Univited Guests

Unexpected characters keep showing up, clamouring for attention. I've already got twice as many as I want, the stage is overcrowded and I've got another 20,000 words to go. But they keep showing up, trailing plot lines, backstory and a need to fit into the "weave of the narrative."
Like Steffi today, I didn't expect her, but once she showed up, I couldn't keep her off the page. Dr. Suze was in the back seat of the limo going up a dirt road in Vermont in August 1976. Turns out Steffi was sitting alongside: Looks like stork, long neck and a big nose, gawky and irritated. kinda like Ann Coulter at 22.

Naturally Steffi wants to hog the spotlight. She'll have to fight for it.

Counting Words

I like WordPerfect. I like the way it counts my words. You can start at the bottom, then right click to select the stuff you've written so far, a bar rises in the far right column, like an elevator in the World Trade Center. Seemingly slow, but rising up a great distance, past hundreds and hundreds of paragraphs like floors in a tower zipping past. Until it stops at the top and the title: How to Fall Out of Love. Then you go to file/properties/information. Where all your words are added up. 69,287 words so far as counted this morning before I lay down some fresh ones today. Writing a novel is like laying down 90,000 bricks. 20,713 words, or bricks, to go before you get to the editing and re-writing. Trying to make those bricks fly.

Dear Darling Kickass Molly

Molly was always a good read. And a lesson on how to skewer, spindle and mutilate the arrogant & ignorant with a good laugh and a sharp poke to their soft underbelly. We miss her wit and her style. She made Texas shine bright as a tin star. Go to the Texas Observer web page: Texasobserver.org to read her and weep that she's gone.