Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Once Upon a NaNo

Still plodding along, making progress. I've been posting little bits of my story to my Facebook page, so if you want, you can go over there and see what I'm up to...

(Rough draft is rough.)

Today's writing was pretty emotional for me. I love my characters. Beau and Vin have been busy and active parts of my day-to-day life for eight months now. By the time I'm finished writing Blues (probably mid-December or thereabouts) I will have lived with them for nine months. If that's not all symbolic and shit, I don't know what is.

Anyway, obviously, since Roll hasn't been published yet (It will be in our hands at the end of February, 2014) most of you don't know what's happened thus far, so a shocker of a revelation that happens in the first third of Blues won't mean anything to you.

I'm trying to be a bit realistic with this novel - which is unusual for me. I'm usually a zombie/steampunk/urban supernatural sort of girl (and if that's your thing, the first in my urban supernatural series, Blood Sight, will be released in March) But you know, this one's a coming-of-age sort of thing. New Adult. A genre that some people have decried, but I'm really happy to see coming into its own. So to speak.

College and young adulthood is a crazy time that's not really covered, especially in the romance genre. Admittedly, that's because we all act like complete assholes, break ups, hook ups, screw ups, throw ups. We drunk-text old boyfriends, we sleep with our roommate's high school sweetheart. We fall into swimming pools and wake up all Goldilocks (who's been sleeping in my bed.) If we're really, really lucky, we come out at the end with a degree and a small mountain of debt.

I came out of college with divorce papers.

A few days back (really, it's not even been a WEEK yet since NaNo started) I wrote about one of the couples I established in Roll breaking up. (My editor was a bit distressed about this - but I liked <character>! she complains.) I like her, too. She's not a bad person, just not ready to cope with the realities of grad school and balancing a long-distance relationship with someone who's still an undergrad. Long distance relationships suck. Today, one of my real life friends told me she and her SO had broken up. Because of a long distance relationship. Yeah, so... that happens.

I stumble over myself a bit, in this story. Beau's a misfit from a redneck town. Someone who's smart, smart enough to know that he has to pretend to be normal in high school. I wasn't that smart, but I wish I had been. Still, he feels alienated and alone, and even now, in college where people accept him for who he is, he's still uncertain. He keeps waiting to wake up and have it all taken away.

Vin's a little more like I am now, outgoing, obnoxious, says what he thinks and sometimes thinks not at all before opening his mouth. He doesn't try to fit in so much as he adapts his environment around him; he surrounds himself with like-minded individuals and delights in being the center of attention. And just recently, he's come face to face with the possibility of rejection. He's never really dealt with it before, and his anger and pain are very familiar to me.

Today, it took a while to get my words out. I was just finishing up when my daughter got home from school.

I've been sitting here all day, staring at my pages.

Because I love these two boys, these shadows of the me I used to be. And I know that I have to hurt them, in order to have story.

But I really don't want to.

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