I'm In Love With Me

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." --Oscar Wilde



I have been posting my current work-in-progress, a novel titled I Am No Hero, in 1000-word chunks on CleanPlace, the site where I mentor teen writers. What is posted online has nearly caught up to what I've written so far.

Today I posted the climactic scene from the end of Part One, and I totally fell in love with my own brilliance. I figure this is excusable because it doesn't happen very often. Most of the time I don't feel particularly excited or depressed about my talent. I just write.

My story is about an unlikely group of people drawn together who have mostly useless superpowers. The big fight culminating in the last pages of Part One is by far my favorite part. I'm not super good with action--if I can't picture it moment-by-moment as if it's playing on a movie screen before me, I have a really hard time writing it. But this scene unfolded so cinematically as I wrote, exactly what I could have wished for. It is delicious. Part Two has a lot to live up to.

I have two favorite quotes from the big scene. Well, the first one is just a phrase. There is a character with a deep, really smooth voice, something that's kind of hard to describe well without drawing on cliches (like butter, etc.), and by this time, I'd mentioned it on at least three different occasions. This last time was my favorite description: "that smooth, hot cider voice." Yum. I want to drink that voice.

My other quote comes right after a telekinetic man uses his funky mind voodoo to brush a woman's hair out of her eyes: "His gesture seemed more of a violation than if he'd touched her with his crazy, evil hands. He was touching her with his crazy, evil mind, and that was worse." :P

I'm writing this story in first person, which is a lot of fun in itself, and freeing, but also in the point of view of a 24-year-old man. It's a blast. Some people think it would be so hard to write from the opposite gender's point of view, but I really don't think it is. Not for me, anyway. I have male readers who keep me on track and remind me that guys don't sit around talking about their feelings. :P I love writing from a guy's point of view.

The good thing about being totally in love with myself right now is that I'm really motivated to finish this story. It's only about a third complete, and I honestly have no idea how it will end. Right now I don't even know what will happen next, and that's the way I like it, writing by the seat of my pants. But I have readers who are excited to see what happens next (so am I!), and I love what I'm doing, and those are two huge motivators. The issue is time management and self-discipline, those yucky, boring words.

Right now I have some rewriting to do. I forgot a couple of extremely important details that need to be worked in, one of which involves completely changing a character's appearance. I described him as being kind of a goober, but then I remembered that he's supposed to make women swoon every time he enters a room, and while dweeby-looking guys have their place (I'm a dweeb lover myself), they don't have universal appeal. So I have to recast my dweeb as a heartthrob.

While I was reading the climactic scene today, I also realized I had mentioned a character doing something very important and then never followed up on it. It was as if her important task had never happened. I hate loose ends, big ones like that, and even small ones, like a weapon that disappears or changes hands by itself, which I am also guilty of. Those pesky scalpels! So hard to keep track of except when they're pointed at someone.

And now I'm completely and utterly distracted by Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor tap dancing on a desk. Suffice it to say, I can't wait to return to the world of my story!