Round Robin: Up a Tree

Welcome to the weekly Round Robin! Each week I post a four-sentence prompt, and your mission, should you choose to accept it is to continue the story (up to 4 sentences at a time) in the comments. You may post more than once, but not consecutively. You don’t have to be a writer to join in – anyone can play, and take the story whatever direction you want.

Here we go!

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Up a Tree

Nelson stood barefoot in the cool grass, his neck craned at an impossible angle. Above him leaves rustled and danced as the object of his interest moved through the branches. Dark clouds were approaching, and lightening had flashed just south of the ridge moments ago. He reached for a low branch, preparing to swing himself up.

Construction Zone: Automatic Sub-plots

Delve into my NaNo draft with me for a moment, if you will. Marie, our heroine is driving her team in a big truck with an extended cab along a highway in the desert. The next “catastrophe” I’ve planned for them is an engine problem, which happens on schedule. They get out, one of the guys thinks he can fix it, and rummage around in back for a tool box. I’ve not given them one, I want them to solve the problem creatively (or not, whatever happens as I write).

And then they find a box in the back. One that could be a tool box. I’m intrigued, because it’s not supposed to be there. I’m typing furiously; just as curious as they are to find out what’s in the mysterious box. They open it up, and through a serious of cryptic comments, we all find out that it’s a kilo bag of cocaine.

Obviously, this adds some serious issues to the story. There are certain logical things that one “expects” to go with illegal drugs being randomly found. One of which is that at the very least, someone’s probably looking for the drugs.

This doesn’t actually change my plot at all…it just adds another layer of complexity. More bad guys to watch out for. Maybe more good guys if law enforcement gets involved. Certainly more challenges and danger to deal with as they try to solve the main challenge in the story. It’s something I hadn’t thought of, and why would I? I was focused on the main story when planning out my scenes, and I don’t plan out every little detail before I start writing (because knowing too much about the story before I write it bores me, and then I don’t write it).

This happens to me quite often – I’ll be writing along, minding my own characters when someone finds something, or an event I didn’t plan just sort of happens. Sometimes it’s annoying, and completely unusable. My past NaNo drafts have many such examples that make me fear editing them. Occasionally, they’re like the example above, and I sit in awe of what can happen when you let things play out as they will on the page.

Do automatic sub-plots pop up in your drafts? Are they normally usable, or just words to cut later? Have you ever taken an automatic sub-plot out and turned it into it’s own story?

Goals and Reading List 11/9/09

Here we are again, looking at another week full of things to do. Last week I was about half and half with accomplishing things, but the momentum wasn't too bad. I'm about 1,100 words behind on NaNo at this point, but I'll catch up eventually.

I couldn't wait to re-check the word count guidelines again - for anyone who might be interested, Harlequin Blaze and Intrigue (the two lines I'm considering for my novels) are both 55,000 to 60,000 words now. Must have gone up, but that's okay. Good, actually, since it opens up potential to submit to other houses without having to add so much should Harlequin turn me down, if I write to 60,000 words. Cool.

Anyway, I didn't do too badly last week, even with falling behind a bit. Desert Heat is cruisin' along, but needs more "heat". I didn't get a short story drafted, but did get the plot down for each of them, along with the main character and common thread. So good progress - they should go quickly with the advanced planning.

As far as personal goals went, the Thanksgiving decor is up, work-outs were a non-event, and all the halloween stuff is gathered for inventory, but that's as far as I got. Sometimes, you just have to sit and play games instead of working all weekend.

So...here we go again...

Weekly Goals

Writing
- 2000 words per day on Desert Heat
- 2 short story drafts for Holiday Lights
- Chapter 32 of Tempest
- Start writing earlier in the evenings (ie, quit playing on FB so much)

Personal
- Get cracking on the halloween decor inventory. I don't want it stretching into Christmas. We have Wednesday off (Veteran's Day is a federal holiday), so will hit it hard then.
- Start my gift calendars
- Catch up on the backlog of laundry from before the Halloween party

Weekly Reading List

It's slow going with all the writing at night, but I still manage to sneak some reading in at lunch and on the occasional break at work. The beautiful thing about ebooks is they are completely portable, and unnoticable on a device as small as my PDA.

Another Harlequin freebie, Snowbound by Janice Kay Johnson was completely delightful, fraught with angst as it was. A teacher and her high school charges are stranded in the mountains by a huge snowstorm, and taken in by a war vet in a remote mountain lodge who isn't at all happy for the company. It's a wonderful story of redemption and healing, very well written.

Starstruck by Julie Kenner (Harlequin Blaze) is a hilarious and poignant story about falling in love with your best friend - or not. The tension is high, the heat is on, and so is the struggle between following your heart, or following your head. The sort of on again/off again bumbling relationship between the two main characters, Alyssa & Chris, is very believable, and the ending is just perfect. I can't wait to get Claire's story (Alyssa's best friend) when it comes out!

Texas Blaze by Debbi Rawlins (Harlequin Blaze) is my current read. Last month I read her Texas Heat, which was three shorter stories about three of Kate's friends finding love at her ranch (two with Kate's brothers, one with a local rodeo hero). I was really looking forward to Kate's story, and so far, it hasn't disappointed. How do you get the guy you had a crush on when you were young to admit his attraction to your grown self when it seems "taboo"? This is an excellent read, but I wouldn't expect anything less from Rawlins.

That's it for this week - how's your week shaping up? Any good reads, or is everyone busy writing away?

Variety News 11/8/09

It makes no sense, but it seems like the busier I get the easier it is to be organized. Probably because I don't have a chance of keeping up unless I am organized! Last week, I had nearly every post for the blog written early and scheduled to post on the correct day. It really does make things go so much more smoothly. Why can't I do that when I'm not rushing to write a novel draft in 30 days?

In any case, 'twas a good week around here last week. Thanks to everyone who participated in the first Round Robin! It went a completely different direction on Facebook, which was really cool but I don't have enough interested friends there to keep it moving along. So I'll fix the connection over there today, so everyone can come over here to participate in one spot.

Welcome, new followers! Glad to have you with us!

There are always several posts I read during the week that ressonate with me, I always find myself thinking, "I wonder if all my online peeps have read this yet?" Because I find myself wanting to refer these to people, I'm creating a new topic for Saturdays called "Notable Posts". This is where I'll mention and link posts on other blogs/sites that I found particularly interesting or helpful during the week. Hopefully you'll enjoy visiting them too.

This week on The Variety Pages:

Monday: Weekly Goals & Reading List
Tuesday: Construction Zone - Automatic Subplots
Wednesday: Round Robin - Up a Tree
Thursday: Wildcard - NaNo Update & excerpt
Friday: Chapter 32 of Tempest
Saturday: Notable Posts

Elsewhere on The Variety Network

Word Blizzard - I've fallen behind on updates for this over the weekend, but since all the members are doing NaNo, they don't have time to read anyway. I'll get caught up tomorrow with the next chapters and daily prompts.

Nail Art Tuesday - Something pink and petally for this week, I think. Maybe. My creativity is faltering a bit, but I'll figure something out by tonight.

Scaryview Cemetery - is effectively going silent for awhile. I might post occasionally on the inventory process or ideas for next year's party, but nothing with any regularity. Time to move on to Thanksgiving!

Tea on Tap - I do waffle on this one. I'll keep it open, but not sure I'll get around to posting over there anytime soon. We'll see. I have tons of tea to try and comment on...

Here's to another great week!