No time to blog! Too busy writing!!!

I know all my adoring fans are just dying to know how the old novel is coming along....wait, er, well, one person asked.  Soooo, I'm just going to treat you all to a little summary of my progress so far.

Before I tell you anything else, I have to say that this has been a strange and wonderful mixture of completely terrifying and supremely pleasurable.  I once read that a writer should force him/herself to write at least a little bit every single day, "come hell or high water."  Even on the holidays.  No days off.  Thou shalt not rest on Sundays.  Sounded like a chore when I read that.  But when I really got going on my own story, I found that I couldn't bear to let a day go by that I wasn't adding to it.  I think it's probably safe to say that I've had my computer on and click-clacked away at it every day since November 6.  Even Thanksgiving when I packed my computer and hauled it down to Mom's.  I'm not joking.

In the roughly six weeks that have passed I have written approximately 60,000 words and 18 chapters in what will probably be about a 24 chapter book.  How have I found the time you ask?  What with my three young children, my work at church, occassional babysitting, and my house to take care of (I even threw in a little girl's slumber party during that time!)? 

For one thing I haven't watched a television show in its entirety since I began writing.  Not even Bill O'Reilly.  If you know me, you know that he has such a presence in our house that we refer to him as Uncle Bill (not to be confused with my real Uncle Bill).  But he comes on in one of those precious hours when the girls are in bed and I can WRITE!  So no Bill for me. 

Second, there is no idle brain time.  That means, if I can't write, I'm thinking on purpose about my story.  I have a notebook that is bursting with sticky notes, grocery lists that I have dug out of my purse, junk mail envelopes that I have written on, etc.  No matter where I am or what I'm doing, I'm thinking about my story and when something pops into my head, I jot it down and tuck it away for later.  If I'm home but not able to write, I'm reading a book about writing.  Or reading another work of fiction so that I can study what the author does that I like or don't like.

And if I can't do that?  Well, there are simply some hours of the day when I need to be wife and mom. I block off sections of my morning and evening when cooking or babysitting combines with laundry and dusting.  Amazingly, hubby has only run out of clean underwear once in the last 6 weeks.

Also amazingly, he has not written me off as a total nut job for spending hours with my mini HP on something that may just prove to be a fruitless endeavor.  I think he's secretly hoping that it's good enough that a publisher will want to buy it.

Is it good enough?  Um, I'm not sure.  Truthfully, I'm not sure.  It's kind of in the style of a Deanne Gist, although written more for the young reader.  It's not as good as, say, a Francine Rivers.  But it's waaaay better than a Karen Kingsbury.  But that's just my opinion.  I read "The Help" while I was in the midst of writing and practically despaired because I knew it was light years ahead of my skill level.  But I'm not giving up because that's just not what I do.  I actually used that experience to make my story better.  I added a scene that provided conflict and developed an antagonist from the beginning that now makes appearances throughout the story because I so enjoyed the tension between Miss Skeeter and her nemisis, Hilly Hollbrook.

My story is one of those classic romances where girl meets guy, girl falls for guy, and then, uh-oh, something happens that pulls them apart...will they get together in the end?  It's got all the good stuff too,  ya know, hearts pounding, lips meeting.  But it doesn't go too far.  As Drew Barrymore says in "The Wedding Singer," it's church-tongue!  ;)

There is guilt, love, danger, fist-fighting, self-doubt, being negatively influenced by a shallow friend, a longing to hear God's voice, grace, forgiveness, misunderstanding, loss, and realizing one's calling in life.  Who hasn't experienced those things?  Better yet, who doesn't want to experience those things vicariously through a herione that you are rooting for?  But maybe that's just me.  I love a good story.

But it's also one of those "inspiriational" types where God is practically a main character.  So if you're not into spiritual things, there will probably be lots of eye-rolling.  I just can't spend all this time on a story if the character doesn't figure life out without looking through the lense of scripture.  It's how I make sense of the world.  I teach a room full of kids every single week how to make sense of the world by looking at scripture.  So naturally, a character that comes right out of my imagination would too.

That's all for now.  I've just thought of something I want to change in the last little bit of dialogue I wrote.  Ah, dialogue.  I could write an entire blog just on what I've learned about dialogue!  It's not what you might think! 

So, until I get another few minutes when I'm not writing, working, reading, cooking, teaching, or caring for the chillin's, wish  me luck!  Say a prayer!  I'll keep you posted.