NaNo Day 4 - Motivation is back!

First I want to give a shout-out to all my writing buddies who are also participating in NaNo 2014! Congrats guys on kicking up your word-counts every day, no matter what the number is. Use every word you write to attack the doubt dragon and shove him back in his cage of doom. Together we shall be victorious!

Yesterday I got stuck in my writing after only 530 new words or so. What got me stuck was a conversation between two people that didn't like each other, but...I didn't know why yet. So my characters sat there staring at each other with angry faces for about 30 minutes. And I left them that way all afternoon. So in the evening, after I played enough matching games on my iPad to make me dream about colored fruit, I pulled out my trusty Paperblank journal that I got for NaNo. The covers are so pretty and shiny...mine is purple. Anyway, the feel of paper and pen in my hands was pretty refreshing. I scribbled some notes about my two characters and listed a couple reasons why they know each other. Before I knew it, I found out why they were angry!

And I realize I never even made a character profile for one of them. That's why I had no idea what his problem was....

After typing up my paper notes and storing them neatly into my Dropbox folder called "New Novel 2014" - one day I'll actually organize all the docs in there - I'm now ready to continue with my character's argument. With intelligent reasons. Woot!

After typing for two hours, I proudly present my new word count of:   8066 words!

EXCERPT

I guess this is still part of introducing my characters and pushing them into the event that will start the story. Most of what I wrote today is dialog. I'm not sure if this excerpt will make sense out of context, but yarg, whatevah. 

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Jason found that remarkable crack in the ceiling again. "I just told him that I’m only on this trip because you asked me."

                "Looked like there was more to it than that."

                "It's the truth, I swear."

                She sighed and unfolded her arms in an exaggerated show of defeat. “Why do you have to be like that? You know what he’s been through, what our family has been through. Isaac told me when that letter came to the house. It was the first time the whole house had been smiling in a couple years. It looked like Uncle Shawn had hope again.” His sister paused and placed her hand gently on his knee.” Why would you want to take that away from him?”

Now she was trying to take him on a guilt trip. Without thinking, Jason blurted out, “You and I both know it’s just a false hope anyway. There is no way he’s gonna find his wife alive somewhere in some ‘undiscovered’ ruins in that god-forsaken territory out in the middle of nowhere!”

                “False…hope?” Shiri croaked.

Her hand went limp on his knee and fell to the side. He shouldn’t have said that! Not only did he just speak his true feelings about his uncle.

Her eyes went blank. Everything inside of him as sorry for letting that comment slip. All Jason could do was clench his fists and franticly think of anything he could say to remove the awkward feeling in the air.

                “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

'Oh yeah that’s the best apology ever', he hissed at himself. Shiri didn’t respond.

                "It's not like," Jason spoke meekly, "that's what I think about...you..."

                "Don't worry about it. It was my mistake," Shiri interrupted him.

                Jason looked at her, now confused.  "What mistake?"

She looked up at him with the most painfully fake smile she could muster. That expression actually hurt more than what she said.

                “I thought you would care about helping me discover more about my past or maybe even where my real parents are. It's all you used to promise me when we were kids. And now you tell me it’s a false hope?”

                She paused and lowered her voice. “If all you were doing is lying to me this whole time, then I apologize for being so naïve. That was my mistake."

Even though his heart was aching, he pulled himself off from the bunk and turned to face her. He needed her to understand that he never wanted to hurt her feelings. He needed her to see his honesty, but she wouldn’t look him in the eye.

                “That’s not true Shiri. I do care, maybe even too much.”

At that remark, she couldn't resist looking up at him.

                "It's just...I have always considered you as my family,” he continued, “Mom and Dad adopted you all those years ago and we fit together ever since. Sometimes I don't understand why you would even want to find the people who abandoned you in a forest at four years of age to die."

                "You have no idea if that's what really happened. What if they had no other choice?" Shiri blurted out.

                "No other choice but to just leave their kid? I don't buy that."

                "But what if I ran away from them and got lost? What if they just never found me?"

                "Then our parents would have found them. When you were found abandoned in that forest, the whole town was out searching for your parents or any other human that could have known where you came from."

                Jason paused.

                 "Don't you think it was too convenient how close you were to our village when you were discovered? It was like you were left there…on purpose."

                Shiri straightened her shoulders. "That's exactly what I want to find out."

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