A plan comes together!

I interrupt this parade of Nanowrimoscarforama to actually talk a little about my writing. I don't have long. I've got more writing to do.

First, I have been a little down because I have been either sick or exhausted from work and sometimes those were the same things and I have not been doing much writing. Each day I see my stats for Nanowrimo (November Challenge for Writing) get worse and worse. And last night I decided to fight back. Today I am going for 10,000 words. Or maybe 15,000 for the weekend depending on how things go.

And things are going well! I usually do some planning for a novel, but this time I decided to just embrace writing by the seat of my pants and go for it. And I have. Today I have gotten far enough along that my primary and secondary characters are developed. I know my basic plot and theme. And I know how I plan to get there for the most part. I also know some of that will change as the characters take me places I didn't intend to go. But I also know I will enjoy our trip together. And when it is over, I am pretty sure I will cry. I often cry for characters when finish a book whether I read it or write it.

My new book that I am working on is tentatively titled "Monsters Within".
I am asked if I write about real people. My answer is not. But I sometimes start with the experiences of real people and then I try to write about real emotions.

How I came up with the original premise about a girl who is recovering from a disfiguring accident is...A few weeks ago, I saw a former student who had some facial altering injuries in a vehicle accident some years ago. Others were injured and one passed away in the accident and I thought how emotionally burdensome it must be to mourn and heal emotionally and to have to heal physically too. How do you deal when you have such visible and ever present reminders of tragedy? And how do you deal with people who see a disability rather than the person who is you?

I also thought of other students who have had physical injuries or disorders that changed their bodies in noticeable ways and how hard that must be to cope with a peer group that focuses so much on people's bodies. It usually takes some age and life experience before people truly understand about inner beauty. And some people never do. My students who have experienced these changes always seem to have such an outward face of grace that I wonder how hard fought it has been to get there.

I also have had some experience with life-changing incidents myself and I remember mourning and still do somewhat the loss of some of the things I had been able to do before in my life. The things I do without are not as noticeable or as serious as some deal with. And of course I was and am overjoyed to have the abilities and life that I do, but there were days when it was not easy to feel that way.

So, I decided to write a book for people who have to take broken or non-working pieces of both their actual lives and sometimes their physical selves and continue on. My characters are fictional of course, but I hope their hearts and experiences ring true. If I can capture this, I can do what needs to be done to honor the people who experience loss and change. And I am writing this for the age group who need to hear about this the most. In my teaching I sometimes get to help others to better understanding and I am hoping to do this with this novel.

Now...to write it!

Happy Nanowrimo Everyone!