The Writing Life - Part Deux

It's Wednesday, so it must be hump day! It is now 1:5o p.m. in the afternoon and I have done very little today in terms of the way of writing. I've written half a page so far. My goal is of course 5 pages, and the past two days I've managed to crank out 8. I'll still make my goal of 40 pages this week, but I would have liked to have done more.

I have started working on my character sheets, stuff I should have done before writing the book, but since I'm in the let the words flow stage, alot of stuff has come up as I've been writing. I have however been thinking about the book. I've just killed off a character that really served no purpose in the book. I was bored writing her which always tells you that the character was not working. I'd already done the bitchy model in another book. So Justine, the ex-wife model is now dead. I can still have it come out that Jeremy, the villain (I'm using the British actor Simon Russell Beale as my inspiration when he played Iago). I've decided to make him a comic figure with a sinister side. I've added a new character, Penelope the perfect. An old college friend of my hero, she once had hopes of a romance with the hero until he met Justine the model and fell in love and married her. Now Penelope has hopes again (I'm imagining Olivia from Guiding Light but without the bitchy side). They had a brief relationship soon after Justine died, but the hero didn't want to use Penny, so he broke it off. She still has hopes though, she now is dating Jeremy. I'd love to give her a really cool job. I could have her be in PR, like the heroes sister, Henrietta.

I don't want her to be the stereotypical bitchy ex-girlfriend who comes between the hero and heroine, staking her claim. I do think that the fact that she's know the hero since childhood is a good idea, and he's always seen her as a good friend, but nothing more, although she would like more.

Her friendship with the hero, could lead my heroine to feeling insecure, because she knows the hero so well. Plus, she comes from the same background as the hero, and knows his lifestyle. She knows alot of the right people, who can help him get the estate up and running. She should have a quieter style than my heroine, but still she should be friendly towards the heroine. No ulterior motives. I don't know if this is going to work, but who knows. I can always fix it in the second draft. After all that's what they are for!