, in a way.  Or as if she was out on the
edges spinning round and round and round and waiting for the tornado to just drop her off or spit her out, when it felt like it.  It was like storms raged in her spirit, but there was no way out.  It had become obvious to her that Jax might not be coming back.

This passage was incredibly difficult to write but, it contains like I said, the pathos in the novel which you need to show in order to understand the crux of the novel — which is love?

!

xxoo!

onwards…. and back to Devlin’s little puppy!

excerpt:

* * *

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Devlin’s grandmother called from just outside his door.
Devlin turned on his side and suddenly realized he had a puppy in bed with him!  The puppy yelped as he rolled on it by mistake.
“Hey, little guy,” he said.  “Are you okay?”
Devlin cuddled the puppy to his chest and pretty soon it was licking his chin again and pulling at the collar of his T-shirt.  Tugging at it and playing like he was going to rip it to shreds.
“Hey, quit that,” he laughed.  “Cut that out!”
But it didn’t do much good because the puppy just kept on until Devlin was laughing and rolling around on the bed while it barked and made little lunges at him.
“You nut,” he said.  “What am I going to do with you?”
“Come on downstairs, Devlin.  I have breakfast ready.  Have you decided what to name him yet?”
“I’m working on it, grandma,” Devlin laughed, as the puppy wiggled and snuggled and cuddled against him.
“You little monster,” he said.  But he meant that in a good way, because overnight the bond between puppy and boy had been sealed forever.
“Brownie,” he said.  I think I’ll name you after my favorite dessert, because that’s what you look like to me.
“Come on Brownie, he said.  “Let’s go get some breakfast.”
“He’s Brownie, grandma!”
Devlin came down the stairs hugging Brownie like he was nver ever going to let him go.  He just loved that little puppy with those big sad eyes that never left his.

back at it!

Sinatra helped with that song.

Slept some last night — a bit more than usual.  I love this book and I want to get it just right so, even though I know it will be edited post-nano, still, it’s pretty tight writing I have tried to do.

Today this 32,000 point… basically means were are heading toward the end o’ things.  I have a book by Graham Greene sur la table ici and I’m looking at where he was on page 145 – 146 because that is where I am too.

This whole idea of 50,00 words — I like that as a size?  Truly.  One giant leap up from a short story in a way, and I have told this tale as if it is a short story so how to close?

I have 18,000 words or so in which to do that.

Have to get away from all distractions in order to press on.  This means turning off everything and I can’t because somebody other than me has chosen the music and this is a tearing out hair mo because post Sinatra it’s jazz which I love — but it might not go with this next scene I want to do.

Urrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

At any rate…

continuing right along with HEART OF CLOUDS

This is what yesterday looked like on Wordle.net — I love the picture!

I have 18,000 words to tie all the threads together…

this means oh say, 6,000 more in center and then 12,000 to bring it to a close and because I care a lot about this story, well……….

hmmmmm……….

wish me luck!

xxoo!

back later…

**************************************

It’s 11:16 and still nothing. nada. zip.

this is what writing can be like at times — that is why keeping distractions to a minimum is what you have to do?

Seriously.

have to get in the novel’s groove and it is tough this morning — thinking about the puppy…

maybe go back to that as an opener…

back later.

in the meantime a half limerick

there once was a girl who tried nano

but she started without any plan, Oh!

so she tried a hot shower

LOL sort of.

But not.

This is serious biz at this point.

back later….

uuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

the 32,000 word point has arrived.

Oh, this was very wonderful today, tired but have plot/character arcs syncing up!  And, Devlin’s grandfather got him a puppy!

excerpt from first half of today:

Devlin’s grandmother hadn’t been able to keep from smiling when she saw what her husband Jess had done.  He’d taken his old truck to town and out in the truck was Dev’s surprise — like a little chocolate ball.
“Oh Jess,” she’d said.
“What are we going to name him?”
“That’s Devlin’s job, sweetheart.”
“Oh Jess, look at him.”
“Just look at him.”
“Isn’t he cute?”
“He looks like a chocolate malt ball.”
“He does, doesn’t he?”
“He’ll be good for the boy.  I think he really needs a companion to help him get through this time, sweetheart.”
“I’ve been so worried about him, Jess.”
“I know sweetheart.  He doesn’t say much.”
The tiniest little puppy lay curled in a little cardboard box on the
seat of the old red truck.  He was a chocolate Labrador.  Jess knew that the boy needed something warm and alive to love of his own.  They had tried not to bring up the subject of his mother much.  His dad was off working in the city as an architect and so, since he worked so many hours he wanted Devlin to have a family after the tragedy.  At least until he felt he could make another stable home for the two of them.  He’d thought that would be best for Dev, but, he really didn’t know how Devlin felt, because the two of them never said much about her after the funeral.  To do so would be almost too sad, or too hard for both of them.
“Got something for you, son, Jess said, the minute Devlin came through the door.”

don’t forget this is a rough draft!  At this point it is just WRITE forwards….EDIT REWRITE later!

xxoo! Here is what Devlin’s puppy looked like!

back later!

xxoo! x2 because have found way from crux into charmsville — my characters! love them!

they are Disney films like in my childhood but contemp….

(gee, I had no idea they’d surface as they have but Thomasina was always a fav film of mine)

I almost can’t believe it myself.  As a person who has written many short stories and poems, I never thought I’d be able to get to 30,000.  Well the high 29 thousands anyway — today.  There have been days when i have been ready to pull my hair out that is how hard this pace is.  I miss people, but I have to stay inside the world of the characters to get to the end.  It’s like that old movie… back later.  Need to write and feel like the image below from that fantastic film — exhausted.

That is one of my fave movies by the way…..

and it isn’t exactly like this — but?  It’s a marathon just like this so take it as a metaphor  — it’s the best kind of marathon though — really fantastic for those who can make it.  Each one will have written a book.