Happy Birthday, Michelle
 
Today is my wife’s birthday. She’s really old now.
 
In other news, NaNoWriMo is going well. And by well, I mean I haven’t had the sudden urge to remove my eyeballs with a screwdriver yet, so let’s put that one in the win column.
 
I’ve reached that point in my WIP where the characters are doing things I hadn’t expected. For those of you who don’t write fiction, this is not me talking out of my rear. As you progress in a novel, you get to know your characters on a deeper level, deeper than what you’d get from a character sketch or by having your characters “fill out” a questionnaire. As a result, they become more real in your head, and they deviate from the prescribed flight-plan.
 
Some writers hate this. It causes them sleepless nights, hives, and premature balding. Others don’t mind it so much. It makes us feel like we’ve created something bigger than our own egos could have anticipated, and that’s saying something.
 
The best part of all this comes in dialogue, when your characters interact in ways that you didn’t believe possible. It makes the work go that much faster, and instead of dreading the next day’s slog to 2k, you wake up looking forward to it.
 
I hope it lasts. It won’t, but that’s a topic for another post.
 
And, again, Happy Birthday to Michelle. Without you, I’d be, well, probably in jail. Like this surprises anyone...
Sunday, November 16, 2008