First 1000 words

All it took was 1,000 words and suddenly I had a new friend. Even two and it's looking like there will be a third in the very near future.

And suddenly I'm thinking about "Jane" -- will I keep this name?? -- all the time. Where did she go to school? How much does she weigh? Why isn't she already married?? She can't be 27, no too young. Is 50 too old?

Jane -- it fits for now -- appeared in my imagination a week ago. I wasn't looking for her but suddenly she was sitting at her computer working from home when suddenly. Well, let's just say she complicated my life.

I left her waiting -- and no it wasn't quietly -- while I looked for a perfect first sentence. And maybe an outline for the story she was about to tell me. She introduced me to Brice (where did that name come from?) and Collin (she was shy about him) and her cat Brutus (isn't that an awful name for a cat?)

I wasn't sure about her friends' names and thought about them for a long time. Once a character gets a name it sticks. Sometimes, of course, it's all wrong and everybody who reads your story later will tell you -- that's a terrible name for that character! So I think about names a lot. I probably spent more time thinking about Robin's name in my last (unpublished) novel than I did thinking about Gina's name. But her name honors her great grandmothers so there was really no discussion about that. Names of characters in books are fanciful. They don't have to honor anybody but they really have to fit. Jane says plain -- but is Jane plain? Hmmm. What about Collin? Is it even spelled correctly? I think so; I don't want anybody calling him Cole-in. Sounds too anatomical.

By Sunday morning -- we're talking 3:30 in the morning here -- Jane was bursting out of my brain. So I wrote down whatever she told me. She introduced me to Brutus, showed me around her house and gave me a ride in her car. Not that she even wanted to take me anywhere. She felt compelled. And so did I. I wrote and re-wrote until I had 1000 words I didn't hate.

Still....I don't think I did her justice. That first sentence doesn't work. It's not the proper introduction. Dickens had great first lines: "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." "Marley was dead, to begin with." Don't you just have to continue reading?

That's what I want for Jane. We're going to spend a lot of time together and if she's like Robin I'm really going to miss her once the story is finished. So I want to get the story right. And I want other people to read it. And like it. And like Jane -- unless it turns out she's rotten to the core. We just aren't that close yet.