Nifty 350 (Thanks For the Idea, James Scott Bell!)

As in 350 words a day. That's going to be my goal until I type "The End" on this story.

I wrote today. Nine hundred and ninety-five words, to be exact. Yay, me! Beginnings aren't easy, but I'm determined, as I blogged yesterday, to go forward and not look back over what I've already written. This is a first draft, so I shouldn't expect anything. Maybe the occasional good line or description or whatever, but nothing that sings off the page.

Not yet, anyway.

I did follow that first index card, where I briefly plotted out the opening scene (and all the other scenes in the story). I feel I'm off to a good start, as I got my point across in a somewhat humorous fashion (which is what I was going for).

A brief synopsis: A divorced, 31-year-old contract paralegal divides her time among her love life, caring (part time) for her Alzheimer's-stricken mother, her job, and trapping feral cats. Her love life is in a coma at the moment (one-night stands definitely aren't her thing), her mother's driving her crazy, her job is going fine but she wants to do it full time.

The cats? Well, one in particular is going to give her a scratch that lets loose with a curse, one that will bring her in touch with a gruff man who sometimes speaks in a strange language, a secret society dedicated to the Egyptian protectress of cats, and a demon bent on ripping apart all those who have the curse...

Meh. Not bad. :-) As long as I can make it sound interesting all the way through. Oh, her one voice of sanity is her grandmother, who's more lucid at 91 than Jackie's (my protag) mother has ever been--at least to Jackie.

Shuffling the Deck

I also tried that shuffling the index cards idea. Although it didn't suggest any different plot connections or whatever, it did suggest another scene which I felt I was needed (this is toward the end of the story). And, I'll probably lay out the index cards after I go through the first three or four, just to see if my mind comes up with something: A twist, another character, another scene, whatever.

No writerly advice or websites to check out; I haven't been online very much today. I will say that I think there are no rules when it comes to whether or not to use an outline. I took an unscientific test in Plot and Structure and came heavily down on the Outliner side. Others might come down on the seat-of-the-pants or Non-Outliner side; still others will have a combination of both. The bottom line is that a writer should use whatever gets her to finish her story.

Keep writing!