Plotting words: 6,472 (total 10,684)
Drafting words: 0
Hello from a cozy secondhand bookstore. I’m tucked into a corner table by the window, listening to a local talk to a day-tripper about how much they both love reading. I’ve got iced tea and a pastry and this place is so perfect it feels like it was made up.
It’s got big, floor-to-ceiling solid wood bookshelves. Multiple rooms of books stretching back from where I’m sitting. Hand-written labels for the book categories. A little cafe with coffee that (so I’m told) is some of the best along the Washington coast. It feels like the set for a Hallmark movie.
Granted, the whole town feels that way. I’ve been staying here for the last couple of weeks, and the feeling’s only intensified as time’s gone on. Yesterday, after knocking out the most important parts of my to-do list, I went and worked at the local library. It has a second floor where you can see the marina from the windows. And there’s a fireplace.
And it doesn’t stop there. The post office is in an old brick building. When I stopped to get something printed, a local walked in and he and the woman at the cash register had a whole exchange about his upcoming RV trip to Canada with his wife. My mom and stepdad moved here a few years ago, and my mom’s social group here revolves around the knitting group that she joined.
Did I mention there are tulip fields nearby?
Yeah. I told you it feels made up.
But here I am, sitting in this perfect cafe inside this perfect bookstore inside this perfect town, and I can’t help but think that if this were actually a Hallmark movie, I’d make for a terrible heroine. I’m sitting here writing, it’s true, which seems like a promising start.
But then let’s say a guy walked in — tall, broad-shouldered, handsome in a guy-next-door kind of way. Definitely wearing plaid. And then he’d notice me, and ask what I’m writing (in this ideal scenario, I would already be in my draft rather than stuck on plotting, but we’ll discuss that later), and we’d strike up a conversation and it’d turn out he’s a tulip farmer and he’d try to convince me that happiness doesn’t lie in the big city, it’s right here in this town, and we’d fall madly in love and I’d work at the bookstore and write books and maybe do some marketing for the tulip farm and we’d all live happily ever after.
Thankfully, this isn’t actually a Hallmark movie and there are no men in plaid in sight, because if this were to actually occur, I’d laugh in his face. Baby, I’ve got things to do, I’d say. A business degree to go get (not Hallmark-heroine approved). A big city to aim for — and not just any big city, but Tokyo, a city of fourteen million people (very not Hallmark-approved). A whole life to go build (since said life isn’t built around the hypothetical man in plaid, I think we can safely assume this isn’t Hallmark-approved either).
Maybe I’d get cast as the Big-City-Girlfriend-Who-Gets-Dumped. Y’know, the one who stares at spreadsheets and has opinions about how to save for retirement and gets nudged out of the way because she’s not tulip farm material.
But that’s alright, because my ambitions in life don’t actually extend to being a Hallmark heroine. Right now, they currently extend to just getting words in the draft, which hasn’t occurred yet because I sat down to write yesterday and realized I had a lot of pieces missing before I could tackle that first scene.
You see, I write chronologically. In an informal poll of my writer friends, this doesn’t seem to be the norm — but it’s how my brain’s always worked, when it comes to stories. And while I’ve known the general shape of this particular story for a while, I don’t have enough of the specifics. Who exactly do I need to be introducing? What exposition do I need to sneak in there? What parts of the magic system come into play, and by the way, how the hell does that magic system work?
There’s a lot to nail down, but hopefully I’ll be able to get it done today, because the draft awaits! Wish me luck. And wish hypothetical Hallmark Man luck too — hopefully he finds another girl to help him save the tulip farm, because I don’t have time for that. I’ve got a story to write.
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