Random Thoughts On A Thursday Morning

It’s likely Friday Eve where you’re at, that magical day when you have only one more work day to endure before you enjoy the weekend. For others, it’s just Thursday. For me? My body says it’s a day of rest so I’m unlikely to exercise today. I’ve had to wake up at sunrise every morning since Tuesday, and for a good reason.

There’s been a lot going on at the house since Tuesday. My sister finally relented and hired workers to transform our yard. A retaining wall that borders the public sidewalk is under construction, replacing the eyesore called Iceplant Hill. This has been sorely needed for a long time since soil erosion meant those of us who live here had to do manual labor to scrape the sidewalk clear of mounds of dirt that washed away. 

The property doesn’t have grass, understandable considering we have the highest water rates in the nation to match our utilities. In the coming weeks, as Buzz Lightyear would probably say, there will be mulch, mulch everywhere. Hopefully this will mean the end of the mass weed killing every week in Winter and Spring. That was a major hassle.

In the end, I look forward to the next time Google Maps photographs my property. Then the world can see with its own eyes we no longer have the shittiest looking house on the block.

***

Even though I finished writing my novel on Saturday night, the work endures. 

I've spent a few hours every day since then working on brand new character sketches. Now that I have their voices and stories fresh in my mind it’s like they’re coming to life. I’m also discovering new things about them as I go. 

For example, there’s the goth woman that has a moral compass. The divorcee still bitter at her ex and praying to God her teenage son doesn’t grow up to be like him. The young woman that graduated high school early that’s clinging to her gyaru looks before she begins college. The Trump supporter that harbors a big secret about his ethnicity. The list goes on and on. I’m finding that as I think about these characters, even the most despicable of them could be redeemable in some way. Well, maybe a hard no on a few that are only there to move the main character’s story along.

Now’s the fun part of this post. I get to tell you random things about my work in progress (WIP) by using numbers…

1 - Main character (MC). She’s a 35 year old woman that’s never been married and is a closet otaku.

2 - Possible love interests (LI). There’s a person behind the online character that the MC will fall for, and she spends a good portion of the second half of the book guessing who in her past life this person is. I hope readers will also have fun putting together the clues as they read along.

5 - You know what the letters LGBTQ stand for. Guess what some of my characters are? There will be some straight people, too.

26 - Character sketches. I found it important to create a character sketch for every person that has a pivotal role to play. That includes a handful of NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) that are part of the fictional action adventure game the MC plays with the LI throughout the story. I want to give some of these support characters a chance to steal a scene, as well as a possible role in any follow up books I write.

55 - That’s how many chapters the first draft contains. This will be subject to change when I edit the manuscript. Some chapters will likely be combined, while new ones may be written to enhance the main character’s story.

300 - When my first draft was formatted in Scrivener as if it were published as a 6” x 9” paperback novel, that’s how many pages 70k+ words is. This is the most popular question I get when I tell people I wrote a book, so now we all know the answer.

Now you know why I truly don’t get burned out by the writing process. This project is way too interesting for me to shelve it.