The Diary of a Scribe Part One of 33

Following in the steps of my fabulous friend Danyel, I turn 33 this year. She had a blog for 33 days during her birth month about buying local. It was awesome, so I decided to totally steal her idea and twist it to fit my purposes.

It is July 1. I turn 33 on July 22. What better day to start my new project?
And this project is going to be [hopefully] about the writing or working that I've done or plan to do each day. Maybe it will help keep me on track.

I have finished my first novel for the second time. I've decided to put it away for just a bit until I work on some other stuff. I have four other projects going on at the same time. Sort of. At any moment of the day I'll have an idea for a scene in one of the four and write it down, and continue...But that's not structured enough. So I decided to get my structure on.

My four stories are: The Long Way Home, a period piece set mostly in England that was wholly inspired by Lady Gaga's "The Fame Monster." Every song on those two albums make up the soundtrack to this story.

Calendar Girl--This is a working title. A good one hasn't hit me yet. This one is about a woman who owns her own business and has a nice enough life but doesn't really date, who suddenly realizes that she is attracted to one of of old college friends. She decides to not actively pursue him; he's currently in the middle of a divorce. He has 2 children, a boy and a girl, who think of the main character as an aunt. The two adults see each other mostly on holidays (Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc). Long story short, she finds herself pregnant, due to a huge bag of defective condoms she'd gotten as a Dirty Santa present.

The third's working title is "Just Dance." Yes, this one is tinged with Gaga, too, but mostly Britney, back when I actually liked her. This one is about a woman who has this dance club, which is similar to a strip club but it's more about the performance than the boobs. She has been having some slight difficulties with the community, who think she's nothing but a flesh peddler. Her father(from whom she is estranged) sends a PI to check things out. This PI is an old friend of hers, pretty much the only friend she had in her younger years. She taught him how to dance, he knows her deepest secrets, including the fact that she faked an injury to get out of her career as a figure skater, once destined for the Olympics. At first she refuses his help b/c of his connection with her father, but he makes her look at her problem logically, and she gives in and lets him give her a hand beefing up security.

The fourth is A. Rose for Justin (the period is meant to be there) It's the second in what I hope to be a three book series. The first one I mentioned, that one that is already done is book #1. This is story #2. Since I'm working on it right now I don't want to talk too much about it just yet. Tomorrow perhaps.

So all four of these projects have pages, scenes written. All have a general outline, the random scenes I write are plugged in to a timeline, and then the scenes are fleshed out.
I decided to give myself formal assignments after the outlines were completed, and there were a few scenes to work off of. My first assignment is to write the first 5 chapters of each story. Beginnings are really hard for me, so this is a great exercise. Endings are scary too...They are almost always one of the first things I write, though. Gives me a goal to strive for.

Ok, I've spent entirely too much time on this blog rather than actually working on A. Rose for Justin. I'm working on getting Annie Rose out of her mom's house and back to the theatre....Gotta get my segue on.

Enjoy the next 33 days.

Cheers!

SJG