She’d hidden it in the shell, too.   Just like before.  And she’d taken his note, too.  What he didn’t know though, was that Teenie had left a kiss on the paper of the note she left him.  It was invisible because her lip gloss had worn off — but it was there, anyway.  She’d kissed it right before she buried it in the sand.
If Devlin had known that?  Well, then he wouldn’t have had to have been so worried.  Would he?
Invisible kisses are quite magical that way.  What Teenie meant by leaving that like that was almost like how writers in the old days put sealing wax on the backs of their letters, and then stamped them with a mark.  That meant their letters were only meant for one person to read, and only one person to open,  I bet you didn’t know that’s where the expression “sealed with a kiss” comes from, did you?
That’s what she had done.  In a way, it was like a pact between Teenie and Devlin.
It must have been the magic in that invisible kiss that caused Devlin to do what he did next.  After he finished reading everything that she had written to him in that letter, he took off down the beach straight for home.  But not before he left one last note.  It said:

MEET ME HERE TOMORROW AT TEN O’CLOCK
Love, Devlin

That’s the novel I’m writing in NANOWRIMO!

VB-Demoiselle,  author of “Heart of Clouds”

genre: literary fiction

romantic love story rated PG! but only if you are offended by the idea that a kiss might be a bad thing!

xxoo!

Oh I love this book I’m writing — I really do…………………

Today, I realized I was going to make 20,000 words.  I am in awe of that — that I did it?  I slowed down as I was getting to the last 328.  I wanted to see what the 20,000 word was.  It was the word “going” — and that word can mean many different things.  It has been amazing to me, to be writing with this group of writers.  Their little icons flash by on Twitter like a wild rush!  And, sometimes it helps just knowing that we are all in the same boat as writers?

It’s the words — and whether they are moving us along, or not.  Sometimes, the words don’t come out — so when a writer sees another writer in there — you can see the struggle to make that happen.  And, you aren’t alone!

It’s great.  Also, it’s great to see people doing the shout outs!

So today was 1779 words.  The total is now 20,197.

When I started I really didn’t know whether I would be able to do it or not, because I had usually written short stories?

Today was just beyond magical to reach 20,000 words to me.  I really mean that.  And, I love the story too.

Today was all about how Devlin and Teenie are writing to each other?  Here is the opening of the chapter “seadreams” –

Teenie Alexander parted the seaweed curtain and stepped inside the hut.  It was totally private in there, now that it had a sort of doorway.  He’d taken strand after strand of the seaweed and woven it into the driftwood in thick bronze strands — it would take days to dry out.  She went straight to the abalone shell and shook it sideways until the note floated to the top in the sand.  Then for a long time she just hugged the little piece of paper to her chest and closed her eyes and smiled.  It was like her whole heart was just expanding out in rings.  She rocked in place, back and forth, with her eyes closed — just listening to the sounds that the ocean was making.
The waves had their own rhythm — a really special sound, and it always depended on what the mood and the weather of the day was.  If there were storms they sounded violent as they crashed up against the rocks — almost like pounding.  Those kind of days they rose up out of the sea like giants had formed them and they were in an angry mood.  But on days like today, they made a slow, shushing sound — with long silences in between.  Before she opened the note, Teenie looked out to sea for a long time.  Way out on the horizon she could see a lone sail, from a sailboat — way, way out to sea.  On the edges of the island it was clear — it didn’t look like there was going to be any fog today at all.
When Teenie had gotten dressed that morning, she’d pulled on her most favorite hat.  Even though the days were getting cooler because it was fall, it wasn’t too cold out yet.  She remembered the day her dad had gotten her the hat.  He’d said, “Teenie, every writer needs a hat.”
He’d had her pick it out at the hat store and now it was two years old.  But, she still loved it.  It was so plush and soft — she pulled it down over her ears — tugging it, and running her hands over its furry surface.  It almost felt like one of her old stuffed animals in a way.  One of the things that hat did was give her brain some privacy besides making a fashion statement.  Also, she rubbed it for good luck, too.  In a way it was like a lucky charm sometimes, and, it always made her think of her dad, too.
Dad, I think you’d like this boy, a lot, she thought.
And then, she slowly unfolded Devlin’s note very carefully.

It was a very powerful day, today.  Part of that was reading the pep talk from the man who founded NaNoWriMo.  He said the most poignant and profound thing a writer could ever read in that note today.  I thought so… but I’m going to save it till the very end.

What he said made me know that I will get to the end of this tale, by the end of the month.  I will.

But tonight I just want to sit with that magic number for a little while.  20,000 words.  My words.

I came across this accidentally on Twitter, but, you might want to take a look at it?

Where are the words?

Basically what this is is an interactive game — I once wrote a paper for Pacifica on that — this is what you call a pre-scripted game in a sense?

Watch! — at this link.

What did George Orwell have to say in that Newspeak Dictionary about a future without language?

Chilling.  I was writing words at age two and a half.  I have the stuff my mom saved to prove it.

Hmmmmm…..

this device above teaches nothing about self expression and I say that as a therapist…

all right — back to the novel — day 9…

also doing some research and watched this film — on gen emo — gee, high school hasn’t really changed all that much, nope… hahaha! enjoy!  writing for this demographic, umm, hmmmmmmmmmm!

I was thinking of my character Devlin Underwood — is he emo?  Probably so, and ummm, so is Teenie Alexander.

back later…..

Nanoday  nine continued — the site seems down so can’t post w/c yet…

it was 1973 bringing today to 18,418 —— whew– exhausted from research and then saved by the tweets about this site! hahahahahah!

all genres broken down by predictability —–?

is life that simple?

no, not in literary fiction…..

sample from today Dev is at the hut when a seagull almost steals Teenie’s note!

He ran down the beach like he was going two million miles an hour almost.  And then, he saw what she had done with the abalone shell.  It was filled with sand.  And the two feathers were still there.  There was the tiniest little shell on top of a rock, right in the middle of the sand-filled shell though.  How come she did that?
This has to be a clue, he thought.  It has to be.  But?  Where was her note to him?  Quickly he scanned the rafters where the origami bird had been that first day.  Not there.  And then he scanned the inside of the hut, but nope, not anywhere there either!  There were hundreds of places she could have hidden it in — any place at all in all that driftwood full of nooks and crannies.
Oh no, he thought.  Oh no.  Maybe I’m too late, or maybe she didn’t write anything or?  He shook his head back and forth in defeat.  Maybe she just left this little shell.
Just then a giant gull came to the front of the sea hut — the one that usually guarded the top of the driftwood where it formed a peak.  It began to shriek at him, and started to flap its wings.  It stood there cocking its head and looking at him — making so much sound it was unbelievable.
“Well, gull, what happened?” Devlin asked it.
The gull brazenly went right over to the abalone and dipped
his beak inside, riffling through the sand.  He pulled out the note and headed right out the opening for the beach.
“Hey, wait a minute, that’s mine.”
“Hey come back here,” Devlin cried.
All of a sudden about two hundred seagulls arrived and they
were all shrieking at once — at Devlin!  They landed all around him — their colors flashing white and gray against the mackerel sky.
“Hey come back here, you,” he screamed as he ran after the gull.  It was teasing him.  Every time he got close to it, it flew another few feet and landed, cocking its head at him — with her note in its beak.

exhausted!

xxoo!

back in the morning…

Well, yesterday was a pretty unbelievable day when women heard the news on that health bill.  Unreal.  It is.

But, one thing it has done for me as a novelist is made me determined to tell the tale of a feminist little girl — and so, even though I am writing a charming little teen romance — there is more there than meets the eye.   My main character Teenie will learn — (in the series I plan to write that covers Jr. High and High School) — all about all kinds of things.  In this first book “Heart of Clouds” — she is learning how to befriend a boy.

So, were are at 74 pages today.  How fab.  I had no idea just how “big” that was going to look but I looked at Graham Greene’s “End of the Affair” and it’s 192 pages long.  Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” is 105 pages.  These fall under Literary novels.  My fav kind, and hopefully what I am also writing.  Classic themes of human nature — ?

So anyway “Heart of Clouds” — is a pre-teen romance…for the 13+ year old set?  maybe 14 – 17 years old — as well.  Maybe even more than that?  I’m not sure.

Today, my character Devlin is going to drive for the first time — with his grandfather on a high mountain road.  I did a lot on the backstory for T’s mom today too.  1942 w/c and total so far is 16,445 words.  74 pages!  Whew.  That means I have 101 to go, by the end of the month.

here is their dialogue from the mountain scene today:

“Son, I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you for quite some time,” he said, taking the wheel back.
“I know how hard it has been for you to lose your mother.”
“Grandma doesn’t like to bring it up, so, I thought we could have a man-to-man about it.”
“I don’t really feel like talking, Grandpa.”
Devlin fidgeted in his seat.  It wasn’t easy to talk about feelings most of the time.  His mom and dad hadn’t really encouraged that — and so he had grown up pretty much in his world of books, all alone.  He was the sort of person who observed life, most of the time, from a distance.  He saw just about everything though.  Not much escaped him.  It never had, even from the time he was very, very young.  He seemed much older than his years.
“All right then, we’ll let it go for now, son, but, I want you to know that you can always come to me, if you want to talk.”
“Always, Dev.”
“Any time, okay?”
The truck climbed into the steep hills.  Devlin watched the pastures flying by and the cows, and the deer, and the hawks — they even saw black turkey vultures wheeling in the sky.  As they turned inland from the coast the fog was gone and it grew hotter.  Eventually they were going to come to the dirt road where they would make the last climb to the top of the mountain — up where the tallest pines grew.

I’m very happy with the scenes today — the characters are blossoming as the backstory unfolds.  I’ve set the novel in the real world — albeit a world that does have some magical realism in it.  Anyway, it isn’t fantasy…this series is going to be real life, for real teens, but, what I did was set it in an earlier era a bit.

The truck Devlin’s grandfather is driving looks like this…inside!

What I’m going to do after the month is up and this novel is finished is start planning the second one in the series.  I had no idea I was going to take this jaunt, but, I am.  It’s probably because of last night and what happened — for feminism’s sake.  Teenie my character is an example of the kind of empowerment girls had in the 70’s as they were growing up.  Timely, no?

Had a good morning, but it took a while to get started.  Over at Uppity’s I watched a trailer for “V” — hmm…

It’s harder than I thought a bit going over 2,000 a day.  The secret is not to worry too much about editing the rough draft — I decided to do character driven and I think that is where I spend most of my styling anyway — so sometimes the characters cooperate and sometimes they don’t.

My own grandfather was very much with me this morning as I wrote Devlin’s grandfather and that was magical for me.  Just to use his dialogue in this.  He is going to take Dev up to the mountains but first they are having a pancake breakfast — one thing my grandfather always used to say is “isn’t that swell” — and so, Dev’s grandfather says that too — about his spatula as he flips the pancakes.  This is when Devlin first wakes up:

Devlin slept in for a long, long time.  It was the sound of a black crow’s harsh cawing that finally woke him up.  Devlin could see him out the window fairly screeching at something.
“Hello, crow,” he said.  “What are you up to?”
“Nothing,” the crow seemed to screech back.
“Nothing at all.”
But Devlin knew that was never really true for crows.  They almost always had something in mind.  Sometimes they traveled in fierce packs together — screaming warnings especially if there was a red tail in the neighborhood.  With a swift rustle the crow flew away, but not before cawing ten more times, just to let Devlin know he was king of the tree.  The whole world outside seemed to be shrouded in a mysterious mist.  He’d never really seen the fog before — not quite like this, when he’d lived in the city.  The beaches he’d been to with his mom and dad had always seemed sunny for some reason.
He thought about his mom’s face, and then he remembered where he had put the sad girl’s notes.  I better not leave these in my pillowcase, he thought.  My grandmother might find them.  Devlin had a special wooden box he liked to save things in.  It was his wizard’s box in a way, and he had little collections of things that he called talismans.

Anyway, we are approaching the “central” part now of the book and so I have time to really stretch out the characters and their experiences.  Devlin’s grandfather is taking him up to the mountains to have a talk because Dev lost his mom.  But, really Dev wanted to go back to the beach and see if she left him a note…(and she did!)

So?

So far so good.  Today was 2190 w/c and the grand total is 14,503…

If you want to see inside NaNoWriMo click this link — it’s really something to see all the writers in there and what they are doing!

Mine is under VB-Demoiselle.  And, I have thought of something too.  I could grow these characters up?  I was telling my old best friend that the other night.  I could grow them up on the page into happier childhoods than the two of us had?  Now that would be magic.  Yes it would!  She is telling me what her kids did at that age, and then I can remember the two of us at that age, too… lucky for me she had a girl and a boy!

ps: it is so hard to look at the news right now, terrible… the world of the novel is a place to escape!

Ah, what could be more charming than a first crush?  Not much.  How may of us would love to revisit age 13 again?  Probably lots of us.  So today was a fab writing morning.  2364 words to be exact.  Total is now 12,313.    Two things have changed for me as a writer during this process of NaNoWriMo.  One is respect — complete respect for published authors like the ones in this article — some of them are my faves anyway and now that I saw them talk about how they come up with the words? Well.  What occurs to me is that some of us are full of words and we probably always were — even when we were little.  In fact? Maybe the words on the page are the only way we can speak about some things?

Certainly, when I was writing love poems, I knew that.  Some of us burn our words down, sometimes?  That is how much they mean.

And there is something else too — a book is a really important thing.  When I think about the books I read in childhood — and sometimes escaped into?  Well — what if I were making something like that for other kids?  What if I were making something really important that would be left as a legacy of my life in a way?  Hmmm…..

Most serious published authors must feel that way I expect, as well.  That is what the cavern is about for us writers.  I think so — that cavern being the place that we somehow manage to be like the scribes that always existed — since the beginning of time.

Well, enough of that — it was a good day today — my characters have just communicated… here is a snippet from today:

And so he began, a little like this:

I am Devlin,
boy of the dunes and boy of the air who left you the magic feather and you are the sad girl that I saw crying.

Then he sat looking at what he had just written to her.  He wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have told her that he’d seen her like that.  But it was too late.  He’d already written it down, and besides, if he wanted to have a relationship with a real girl like she seemed to be, he thought he’d better just tell her the truth.  So, he continued.

I am the boy who built this driftwood shelter
I am fourteen years old and my mom died
and so this summer my dad left me here with my grandparents,
do you want to be friends?

The words had just poured out of him from someplace and he wasn’t even sure where.  But that feeling of tightness in his chest had lessened while he wrote.  He let out a giant sigh.  There was no going back now.  None at all.  He decided that was enough to say for his first answer.  He’d wait and see what she was going to say back.
Devlin stuffed her paper airplane in his pocket, and left his note folded inside the abalone shell — weighting it down with a rock, like she had.  It was time to go home and have dinner, and besides what had happened seemed so magical to him that he didn’t want to break the spell by staying too long in the hut.

I’m writing this in two ways — one of those is as a therapist, in a way –  and that is the really fun part, because, well, I sort of miss doing that work and so this novel is what I said I was going to be doing.  Putting all my “work” into something that hopefully eventually could be a screenplay — so this is serious stuff, for me.  Really serious.  My main characters, the boy and the girl are both grappling with loss — and this friendship they form is going to be very important to both of them.

Ah, the cavern.  It’s made of so many different things for each writer.  It really is!

xxoo!

Loving the writing this morning is going to help me tackle the parts that will be harder?

I have nothing but gratitude for NaNoWriMo in my heart — what an opportunity it is to be among my fellows as a writer!

ps: I love the tweets too!  They are the greatest!

What Teenie Alexander did was to leave Devlin a second note — it was a paper airplane this time — and the passage above is the note he left her back!  It looked a bit like this one!

Plus, something fab happened for me yesterday as a writer (make that two things during this process) — a very old friend of mine was listening to a reading over the phone of that hard dialogue chapter from yesterday and she wept.  Really.  I hadn’t realized just how much emotion was in that piece but that is where I was blocked like mad in that passage of dialogue.  I really had to write myself out of that place by changing the subject, I swear.  I did!  Anyway, feedback like that is priceless to me as a writer?  It really is.  I sort of teared up myself, after that — but, I’m trying hard to do realistic emotion and ?

Whew.

Also, thank you Song — for taking the time to read that and get well!

Today was 1828 more words — grand total so far is 9949.  I have not done one thing really since this started either — so today I’m going out to paint.  I’ll be by the sea, myself!

I wish all the writers as much luck as I seemed to have today, truly.

So, here was a snippet — from chap 5 — “secret smile” — (romance part building!)  Teenie has baked a pie, and she shares it with Mr. Honeygarten.  Of course, she has something she wants to ask him?  He serves tea in a set much like this picture!

“Oh good,” she sighed.
“Why on earth would you ask such a question?”
“Well, I just wasn’t sure whether I was or not.”
“Well you are dear, and prettiness is something that women grow into — it takes a very long time, by the way.  I suppose you are just at the very beginning of that rather long quest, yourself.”
There was silence for a moment while they both took a sip of tea.  And then Mr. Honeygarten smiled.
“Is there a boy, my dear?”
“Is there a boy involved in all of this asking about prettiness?”
Teenie Alexander blushed.
“There is,” she said.
“I see, dear.”
But then they ate the pie quietly and neither of them said another word about it.  Eventually Teenie’s blush had gone away, all by itself.
Right before she left Mr. Honeygarten had smiled and said, “You know my dear, when I was a boy, there was a certain girl I thought was the most beautiful girl in the world.”
“Her name was Claire.”

I just adore writing the dialogue for old Mr. Honeygarten.  He’s a charmer!

xxoo!

well, so far so good!

Ugh.  This was like hitting “the wall”  today — not writer’s block but an incredibly tough passage.  I’m in a part where I had to write the depression in the house where Teenie is, in her mom?  She has made an apple pie — here is a piece of their dialogue.  I actually had to change the subject while I was writing — writing Dev was way easier, today for some reason.  In this section today I was inside these two character’s heads, and how they are coping with loss?

here is a snippet:

“Mom do you feel like helping me?”
“Mom?”
“No, honey.  I don’t.”
“Please?”
“Teenie, I am trying to watch the news.”
“But, mom…”
“Teenie.”
When her mother’s voice sounded short like that she knew that asking for anything was going to be impossible.  She’d just have to do it herself.  I wish dad was here, she thought.
Teenie’s mom was in her usual place on the sofa, with her pajamas on and feet tucked up under a blanket.  Her eyes were riveted to the television screen watching the newscasters talk on and on.  That was because of The Wave.
“Another species just went extinct, Teenie,” she called out.
“The Wave is on its way, now.”
“Mom, can we just make this pie together?”
“Mom?”

After the pie is made, I resolved the scene somewhat — but today was just one of those crummy writing days when you aren’t on track in a way.  Ugh.  What really helped was seeing the pep talks in Nanoville?  It really did, and also, seeing all the other writers twittering away with their progress.  I think not looking at the news might be helpful — except, Ugh.  Just looking at the news on the G is enough to make a person ill.

Today I’m stopping at 1822 words.  Better than nothing, and it is only a rough draft.  Forwards!

grand total w/c so far is 8121…

!

Another fab writing morning today.  Yesterday I realized I want to set the story in about a week’s time frame — the week before school will start.  It’s a novel about friendship — a friendship between a boy and a girl.  I did a lot on the backstory today — for my character Teenie Alexander.  She is about to make an apple pie to try and cheer up her mother, but,  the best part was getting to write Devlin, today.  What Teenie did  was leave him a special note asking him just this question: “Who are you?” — here is an excerpt from today about him…

The gull flapped its wings widely and seemed to almost understand.  Devlin knew that animals could speak to humans.  Sometimes they did it just with their eyes, or with their wings, or sometimes they made sounds.  Each animal had its own special language — and birds knew the language of the air.
How totally cool, he thought, when he saw the stones.  How totally cool of her to leave that.    Devlin had never really considered whether girls would think he was good looking or not.  It just wasn’t something he thought much about, but for some reason, with this cool girl, it mattered.  In fact, that morning when he looked at himself in the mirror he had studied his own face carefully.
It almost seemed like it was the first time he had really seen himself, looking back at his own face.  It’s not a bad face, he thought.  But, he wasn’t sure exactly what type of face he would call it.  He decided to think about it as if it were a wise face, because, wisdom was important to him.

I love the way the story is shaping itself.  I really do.  I was doing a bit of research this morning on getting boys to read?  Hopefully this sort of thing might draw them in a bit.  Here is an article off the London Standard on that…I hope there is going to be enough adventure to draw in readers from all sides?  I do.  I’m hoping that by using a character driven plot like I am? Well…

Anyway Dev is based on two actual boys I knew at age 13-14 — when I was in Junior High.  At that age, I remember we had this class called Individualized Reading.  We got to read anything we wanted in that class.  I think I might have read Steinbeck for the first time in that class, and I know I was reading “The Hobbit” at that time too.  My tale has a lot of naturalism in it?  Dev loves the ocean.  The boy that I am remembering grew up into a deep sea urchin diver…he was in a class I had at the time called “Vocabulary” — that whole class was just about learning words.  Truly.  Anyway, it is so cool to see all these kids writing!  Maybe they aren’t reading because it is boring to them?  I’m thinking it might appeal to age 9 or ten and up?  In that class I used to have we got to choose what we wanted to read? It took a while to pick a book from the shelves…the assignment was to write a book report once you had finished — it might have been a book a week or two?  I think it might have been just a one or two page summary but I remember how much i adored that class and the teacher.  I really did.

And, wcll today was 2176  more words– bring the total so far to 6299!  We are on page 27…YAY!

If I do say so myself…

Huzzah, hurrah, and now perhaps lunch?  Before I vote…

Here is that logo for my book again and a link into the fab NaNoWriMo!

Today was great as I wrote because the characters are coming to life on the page.  Teenie has just caught sight of the boy Devlin and found the shell he left for her in the driftwood hut.  Writing this really took me back to that era in my own life and, my favorite old dog Buff was in there too.  There will be more about him, but, he was just there!  Like he always was — even though he has been gone ten years.  I called him “Melloman” and put him on a porch!  Really great to see him again and bring him to life on the page…

here is an excerpt from today:

Teenie sat for a long time just looking at the shell.  Finally she thought to herself, somebody else.  Maybe it was even the person who had built the sea hut!  And then, just up in the dunes above her was a boy.  He looked like he was her age.  The wind ruffled his sandy blonde curls.  He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt — that was all she could see of him.  It was Devlin Underwood.  Teenie stood up to call out to him but he had bolted across the dunes like a young colt.  In one instant he was gone.  Gone.
The longer Teenie sat there looking at the shell, the more she thought it might have been that boy who had left the abalone.  She picked it up and held it to the sun so that she could watch the colors shift inside like magic.  It was one of the prettiest shells she had ever seen.  The outside was rough and knurled like it had lived for a thousand years in the ocean, but the inside glittered like a spectacular jewel.  It must have had about two hundred colors all swirling around inside it — like water, almost.
He must have done this, Teenie thought.  He must have left this here for me.

So, these characters are kids?  I imagine that my character Teenie Alexander would have gone to see a movie like Bright Star — she would have wanted to see that.  Except this is set in modern times — in a way.  They live in a village, by the sea — the details of which are unfolding gradually.  Yesterday Dev had seen her crying — sitting in a sea hut he’d made of driftwood — these are very common along the beaches here — all year long.  I’m having a great time writing it — it’s kind of charming so far, I think.  At this point we have boy and girl just “seeing” each other across the windswept sandunes.  I’ve decided to make this novella just last one week – in both of their lives?  Right before school starts — Junior High.

I dd a reading for a friend last night over the phone.  She loved it so far…

Well  today was 2089 — bringing the total so far to 4123 words!  Pacing myself…  This pic looks like the hut that Teenie found…a little.

and this one shows the iridescence inside a special abalone, like the one Devlin left for Teenie!