Mom is Just a Nickname

This morning started out with a very nice comment on this blog from a woman who works for Girl Scouts. She thought I might be interested in writing articles for the local Scout council. And I am! It was nice to wake up to a message like that, to know that someone was reading and responding to my words.

After lunch, the kids, Toph and I went shopping. We got a few things we needed and then came home.

I rushed off to my first NaNoWriMo Write In. It was across town (which, if you know Jax, you know can be a long way) by about half an hour. I took a wrong turn somewhere on the way there and it took me forty five minutes to get there instead. The social aspects of this scared me and instead of joining a group , I sat alone and did my typing. The good news is that I reached my goal word count in about an hour. After I had passed my goal count, I got some food (we were at a Panera). As I was sitting there eating and pecking slowly at the keyboard, a lady walked up and asked if I was with Nano. When I said yes, she invited me over to sit with the others. After a few minutes, I did just that which led to me listening in on a conversation about writing and reading and NaNo. Ok, I spoke some too, but mostly just when asked. (Why am I so hopeless in social situations??)

Anyhow, now I’m home. The kids were both fed and in pj’s when I walked through the door. They were putting on a marching band show for me when I came in. They’d even built a shelf for our cd’s and vacuumed up the mess that project had produced. Daddy did good. (love ya, toph!)

I may or may not do any writing tonight. We’ll see what I feel like after getting the munchkin to sleep. I should probably do some dishes at some point tonight too.

Oh! Did I mention my washing machine is broken? Yeah, it’s less than 90 days old and it’s broken. I’m not happy. The silver lining is that they can’t come out til Friday to fix it which means that’s one less chore to do all week. The bad news is that we still have to wear clothes and use towels, so we’re still generating laundry. There’s gonna be one hell of a backlog of laundry waiting for me once that sucker gets fixed.

It’s 7:30pm EST and Xavier is already asleep. I completed my word count goal and then some before dinner, so tonight anything I write is bonus. What I want to do is develop my characters a little more.

I find this really challenging, figuring out what motivates people, what their personality is. Toph says it’s hard to define the personalities of real people, even, so I shouldn’t stress it. But I am having a hard time knowing WHAT my characters should do when I’m not sure what motivates their actions, or what their personality says they should do in a particular situation. A couple of my minor characters are far more vivid in my head than my main characters. A lot of this is because they are either modeled after someone I know in real life, or because they are an archetypal character.

My FMC kind of resembles me, but I’m not sure how far the resemblance goes. My MMC…well, I’m not even sure. In one scene I write, he comes out a macho ass. In another scene, he’s a sensitive new age guy. ugh.

So, this is my mission…to figure out where these characters belong so I can better relate what they are feeling, why they are doing things and the things they are feeling.

Current word count is 18,617.

Oh. I know that the excerpt I posted yesterday is long. I understand if you don’t want to take the time to read it. But if you DO happen to take the time to read it, let me know if you have any remarks. Good or bad, specific or general, I’d really appreciate the feedback. Thanks!