Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Day 52, May 19, 2010

I'll start today with some practical advice for the would-be fiction writer. Try to find a spouse with a great big trust fund. Wealth comes in handy when rejection slips outnumber advance checks. Which is to say most of the time for most writers. If you lose your heart to someone who doesn't belong to a Fortune 500 dynasty, at least look for someone who's in the arts. That way your spouse won't think you're any crazier than he or she is. Failing that, look for someone who's a good proofreader. Otherwise, your typos and grammatical errors might be some of the funnier parts of your material.

I'm lucky in many ways, but relevant to this blog and my work as a writer, I'm fortunate that my wife is an artist and a good proofreader. I'm unlucky in that she's out of town right now. So any glitches you might find over the next few days are what my wife sees every day.

In today's first scene, the protagonist is out searching the streets of the town where the story is set to see if he can find the sexual predator whose name and appearance he now knows. But the SOB is nowhere to be found because he knows he's being pursued. The predator may even have fled for parts unknown, but the protagonist can't afford to make that assumption lest he be mistaken and fail to prevent another attack.

In the second scene, a supporting character, the weak link in a criminal conspiracy, is about to be arrested when he foils—or at least delays—his incarceration by having a heart attack.

Today, I wrote five pages, edging up toward page 300 now.

Day 52 of writing my new novel is done.

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