The Start of Something New

As you saw yesterday (in the first post), I came up with an opening for the first chapter of Love Remains that I was pretty tickled with. Well, since I have to get this book written, revised, edited, and turned in in LESS THAN TWO MONTHS (I’m thinking I need to find a countdown widget for this one, since it is really marked in days and not months to deadline . . . 59 days, if anyone cares), I need to average a couple thousand words a day if I’m going to accomplish that.

I spent several hours yesterday afternoon working on collecting my thoughts about secondary characters, settings, and backstory—all in Microsoft One Note, which I’ll write about more next week. But I knew that before I went to bed last night, I needed to continue what I’d started the night before and get further into the first chapter. (I already have the 500-word Prologue written—I wrote that eight months ago when I was working on the proposal for this series.)

I’ve discussed many times before about how I don’t like writing first chapters, because I never feel like they’re any good. But I think I’m going to have to stop saying that, because the last three books I’ve written (MFR, ACFL, and RC) I’ve liked the first chapter. LR will be no exception to this trend. I wrote a little more than 1,100 words last night in under an hour. Of course, it helped that in the synopsis of this book that I wrote for the proposal, I had written the summary of the opening scene in pretty vivid detail, so I knew what needed to happen at this party where the sharks were circling. Not only that, but I was thrilled with how clearly Bobby’s character was coming through to me—ex-military law enforcement officer that he is. The way he looked at people and the words he chose to use in his narrative: surveillance, he identified himself, peripheral sightings, the all-male encampment outside, and jar-head. I can tell I’m going to have a lot of fun with his character.

Today, I’m heading back to Nashville (Mom and Dad talked me into staying an extra day so that I’m driving between two major storm systems instead of in the middle of one), and I’ll once again employ the speech recognition software on the laptop to get some writing done. When I ended Bobby’s scene last night, I was eager to get on to the second scene in the chapter—Zarah’s first scene. Since she’s a character I’ve worked with before (when I wrote the original manuscript this story is based on, though Bobby’s job/character has changed, as has the plot), but since I have not gone back and re-read that manuscript, it’ll be interesting to see how she reveals herself in this introductory scene—in which she has just run into (literally) the man responsible for getting her kicked out of her father’s house fourteen years ago . . .