Boy, what a day!
Mandy worked today from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. so I was the babysitter du jour. Not a problem, as both little ones were relatively cooperative with what I wanted and needed to do today. However, the older child - 15-year-old - woke up late, so she missed the bus. Mandy told her she could either go in late (having Mandy drive her to school) but she would also get detention then too since she has done this too many times this year or she could stay home but she would have to be the one actually "babysitting" the kids. Now, I wasn't aware of that deal having been struck till about 4 p.m. today - after the teenager had spent roughly 90 minutes or more in the bathroom curling her hair from about 11 a.m till 1 p.m. and then she disappeared upstairs to her room and didn't resurface till about 4 p.m. Meanwhile, I'm here, taking care of the two children same as usual. But, when she slipped up and told me about the deal Mandy had made with her, I was more than slightly ticked off and asked her if she considered her methods of babysitting to be the way Mandy had expected her to perform. We won't delve into the rest of the discussion cause I wasn't very pleased with her responses or her actions of the day!
But, since the kids were, as I said, being relatively cooperative with me, allowing me to mess with the computer a lot, I started to try to figure out what exactly I need to do for my part in a little experimental writing project I volunteered for online this week. This involves several other bloggers (and me) and we will be writing a "pull-it-together-novel" written by the group. Each person takes a turn at writing part of the story.
Now, this is a totally new thing for me! I've written a goodly number of small articles that have been published in the local monthly publication, but none of them were fiction, none required dialogue and sure as heck, none of them needed any "character" much less "development" of said characters!
So, from a couple ideas I did finally acquire, I started to try to list some characters I could perhaps foresee as being part of this story line. Naming the people was a huge problem as my mind, of course, went completely braindead! I finally resorted (since I couldn't find Mandy's copy of the book "What to Name Your Baby") to going through a notebook in which I had logged the names on tombstones in our local cemetery as part of a walk-through recording geneology project I began almost two years ago! Eventually, I ended up with several pages in a Word document of given names as well as many surnames too - at least something I can draw from there now.
Character development though - wow! But I did manage to come up with names and some sort of descriptions for five women school teachers, a "lunch lady" person and her brother, school janitorial person, a minister and his wife! Yippy skippy! Now how to fit them into this story and what roles they will play there remains to be seen too. So many unknowns there that I wish were posted - like more information about WHERE this fictitious town is located, geographically speaking and what genre this will actually be -a romantic piece, mystery, comedy - you get the drift there of my mental quandry, I'm sure! And, I suppose soon enough that type of information will be given to us but I'm just a bit impatient about wanting to know that so I can try to dredge characters up in my mind from bits and pieces about people I have known over my many years on earth!
HOpefully this whole little project will be fun to do, challenging (oh, of that I am sure it will be a major challenge for ME) and that I will perhaps learn a lot of things about writing, particularly writing fiction and using dialogue!
Wish me luck in this endeavor and pray for the poor folks I will be "working" with that I don't drive them all completely bonkers!
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