Stepping Out

Along with finishing up a project for work I've been making more progress on the next NA novel; I'm about 30K into the story. My female protagonist is a blast to write, and I'm finally able to use what I learned from all those ballet lessons my mother made me take when I was a kid. This is also the book that includes Always Never, the song I wrote in English and Korean, in the story.

Book 1 was a bit of an angst fest, and I want this story to be happier and more about first love. I've still set up huge obstacles for both characters, of course; in some ways they have to overcome even more than Book 1's protagonists had to. Emotional rather than situational conflict is also hard for me to write, as complex romantic entanglements are not my experience. Still, I don't want to take the easy route. Neither protagonist in Book 2 believes they can have a successful relationship, and they're both very focused on their careers, so falling in love is actually the worst thing I can do to both of them.

I'm also experimenting with internal dialogue, and that has been fun. The female protagonist constantly bickers with herself:

My body felt good and ready to dance, but my heart was already doing one grand jeté after another. I thought I’d cleared my head of most of my unprofessional thoughts, but all he had to do was look at me and they popped right back into my brain. Telling me to come to him made them multiply like rabbits, too. Rabbits that wanted to jump him, knock him to the floor and rip off his clothes. I kicked them out again, because I wanted this gig more than a hot and steamy hookup. Plus, I’d be dancing with him, which was almost as good as.

This is what happens when you don’t have sex for a year, my indignant heart pointed out. You start thinking that kind of baloney.

One other thing I'm doing is to avoid using profanity in the entire series. I don't have a problem at all with cursing, but I think making an effort to keep it minimal creates more of a creative challenge for the storyteller. Thus "baloney" instead of the default "sh*t" in the passage above.

I should have the first draft finished by the middle of March, at which point I'll move on to Book 3. I'm writing these books without any lengthy outlines or much pre-planning. I did write a one-paragraph premise for each book to work out the main conflict, but I thought taking a more organic approach would be good for me, too.

Image by Marcel Langthim from Pixabay