The ideas come in shifts

I just hit 10,000 words last night. Here's an excerpt from chapter 2 of my novel, tentatively called "Wyoming." It's not bloody Shakespeare, but it's a start...

    Darby woke to the sound of the blender coming from the kitchen.  She moaned and rolled over onto her right side, picking up her alarm clock to better read the glowing numbers on its face.  She had been asleep for four hours and her alarm was set to buzz in ten minutes, but she felt like she had hardly slept at all.  She turned off the alarm and then fell back onto her pillow where she lay staring up at the ceiling, her brain hardly registering the sounds she heard from the other room.  Likely Ellie was making some sort of energy drink, which she usually had around midday.  Though she was practically fanatical about exercising, Ellie somehow had little interest in the sorts of activities Darby enjoyed—hiking, kayaking, camping.  Ellie, preferred her sports to take place indoors, with the benefit of sanitary wipes and air conditioning.
    A familiar jingle sounded, the notes reaching heights that Darby’s second soprano voice could never hope to achieve.  Ellie answered within seconds, cheerfully greeting the caller on the other end, whom Darby immediately learned to be Craig, Ellie’s boyfriend, whose deep baritone filled the kitchen and carried back to Darby’s compact bedroom through the speaker phone of Ellie’s cell.
    “Pack quickly, Hon,” he was saying.  “I’ll be there in half an hour.”
    “What, why?” she said, her voice unusually bright.  Craig was the impetuous type and Ellie was not prone to enjoying surprises.
    “You’ll find out when I get there,” he said, apparently bursting with excitement.
    “No, tell me what’s going on.  Are we going somewhere?”
    “Well, okay.  I’ll give you just a sneak peak,” he said, and Darby could actually hear him take a deep breath.  “Since you’ve got days off coming up, I booked us a suite in the Hamptons.  We leave tonight.”
    “What, just for tonight?” she said.  “That’s a really long drive for just a one-night stay.”
     “No, Hon,” he said.  “We have the place all to ourselves for five days.”  The sound of his voice was still ringing in the air seconds after he stopped talking.
    “El?” he said.  “You there?”
    “Yeah, I’m…here,” she said.
    “What’s wrong?
    “Craig,” she said slowly.  “I took those days off so I could go to Wyoming with Kara and Darby.  We’ve been planning this for months.”
    “Oh, but honey,” he said, his speech gaining in speed, “I had to grab these rooms up quickly because there was a cancellation.  I was just calling them to see when they would be available next and found out we could go this week.  It seemed so perfect because I knew you already had off.”  He paused, the guilt registering in his voice.  “Can’t you go with them another time?”  Ellie heaved an audible sigh.
    “They’ve been looking forward to this,” she said heavily.  “We already booked the flights and the room, and rented the car.”
    “So, you don’t want to go with me.”
    “No, of course I do,” she said, letting her sentence end midway.
    “It’s just that I wanted this to be a romantic getaway for us,” he said.  Boy, he’s laying it on thick, Darby thought, grinding her teeth.  Just kick him to the curb.  Say you’re busy.  Say, “Gee, thanks Hon, but tough beans.  I’m going to Wyoming” already!
    “Okay,” Ellie said.  “I’ll pull some things together.”
    “Great, sweetie.  I’ll be there in thirty.”

    “Darb, I am so sorry,” Ellie said, emphasizing each word.  Her eyes were brimming with tears.
    “Just, don’t worry about it,” Darby said.  She was sitting on the couch in their cramped living room, staring at the floor.  “What else could you do?  It was a bad situation.  On one hand you lose your free frequent flier miles and a partially free trip to the mountains in Wyoming.  On the other hand, you make Craig waste his money booking a suite in the Hamptons.  I think the choice is clear.”
    “But still, I let you down.  And after Kara just canceled on you too…”
    “Yeah,” Darby said.  In the moment she had forgotten about that.  “Yeah.”

Ready, set...Write!!

I tried to post this first blog of National Novel Writing Month last night but my browser at home refused my cookies for some unknown reason. It always appreciated my cooking in the past but has suddenly taken a dislike to my handiwork in the virtual kitchen.  Therefore, I had to wait until today to begin chronicling my progress with NaNoWriMo 2009. So far I'm doing great. I set myself a lofty goal of 5,000 words yesterday, it being a Sunday, and I surpassed the goal in only about 4 solid hours of writing to end at 5,182 words. This will serve me well because I doubt I will get much writing done tomorrow when I go out with a friend to discuss our writing in other formats.  Though many of the members of my writing group Just Write are participating in NaNoWriMo this year, not all of them are, so I will meet with my friend to talk over our short stories. Mine I am hoping to finish within a week or so, so I can send it off to a contest — the very first I will have ever attempted, though I have long been wishing to submit my work for various literary challenges. It is my hope that this will all me to set a good example for myself so I might continue to share my work with some great publications around the country.

As for my NaNovel, I am happy with what I have written so far.  I'm in what I am calling Chapter 4, though my chapters so far are pretty short, and Chapter 3 is more of a summary than actual prose. My protagonist has just arrived at her vacation destination where she will spend the remainder of the novel. Her arrival at the Grand Tetons in Wyoming has not only delighted her but has also helped my writing sanity considerably. Though I love to write and I think myself pretty darn good at what I do, I often find it difficult to begin a novel. Already I have noticed that I am enjoying this novel far more than I was enjoying last year's NaNovel at any point in the process. For some reason, even during the most exciting parts of that novel, I just could not get into the storyline enough to really have fun with it. This time around is different. Though much of the style is the same — realistic fiction with a mystery and some romance weaved throughout the plot — the atmosphere is very different. That novel took place in New England in a small town laden with snow for much of the story amidst people who didn't really want to be where they were. This novel involves a main character on vacation, both in a place she wants to be and in a place I want to be. As I write I remember how I felt when I first laid eyes upon the glorious mountains that force their way out of the earth in sublime magnificence. The allure of it all has remained with me for the last 6 1/2 years, and I cannot wait to be able to witness them again in person. In the mean time I must settle for looking at photographs and visiting the landscape in my mind, but writing this novel helps exceedingly and makes me very happy in the process.