Re: Introduce yourself to the region!

Qberty
Sat, 22 Oct 2011 20:56:38 -0500

Hello! My name is Linda and this is my sort-of second NaNo. I found out about NaNoWriMo when I saw a blurb in the Naperville Library newsletter last year about mid-November and figured, "What the heck." It was a dismal failure ending in only a couple thousand words, but that's a couple thousand more than I would have had! Last year I was going to write a novel about a DES daughter and her path to parenthood (titled DESpair). While it's a subject I'm passionate about, this year I've had a couple other plots needling at my psyche. I've settled on writing about a girl growing up in the mid-40's/50's in a small Midwestern town. She marries her high school sweetheart to get away from home and travels the world with her military husband. In the end the husband is not who she thought he was and she divorces him, moves to the big city and becomes a secretary. In a very cliche move she falls in love with the (unhappily) married boss. After many conflicts (her family, his mother, the soon-to-be-ex wife, all their friends), they beat the odds and find happiness and a life together. I believe I will end with their wedding but that remains to be seen. I guess I'm "breaking the rules" a bit since this is a semi-biographical but I will be taking many literary licenses with the characters. But this will be an "easier" story to write than the other one that's really been pulling at me. That is a story my mother told me about how, during WWII, she used to see the "feds" in their black sedans parked on the streets in her home town with wires running to the phone lines. They didn't attempt to hide the fact that they were listening in on conversations hoping to hear something incriminating and/or anti-American. And how the feds had every reason to be watchful of the people in their mainly German town. She would see her neighbors openly "goose-stepping" in the fields in military drills. But I think I'll save that story for next year when I have more time to research the times and subjects. This year, as I said in my profile, while I may not be actively employed, I made the decision to go back to college and take Web Programming courses. I thought they'd be a piece of cake given my programming background, but they're kicking my in the rear! Most days spent at my computer are writing code or reading the 1100+ page text book. When I'm not doing that I'm sending out resumes and applying for various jobs. So I'm going to dive in and participate anyway! At least this time around, if I'm up until the wee hours of the morning, after I get my 12 year old twins (turning 13 in November!) off to school I can drop back into bed and pass out for a couple more hours, instead of nodding off while I'm at work. My mother thinks I'm crazy and biting off more than I can chew. I'll show her! >:D