A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Beginning

I had time to write today. :)

I think I shall just sit and bask in that sentence, because I don't have that time very often.  And not only did I have time to write, but we were snowed in, all Saturday activities were cancelled, and Handsome Hubby had thought ahead enough to procure coffee and donuts for the morning.  (I know.  I'm smitten just writing it.)

So since I resolved to Write the Darn Book this January, I find myself going about things in a completely different and much more enjoyable way than I usually do.  First, I took a month to just research and plan. (And write report cards.  And more report cards.  And did I mention report cards?) 

Second, I am letting the characters speak to me.  Reading so many writing blogs, I have heard over and over that writers find that the story is asking to be told, or that the characters let them know what's right along the way.  In many of my previous attempts at something like writing, I have hit areas where I definitely felt like I was forcing the story, and that was sort of the kiss of death; the beginning of the end.  This time is the first time that I really feel like the characters are not caricatures of a person, they are not the medium by which the story is told, but rather they are the story.  I am sensing their feelings and their reactions like they are real people.  And it feels so much better.  I'm not quite sure what stood in the way before, but I feel like something has really changed in my approach, and it's definitely a good thing.

Third, I have not begun at the beginning.  Everything else I've written has always begun at the beginning.  In previous writing, I've had some great opening lines and opening scenes, and even planned out the rest, but didn't have the story momentum to get there.  This morning, I woke up with a scene in my head as clear as day.  I had to keep it there for three hours, between the time I got up with the kids (it was HH's turn to sleep in, my turn comes tomorrow, we trade off on the weekends, even though sleeping in is often only until 8:30 or 9.. .still a big difference from the weekday 5:45 alarm!) and the time HH woke up.  When he did get up and settled in with the girls, I came up and started to write.  And the scene I wrote was, interestingly enough, maybe not quite halfway through the story.  I have never done that before.  I just had such passion for that scene (thank goodness my female protag finally gave me her name... at least her first name), it had to be written.  (So for those of you keeping score, first scene, first 880 words... I only have to do that about 50 more times, lol). 

Now I am thrilled because that scene revealed so much to me about my protagonist and another important character that I feel like writing everything up to that scene will be so much clearer, and I can always add scenes later in the book because I have an important checkpoint in place.  I have never jumped around like this in  my writing, and we'll see if it makes the story more disjointed (fun editing ahead) or it actually works because I have a clearer sense of who and what is to come.

Oh, and.... I had time to write today!!! :D

(On a side note, Curly Jones was an absolute Terrible Two today... she peed on the carpet five times, directly after sitting nonchalantly on the potty each time and doing nothing... and she has had very few accidents during the day this past week.  On top of that, she picked up her cup of water at lunchtime and just turned it upside down so that the entire thing spilled all over the table, she yelled at me when I was trying to clean up that she wanted to do it, and don't even get me started on the bear that she was at naptime.  It was pretty funny, though, when she said to me, "Mommy, I'm not terrible (a word I had not used)... I'm just verrrrrrrry silly!"  Oy.  Thank goodness she is usually not like this, lol....)