My 500 Words: Day 1

I have just joined a writing challenge to write 500 words a day for the next 31 days… January is my new writing month.  If I were writing a novel, that is 15,000 words already.  I have some novel ideas, I have story ideas.  I just don;t take the time to write them down.  What is wrong with that picture? I have a note on my phone that is called “My Idea Bucket,” where I put clever ideas for writing and guess what?  It is empty.

I am hoping this will get me into much better writing habits.  I mean, I am retired.  I don’t have a lot to do during the day, but I find myself reading, or watching TV.  What a wasted day when all I do is channel surf.  I am not a lazy person.  I am just uninspired.  Maybe setting a challenge for myself is a good way to develop a habit.  Actually, I have heard that it takes 60 days to fully develop a habit.  So, if 31 days is accomplished, then I will give myself another goal:  29 days.  Or maybe more.

So, what is this novel about that I am going to write over the next 31 days?  It is called, tentatively, Road of Change.  It is a Lifetime Movie type story of a husband and wife who are estranged, then his mother dies and leaves them a 3 million dollar house.  The stipulation to get it is, Anne and Chris have to drive a Porsche Cayenne to Chris’s brother. Sounds simple, right?  Well, they have to drive through every one of the contiguous 50 states to get it there.  

So right away they have problems, when Chris wrecks the Porsche on the first day of the trip.  Anne and Chris snipe at each other, get angry with each other, yell at each other and finally learn to get along.

On the trip, they have their dog with them, a German Spitz named Snow.  They leave their teenage daughter with Anne’s sister.

During the journey, Anne and Chris relive moments in their lives and finally discover the reason for their drifting apart.

This novel is somewhat autobiographical in that I am reliving many parts of my own life and some of it is made up.  The scenery isn’t important on the journey, just the interactions between the two people. The setting isn’t important.  The time of day isn’t important.  It is an opportunity to watch two people fall in love all over again and for them to remember why they are together to begin with.  This is definitely a love story, sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter sweet.  

I hope that is reading this new creation, you will fall in love with my characters, too.  

This is a bit scary for me, writing a story while essentially naked.  I am allowing the world to watch the story unfold, step by step.  There will likely changes made along the way.  Some of what I write may be deleted and a new scene written to take its place.  At the end of this experiment, I hope to have a novel.