Thursday, November 12, 2015

71,000 Plus Words into NaNo and Where do I go From Here?

I have been typing like a fiend for days it seems. I have 71,421 words so far, and that doesn't include the 27,000 plus words I scraped after the first three days. So that's like 98,500 words written since the 1st of November on weekends and after working all day and running around doing stuff that needs to get done...and I don't really have a clue where this novel is going or how it will end.

Life Study is based n a series of short stories I wrote- the same characters, but in Life Skills they were a little younger, still in high school. I've changed what happened to Lissa from a bike accident that left her near death with a mangled left leg to an unplanned for child who is 9 years younger than her next oldest sibling, and she is her mother's love child by another man, but she doesn't know this. The man she has always known as her father does know this and he starts abusing her when she is twelve-thirteen years old after emotionally wearing her down.

Lissa is drawn to a troubled young man named Remy Brice who has had his own share of abuse in his life. He's nearly four years older than her and was still in high school when she was a student there, as a condition of his last arrest where he would have been charged as an adult if things had not gone his way for once.

Lissa has an emotional breakdown in front of Remy who understands better than anyone what abuse in the home is all about. He takes her in and is protective of her, drawing his Uncle, cousins and his cousin's mother into the circle of protection he builds around her- exposing them all to violence from her father and his friends, who happen to be policemen who do not hesitate to harass Remy because of his juvenile arrests in the past.

Remy, meanwhile is trying to move forward in his life. He is going to buy his uncle's bungalow and fix it up. He's busy restoring and customizing cars, making good money. He has goals and plans, but now he is modifying them to include the girl he has always adored--Lissa.

The novel is about how two damaged young people bond and struggle to find a path out of their troubled pasts into a brighter future together. Like in Life Skills class, life provides them with some real challenges that they must deal with and find a way through. They have rough spots, both have post traumatic stress syndrome but they have found ways to cope with bad days and look ahead to good days.

It's basically a love story about two young people who have had difficult lives bonding and trying to make a better life for themselves together-  and their struggles not to let the past haunt them.
How it's going to end? I have to clue!

No comments:

Post a Comment