Day 1

It's NaBloPoMo time!

Which also happens to coincide with NaNoWriMo time. But I'm taking a short break from my wonderful, amazing, incredible novel (of which I have written exactly 380 words and introduced exactly one character) to write my blog post for today.

I spent way too much of my writing time this morning looking for names for my characters. Which was really a waste, because I will probably go back and change their names later anyway when I get to know them better.

Such is the beauty of the Find / Replace function.

Still, each time I am tempted to introduce a new character, I hesitate because I haven't yet chosen names (or even genders) for many of the other people who will inhabit my little make-believe world. I'm going to be spending the next month of my life with these people - I want to choose them carefully and make sure they are people that I (or some down-the-road reader) will actually care about. Right now I don't know any of them very well, and I'm frankly a little shy when it comes to meeting new people. Once we've had some time to get to know each other, I do just fine. But it's hard for me at first, and this is no different.

I'm resisting the temptation to model the characters after people I know. This would make it easier, but it would seem wrong somehow. And it might make me look at those people a little differently if I saw them after their counterparts had done something kooky in my book. So if you ever do get to read my book, the answer is an emphatic no - the characters are not modeled after anyone in real life. Even if they seem like they are. It's all in your head.

Glad we got that cleared up. Because I have no idea what these people are going to do and I could get hit by a bus and someone could figure out the password and open my document and read it and think I'm writing about someone or something real. Which I'm not. It's called fiction for a reason, dammit.

Another bit of business on Day 1 of NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo is the calendar. This month I am: taking three out of town trips, working out of the home at least seven days, teaching childbirth class every Thursday night, and I'm determined to get to martial arts at minimum 4 days per week for 1-2 hours. In addition to the home and school work that needs to be done each day.

At least the family members are used to me not cooking and the boys are all perfectly capable in the kitchen. All I have to do is make sure I buy some ingredients occasionally. Savageman and I can live on, respectively, protein bars and coffee anyway.

Okay, break over. Back to the novel. I can't put off meeting the other characters forever, no matter how shy I happen to be feeling. I'm sure I'll like them once I get to know them.