Well I didn’t get as much finished on my long writing day as I wanted. I had PLANNED to get a good start on Chapter One of Totem and finish the revisions on HOC. I still need to finish fleshing out the scene where C finds out M is FBI. That bit is giving me trouble, so I’m going to come back to it later and just move on with the story. I did remove that section from the later scene where she originally tells him though. And I got a very respectable 1400 words done on my opening chapter of Totem, which was written around chores, a trip to Lowes, a visit from one of my grad school pals that lasted more like an hour than fifteen minutes, and a half hour afternoon nap, which I wasn’t feeling too awful about because I needed all the sleep I could get since I am subbing today. I consider it research. I’ll be at the high school subbing for 9th and 10th graders today. I’ll be making particular note of the lingo, since I’m sure it’s changed even in the ten years I’ve been out of high school. I won’t use a LOT of it in the book simply because it DOES change awfully fast, but it should at least help to get the cadence of their speech down.
I’ve been talking to a lot of my friends the last couple of days about what they remember being important in high school. I wasn’t the average high schooler, and while the high school experience isn’t the primary focus of Totem it IS the backdrop, so I want to insert things like worry about having a date for Homecoming and Prom, whether the football team won that Friday night, college entrance exams, dating, popularity, and fitting in. That’s merely a short list of stuff, but feel free to comment and suggest other things that are a big deal in high school. I need a refresher course that isn’t a cheesy teen movie.
In the meantime, I am finishing up my tea in a gulp here because I need to wake DH and head to school. God, this is the earliest I’ve been up in weeks! I wanna go back to my regular late shift. YAWN!