Howdy,
Last night I wrote about February, about how today would already be March, and it got me thinking that some months have passed since our November immersion into my 550-word per day version of National Novel Writing Month (#NaNoWriMo, as it’s seen on social media).
As we’ve covered, officially NaNoWriMo is 50,000 words in a month, or roughly a pace of 1,700 words a day. My 550-word commitment, in a 31-day month like March, brings in about 17,000 words, which isn’t too shabby. It’s not a novel in a month, but it is a novella (again, as we discussed in November and saw play out with my Jake Jones basketball story [or pieces of a story — as my encouraging brother-in-law Matt Garman will let me know if I don’t finish my edit and publish it soon]).
Jake Jones novella NaNoWriMo in November ended up being over 18,000 words drafted, which was quick work on story for me.
As an experience and exercise, November was a great success, and I said at the time I’d do it again, maybe a couple of times a year, maybe quarterly.
Well, it’s a new month — and one threatening to close the first quarter if I’m going to chase quarterly — so I’m going to launch into #NaNoWriMo Hawes-o 2.0.
It’s spring. I’m going back to my Baseball Boys.
Give a glimpse of the Micah and Mason Redd characters and their family and world and sport.
Baseball.
It may not be actual spring. Yet. But, hey, it’s California, and it feels like it. And the beautiful blossoms are popping, brilliant and hot against blue sky.
Just jamming into this I trying to decide if I should outline a little, and if so how much of that to share in posts or just go, just write. Draft, draft, draft. NaNoWriMo-style.
[Time passes skipping through Baseball Boys ideas …] I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to try to graft back into my Baseball Boys story with an outline yet. I’m thinking more of a scene, or scenario, or, like now, the start of spring, and see what our characters do as they begin to feel baseball season emerging with the smell of fresh grass, so fresh that maybe it hasn’t even been cut yet.
In the foothills where Micah and Mason Redd live the winter grass grows wild, all over expansive landscapes, pushing up through once-tall weeds that lay down and brown. Engulfed in green.
I’ll skip much introduction to our players. (If you don’t know the Baseball Boys story at all and would like the context, I’d certainly encourage you to get the book. The author would appreciate it.)
Fiction writers starting with a situation seek to throw characters into challenging, difficult, stretching scenarios, full of swings, dramatic and developing. Sounds so much like the game of baseball itself to me.
I’ll put our guys in a game …
Micah could not believe it.
To be continued …
—Billy
Reading. Writing. Living.
Word Count: 75,094 / On Pace: 74,800 / Year’s Goal: 200,000
Please subscribe to mailing list for the Reading Writing Living journey we’re on and get my newsletter goods. Thank you.