WiP Report: Two Thirds of the Way There

Somehow it doesn’t seem quite right that apparently I caught a cold when I went to the medical center a couple of weeks ago to have an MRI on my sore shoulder. (I tore some muscles in it, probably when I got too enthusiastic at an exercise class two or three months ago. The pain of that in combination with a hungry cat getting me out of bed way too early led to weeks and weeks of sleep deprivation, clearly a drag on this old body.)

Still, I’ve noticed that working on Apart in April, my NaNoWriMo2018 project, has an analgesic effect on me, so I forget about my aches, pains, and congested nose when I work on it. The writing is going well, and yesterday, I reached the two-thirds mark of the endeavor with 36,293 words, about 3,000 words ahead of schedule.

This NaNoWriMo project seems to be going better than my three previous ones. I’ve had the idea for it for quite a while. I even did some brainstorming and research for it in the spring of 2017. Also, this is the fifth book in the series, so I already have many characters and settings that I can use. I don’t need to create them from scratch.

The latter factor can be both good and bad. This project is going faster than the others, true, but sometimes knowing so much about the people and places of the book leads me astray.

For instance, this past week I got all excited about putting in a scene in which 1) my protagonist, Minty Wilcox Price, has tea with 2) her mother, 3) the woman Minty’s uncle recently married, and 4) Minty’s husband’s aunt. The four women meet in a tearoom recently set up in the house next door to the house where Minty grew up by 5) a woman who appears in Mischief in March and they’re served by 6) the nosy series antagonist who works there.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,“ the part of my brain I call my imp* says, “You can have Woman 6 say snarky things and Women 2 through 4 can suggest that Minty wear a disguise, so after tea Minty and Women 2 through 4 will troop over to the pawnshop you created in ‘The 9th Street Gang’ and . . .”

“Wait!” says the other side of my brain that I call my ump.* “How are you going to use women 2 through 6 later in this new book?”

“Well, I don’t know,” my imp says, pouting a little. “Maybe I won’t. Oh, you’re no fun!”

My ump shrugs. “I don’t care,” she says.

And then by that sort of miracle that often happens when I’m writing, my imp says, “I guess since most of the book takes place in St. Joseph, not Kansas City, I really only need Woman 3 because she moved to St. Joe. Oh and I know, she can help Minty with her disguise and . . .”

After that lots of things about the book that have appeared very disorganized so far fell into place and this morning I’m anxious to get back to it. Best, Juliet

*I describe the imp and the ump in Novel Basics, an Illustrated Guide to Writing a Novel, now available as a Kindle eBook at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K2LXFRP

Juliet’s Calendar Mystery series tells the story of business girl Minty Wilcox and detective Daniel Price in old Kansas City, a place that could get downright deadly a hundred years or so ago. You’ll find the four previous books and several short stories all listed on Juliet’s Amazon Author Central Page: https://www.amazon.com/Juliet-Kincaid/e/B00DB4HWRG