Early….very early yesterday morning at around 3:30, I woke up and tried to go back to sleep. I had these ideas for my NaNo story playing in my head. Lines of dialogue, POVs from certain characters, the story layout, a new occupation for a character, and a possible ending! You can imagine how excited I was when just the day before I was drawing a blank. Writer’s block is funny that way!
Now, I have debated several times on whether this story was the one I was meant to work on for NaNo. As you can imagine with little more than a few ideas I didn’t have much of a story, and was tempted to go with a story I had more background and character development for. But yesterday something happened that, to me, confirmed this story currently titled “Lucy from South Hampton” (a better title will come to me at some point), was indeed the story I was meant to be writing for NaNo.
I was at church and after service there was a celebration for a couple who had been married 45 years! They had a beautiful cake, of which, I knew I could have none. I am a Celiac. However, an elderly woman named Marie made a gluten free cake, her first time ever. She used one of Betty Crockers gluten free cake mixes and yes, you would think this would be so easy to do right? Well, if you don’t have an understanding of gluten free flours and how easily they dry out, then even a mix can be botched!
I thanked Marie for making the cake. It was very thoughtful of her. She said, “Well, you know it was my first time. I didn’t know anything about rice flour.”
“You did a great job.”
“Well, it’s a little dry,” she said eating a piece of gluten free cake.
I didn’t say anything, but the cake was dry and bit rough–like sandpaper–on the tongue. (Not that I’ve ever tried sandpaper on the tongue. Eeek!)
I looked at Marie. She is a small woman, a former school teacher, with white hair wearing a bright blue sweater. “I think you did a good job with the cake. It tasted good.”
“It was maiden voyage with it, you know.”
I nodded. But inside I chuckled when she said “maiden voyage”. At that moment, I thought of the maiden voyages the Olympic and Titanic that would be in my story for NaNo. My next thought was, “Yep. I’m supposed to write this story this NaNo-go-round!”
From The Mists of the Northwoods 