NaNoWriMo, You're My Baby

Beebopaloola you're my baby, beebopaloola I don't mean maybe, nah-na-nanowrimo you're my b-baby now, my baby now, my baby now. . .my baby now. Dadada da, dada dada. . .

It's 11:00pm exactly. Just closed my Word file. It's day 7 of National Novel Writing Month and I've written 19,275 words. That's approximately 77 pages of a novel.

You may be saying to yourself "That's not much" but I'm astonished. If I had said to myself, "Julie, you must write 77 pages of a novel by Friday night" last Saturday, I would have choked and choked fast. I would have said to myself, "That's impossible. Get off my case." I would have worried that I was crazy.

I may be crazy right now, but it's a good crazy, something that Ta-Nehisi Coates, my new breakfast blog must-read wrote about earlier in the week.

I'm writing a murder mystery. It's not particularly mysterious, but it may have a surprise ending, which is a surprise to me. I wasn't sure who dunnit when I started, decided who did do it on Wednesday, and came up with a different idea this afternoon, one that grabbed onto my leg with teeth and couldn't shake off.

This is fun. It's play time here in my living room, where I sit on the sofa with my laptop and type away. These characters have become my friends and their world is completely real to me. I drew a map of where they all live, named the towns and the major roads and where some important landmarks are. I started with one character (and a dead one, who doesn't say much), no motive and pretty much no idea of where I was going with this. It's improv, pure and simple. Suddenly, new actors are appearing on the stage and doing things I didn't expect. It was supposed to be a one-woman play and now I can't keep things under control.

When this thing is over, I'll have a mess on my hands. As the plot thickens, I see I'm going to have to go back and change things people said, times and dates and all sorts of details. But maybe not too much. After all, people lie, or don't remember things all too well.

I do need to know some hard facts. The way the dead guy died, well, I don't know how they could've determined it was a murder. So, I need to ask a doctor. I want to know the blood gas levels and all sorts of stuff like that. Do I need to? I'm not sure.

I've got police reports that are probably ridiculous and psych evaluations that are missing all sorts of important information, like a plausible diagnosis (but for who, I'm not telling).

I thought this stuff would hang me up, but I figured, go ahead and write it and fix it later. It's working for me.

This is like cooking without a recipe and with ingrediants I don't know much about. One big beautiful mess of a stew. Will it be edible? I have no idea, but it sure is a blast cooking it up.

Photo note: Not quite the scene of the crime, but close.

Addendum: Can't sleep, my brain's on fire (fa fa fa fa fa, fa fa fa fa, fa fa). Tried to read reach the 20,000 word mark before I went retired for the evening. Not that I ever retire for the evening, but. . .I fell short by 475 words.

It was fitting that "Psycho Killer" just happens to contain the words, "Can't sleep, my brain's on fire". And yes, I know that the "fa fa fa fa fa" part is not directly after that line, but I don't remember what is, and it's time for bed, not googling lyrics. Good Night.