write a novel

The month of January was my novel month. I didn’t have that many pages, but I did write more fiction than I have in a long time.

Things done: Created an account on urbis.com where I’ve shared some of my stories.. written a few more challenge stories using Randy’s suggestions. Began a strange and interesting set of characters and situations that I hope to wrap up sometime this summer so I can post a version of my book online.

On the drive up from San Diego I sat in the backseat and thought about what my novel should be about.

I had plenty of ideas: I love screwball comedies, but I’d rather not think about love relationships when I’m not in one. I love sci-fi stories, but I kind of already have one brewing with that Santy-C story that I should revise sometime soon.

Then I just started to write.

I wrote about nothing in particular. I used a lot of description to talk about the type of guy and the type of life this fellow has. Then it turned out that his life isn’t quite like it seems.

I guess it is turning into some type of mystery novel. Suspense is always interesting.

I’ve run into quite a few problems already though. My descriptions are LONG. I wrote for about two hours and very little has happened. Also, I can’t decided on the names. It started out as Howard, then Harold, and now Harry. Harry is a great name, but I keep thinking Harry Potter so I should change it.

I also haven’t figured out where to start the story. My first thought was to write about midway through his hectic life and kind of fill in the back story before going too far forward. As it is now, he picks up his paper and reads it.. seeing a picture on the front page.

Problem: I keep describing how tense everyone is by how their forehead is sweating. What? Everyone has stress in different ways, but it quite difficult to describe the calm times when the story is supposed to be moving along.

Finally, I’m not sure how I want to start sharing the story. On one hand I think it would be very interesting to see the development of a story; I could post it on LJ or Urbis and get some feedback.. OR I can keep it under wraps until it the entire rough draft is completed. I think I’m going to go toward the latter. I want to capture some of the frustrations and satisfactions of this piece, in almost a footnote fashion, but I can’t quite figure out how to describe it without ‘ruining’ the unveiling of the story.

I want there to be a few “OH! Ah-ha!” moments (I love that about LOST) so I don’t want to mess up the presentation.

I suppose I can pull a Mark Twain and whisper to the reader about the story telling process (Puddin Head Wilson).

Anyway, I still have a lot more to write so I’d better continue.