And now he’s dessert!

I’ve been writing like crazy this last week.  Since the Tucson Festival of Books is finally over, and I’ve regained an enormous part of my personal life back, I have been very anxious to get Book Two finished. 

I’ve set an arbitrary date of May 15th for the first draft to be completed, but I know My Agent would like it sooner. 

Here’s my favorite phenomenon that happens, at least to me, when I’m writing a book.  It happened today which is what prompted me to blog about it.

I’ll be writing along following my defined route marked out on a big piece of posterboard in colored coded Post It Notes for days just trying to stay on the designated plot path.  It’s not drudgery, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t fantastic either.  I’ve written good stuff and I can see where the story is going but I’m not totally feeling it yet, either.  It’s almost like something hasn’t quite gelled for me yet. 

Well it happened today.  The pudding of my story all of a sudden firmed up.  The problem turned out to be that I really didn’t completely understand my hero.  He was superficial at best and one dimensional at worst.  The heroine was firmly created in my mind, her personality painted with a kalediscope of colors, but poor hero-man was a stick figure.  And dear readers, that was a shame because this book was conceived because I loved his character so much in Book One. 

How can that be, you ask?  Well, Book One wasn’t really about him.  He played a fairly big part in it, but ultimately he was a throw away character.  Only, I couldn’t bring myself to do that.  He was so affable and charming that his story should be told.

Unfortunately, affable and charming can only go so far.  I had to stir life into my limp pudding and, entirely by accident, that happened today.  The words flowed from my fingers without my bidding and, lo and behold, there he was.  It was just as shocking to me as I’m sure it was to my dear gentleman.

Now he’s so much more than pudding.  He’s like Donkey said, “a parfait.”

Now, I’m super excited to keep going.  Maybe I’ll make it early after all.

Parfait anyone?