August Sweeps - Day 195

Fun in the sun, boys and girls.

I came to the park again, spread out my blanket, and promptly had to go to the bathroom, as usual.  It's Pavlovian at this point.  But I forged ahead, since I was at the park partly to write, partly to . . . wait, why else do I come here?  What more can I do?  Who am I here?

Little STEPFATHER reference there, folks.

Sometimes, when I am writing, I will text Big Anklevich to ask him for a name for a character.  Today, I discovered that I had never given Rick, the main character of "Hatchling," a last name.  Well, I suspected it, at least, so I spent half an hour (or longer) compiling all my daily bits of writing it into one file, and completely forgot about the last name as I was doing so.  Turns out the short story is over thirty thousand words already.  Guess that makes it not a short story. 

Oh, so I decided, pretty arbitrarily, that his last name is Ashford.*

I watched MR. DEEDS with my nephews tonight, since I had already gotten my writing done and I remembered liking the movie back in 2002.  But man, it just wasn't very good.  I was impressed by how good Winona Ryder looked in it, and that Sandler played such a low-key character instead of one as big as Billy Madison or The Waterboy or Jack/Jill or The Zohan.  But I probably should've been doing something else during that ninety minutes.

Not blogging, of course, but something.

Sit-ups Today: 122
Sit-ups In August: 2548

Afterward I did my sit-ups and went for my run, and I started thinking of writing a Natalie Whitmore-centric "Dead & Breakfast" story.  It would take place after my (seemingly-abandoned) novel-length "Only Have Eyes" story and I think I would have her go on a photoshoot for a bridal magazine, someplace majestic and beautiful in Idaho, and she falls in love with the dude playing the groom.  But the groom just ain't feeling it, at least, not like she does.  She finds out the groom recently lost his father, who asked for him right before he died, but the son didn't get there in time.  So she becomes focused on getting this would-be lover to the bed and breakfast on July second, so that he can find out what his father wanted to say to him.  

As I type it right now, it sure sounds lame, kids, but while I was running, it was something I really wanted to write, as well as a scene that establishes that now that Mason Bradley is seeing someone else, he and Natalie actually become good friends . . . something that is patently impossible in real life, but might work in a story.  We'll see.

Words Today: 1165
Words In August: 12,762

*Gotta say, though, that I regretted naming him Rick almost immediately.  It is just kind of a bland, unspecial name, especially next to a name like Talia.  But I guess it's too late to change it now.