April Sweeps - Day 448

I spoke to Marshal Latham the other day, and he said he checked in on my blog a week or so back, to see if I was still doing it every day.  I think that tells me that one of the three readers of this daily slog is not Mr. Latham, except for that one Thursday when I had four.

I do wonder why I keep it up, who I am writing this for, but hey, the internet is vast, and one day, when I'm gone, maybe somebody will stumble upon this thing and read through, and say, "Wow.  That Outfield guy was a giant piece of crap.  And not nearly as funny as he thought he was."

I can only hope.

And along those lines, I continue to write every day, having achieved my (rather pathetic) April goal of fifteen thousand words this month just this week (a squeaker, as they [may still] say in baseball parlance).

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In April: 2455

My twin story now sits at about four thousand words (4150, to be exact).  And it would be past that if I had taken advantage of the time I have here at the library before it closes (24 minutes left) by writing instead of blogging--or worse, adding photos to old blog posts.

I do feel like this premise (twin sister goes off somewhere and when she returns is no longer the same) is a very good one.  But hey, you could take that premise and make either a much better, or much worse story out of it.  The premise doesn't matter so much as the execution.*

(I did a search for identical twins, but none of the first dozen results LOOKED identical to me)

For example, I got this idea today that one of the boys that goes with the sister on the trip (and returns changed) is either the boyfriend of or the romantic obsession of one of Layla's classmates/friends.  And she too notices something different about the boy, something only somebody who's memorized every detail and facet of another person's face would notice.  

I like that idea because it gives Layla a confidante, an ally who might understand what's going on (and of course, that girl could disappear or suddenly change her mind partway through the story, leading Layla to question her sanity . . . or whether her friend too has been "altered").  But I don't like it because the idea to begin with is that Layla knows her sister better than anyone could ever know somebody, because they're always together, and they LOOK identical.  

Nobody sees my face more than I do (lucky for them), but if I lived with a roommate/best friend, he or she would see it constantly.  And imagine if that person were my twin, with the exact same face (although, reversed, right?  I can't quite figure out how that works.  I only ever see my face in a mirror, so if I saw me as I truly am, it would appear backwards to me, right?).  It's actually a pretty hard point-of-view to put myself in.

Push-ups Today: 163
Push-ups In April: 2632

Here in the library, they set up a new display that I took a picture of:

It says "Where's my shirt?" and is made up of only Romance novels where the dude has his shirt off on the cover.  It's quite amusing, and a far cry from the folder on my laptop called "Where's my pants?" that's made up solely of photos of that dude from "Bridgerton."

Regardless, I managed 67 words before the damn announcement blared and the lights flashed.  That's less than the above paragraph about the proposed friend of Layla's.

Oh, and I've got to figure out a shortened version of the name Layla.  I refer to Shayla (the twin) as Shay half the time, and that's a bit of a pressure-reliever, but I'm not going to imagine a teen girl allows herself to be referred to as "Lay," regardless of her sexual experience. 

I really don't know how to write, despite doing it all these years.  Is saying that name, Layla, over and over and over again, going to get tiresome in the audio version?  Should I swap it out with "the girl" a few times, like Abbie Hilton told me not to do?  I guess I should ask Abbie about it, since she's the writer I know who makes the most money from it (or the writer I'm closest to that makes money from her writing).  Haven't spoke to her in a while, though.

Words Today: 437
Words In April: 16,978

The library was closed, and it had started to rain when I left.  I got home, and everybody was gone (except the dog, who ran out the door when I came in and then I had to go looking for her), so I decided to get my sit-ups and run done before it got dark, but had forgotten about the rain for some reason.  So, I went outside, and it was both raining and the wind was blowing at the same time, and it was going right in my face, like sand or salt striking at me, and I thought, "Dang, I might not manage this at all."  I decided to force myself to at least run a couple blocks, and then I would allow myself to turn around and run home (this is what I did when I had COVID, having somehow brainwashed myself into needing to exercise every day).

So, I went the two blocks to the corner, but instead of turning around, I turned right, and the wind was blocked there, and by the time I got to the next street, the rain had died down a little, so I kept going.  By the time I turned right again, the wind had stopped too, so I was able to do my whole run, only suffering at the beginning.  You could say it was a euphemism for something, but I have no idea what.

*Feel free to write your own version where a hot female twin goes off somewhere, and when she comes back, she is suddenly sexually attracted to her sister.  I guarantee that will be both better and more successful than my story.  Heck, I'll buy the first copy.