show off

okay, so there i was thinking about writing that romance novel. and i was like, hmm, what do i even do to get it started? and msg says he usually makes a bunch of notes and a simple outline, maybe some chapter titles, figures out who his characters are, what he wants them to be like and how they change in the book.

which sounded like way too much planning and overthinkery to me, because i am pretty happy being a spontaneous person. only nothing spontaneous was happening when i tried to get the thing going, so msg says, "here, why don't i start it for you and you can take it from there? give me the names of two characters, and tell me a place where they meet, and tell me something weird that's happening in the place when they meet there."

so i think i kinda just blinked for a minute all deer-in-the-headlights-like, and then just said the first things that came to my mind.

"great," he says, "i'll get it started, you watch over my shoulder, and when i get the first scene done, you can take it from there."

now, this was all exciting and tingle-ifiying, since we were going to be doing something together, and he'd be showing me how he does his writery thing, and i'd get the hang of it watching him and then it would be easy to jump in and take over.

yeah, right.

there we are, me hovering, him typing and pausing and telling me why he did this or why he didn't do that, and it sure sounded like he thought it was obvious and straightforward, only i kept thinking, "jeepers, this is complicated." and he kept asking, "what do you think? are you ready to take over?" and i kept saying, "no you keep going for a little more."

and he just wrote the whole damn thing.

seriously, msg wrote this 350-ish page book in between the last entry in this blog and this entry. (which you can probably imagine is why i haven't had a crack at the computer to do any blogging since then.)

obviously, i did not hang around watching over his shoulder the whole time, but i watched more than i usually do when he's writing, and it was way eye-opening. that stuff is a crazy amount of work!

when he was done, he apologized about being such a big computer hog and also about being overall kind of neglectful during the whole deal, and he asked if i thought i was ready to start my own book, and i said, "you're crazy. this is obviously something for people way more obsessive than me to do. mister crazyperson." and he laughed and he said it really wasn't any more obsessive than blogging about your feelings and life and shit, which i do all the time.

which gave me the idea that maybe instead of sitting down to write a novel, i should sit down to blog, and then just blog the novel. like, in between my normal posts just write a bitty bit of story as a post, and however long it takes me is however long it takes me, and maybe i'll finish it and maybe i wont.

but i definitely won't finish in 2 months!

crazyperson.

p.s., i think his book is pretty good, but it is not sexy enough. mine may not end up being as good, but it will be sexier by a lot. like, steamy hot without going over into being a naughty book instead of a romance book. well, that's my goal. it may end up being naughtier than i'm thinking, though ... you know me!