Deadlines, deadlines, ‘Sprout’-ing up all around me

As I mentioned yesterday, there’s a lot more writing to be done just to slog through the remaining unwritten parts of my first draft. And that’s just plot, mostly, with none of the subtlety of character and dialogue and glorious, luxurious description that make writing (or, well, re-writing in the case of this draft) so much fun. But today I’m officially giving myself a deadline.

July 31.

Our daughter (“Sprout,” until we decide on a name for her)  is due the first week of August, and I’d very much like to have this first draft done and resting comfortably on my harddrive by the time she arrives. I think of it as a mission imperative to get this done by then, actually. Finding time to write with one kid is hard, sometimes downright impossible when you factor in family time, work time, and all-important sleeping time. But with an active toddler and a baby at the same time? What’s the next level up from impossible?

So, yeah, July 31. I can do this. Perhaps at the expense of early-morning Facebooking and blogging, but still—I can do it. And it starts…

RIGHT NOW!

The first thousand words

Most of what I’ve written so far is in pretty rough shape, but this little snippet is slightly less rough than the rest. So here it is, the first 1,000 words or so of the first chapter of my first young adult novel, The Witches of Coven Hill. Not that you’d ever want to, but please don’t plagiarize. For better or worse, it’s all mine.

CHAPTER ONE

Halloween

Abby Shepherd really, really, really hated being a princess. “It’s the same thing every year, Robbie, every year,” she complained to her next-door neighbor and best friend, Robby Griffith, on the day they turned thirteen. They were often mistaken for siblings, and even more often for twins, because they happened to be born on the same day in the same hospital some thirteen years earlier. That day was Halloween, and on this crisp October 31, like nearly every one before it, Abby’s mother had dressed her from head to toe in a bright pink dress and faux diamond tiara. Only the size of the dress seemed to change from year to year.

“I really thought you’d convince her this time,” Robbie said, shaking his head without looking up from his computer as Abby trudged into his room and shut the door behind her. He was wearing long blue robes that his stepmother, Tina, had made for him. Rusty red hair poked out from a pointy wizard’s hat that sat half-askew on his head.

“I just don’t understand it,” Abby continued. “I mean, why a princess?”

She couldn’t think of anything she resembled less than a princess. She was thin—too thin, her mother said; scrawny, her grandmother said; like a stick, her great-grandmother said—with long brown hair that she usually pulled into a pony tail, big brown glasses that only seemed to exaggerate the size of her hazel eyes, and a decidedly ungirly interest in math, computers, and baseball, not necessarily in that order. Her mother frowned on all of her interests, but no one seemed to mind them at Robby’s house, where computers, comic books, and (lately) reptiles were always the order of the day.

The reptiles came courtesy of Tina, who also happened to be the town’s resident veterinarian. One of those reptiles, an odd little iguana named Perseus, skittered across the floor of Robby’s bedroom and nuzzled against Abby’s high-heeled feet like a cat lobbying for a treat. She and Perseus had forged an uneasy truce, but the lizard had recently taken it to a new level by assuming they were now best friends. Abby scowled at him but reluctantly knelt to give the lizard a little scratch on his scaly back. He gazed up at her with love in his eyes and something resembling a purr rumbling from his tiny body.

Comic books, video game magazines, and empty pizza boxes covered most of the floor, while nearly every inch of the walls were taped over with posters—mostly from science fiction movies, though more recently a few suggestively posed swimsuit models had moved in as well. Two computers, a television, and the distinct odor of dirty laundry rounded out the scene.

“It’s like a nerd exploded in here,” she said, nudging aside a pile of superhero comics and plopping herself down on the bed.

“A geek, actually,” said Robby as he poked his head up from his computer and looked ready to return her salvo. But whatever he planned to say died on his lips.

“Whoa,” was all he managed instead.

“What? What is it?” Abby asked. “Oh my God, is it worse than I thought?”

She yanked the plastic tiara from her head and stared at it accusingly.

Robby shook his head. “No, no, it’s… you look kind of pretty, actually. What happened to your glasses?”

“Contacts,” Abby said. “My mom’s idea.”

“Good idea.”

Abby mumbled a “thanks” and felt her face begin to flush. She wanted to change the subject. Lately she’d been feeling increasingly self-conscious around Robby. And the contact lenses weren’t entirely her mother’s idea, either. Ever since Robby had started to take an interest in Becca Reese—only the prettiest girl in their eighth grade class, and a straight-A student, to boot—Abby had begun to think a little harder about her own feelings for him. The truth was she didn’t know how she felt, but she also knew she had time to figure it out. Becca was currently dating Tommy “T-Rex” Rexman, which made her extremely off limits to every other boy at school. That suited Abby just fine.

“What’s so interesting over there?” she asked, squinting to see what Robby had been looking at on the computer.

“Check it out,” he said, rolling his chair away from the screen to give her a better look.

He was looking at the website of the town paper, The Coven Daily News. With a pit in her stomach, Abby read the headline.

HOUSE ON COVEN HILL SOLD TO ANONYMOUS INVESTOR

Crumbling gothic mansion was last inhabited 100 years ago

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Robby asked.

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.”

“No way!”

“Yes way!” Robby said, a triumphant grin splitting his freckly face. “You promised.”

It was true. She’d promised to help him explore the house at the top of Coven Hill—the haunted house, she mentally corrected—before anyone moved in, because she never imagined it might actually happen. The place was like something out of a scary movie, and while she liked scary movies just fine, she wasn’t crazy about starring in one. It was just her luck that someone would decide to buy it now.

Still, a promise was a promise.

“When?” she asked.

“Tonight.”

“But Robby—”

“It’s Halloween!” he said. “It’s the perfect cover for sneaking around in the dark.”

“What is your obsession with that place?”

Robby just smiled and waited.

Abby sighed. She knew she’d lost, but she still had one more arrow left in her quiver of flimsy excuses. She let it fly. “I’m not going into a haunted house dressed like this. No way, Robby. Not. Gonna. Happen.”

Robby grinned. “Yeah, about that…” He rolled his chair over to the closet and opened the door, revealing a black robe and pointy witch’s hat dangling from a hook, in stark contrast to the pile of dirty socks and boxer shorts crumpled in a ball on the floor below it. A beaten up broomstick leaned against the side of the closet, looking entirely out of place in Robby’s room. “Tina made you a costume. Happy birthday.”

Abby threw her hands in the air and sighed theatrically, but deep down she felt a little thrill of delight. She would have done anything not to spend another Halloween dressed like a princess—even if it meant sneaking into a haunted house.

“All right,” she said. “I’m in.”

She was out of excuses, anyway.

###

So what am I trying to do here? The most important task, I think, is to establish the friendship between the two main characters, and hint at some of the personal conflicts that will come between them: namely, the will-they-or-won’t-they nature of their friendship slash possible budding romance.

I’ve also tried to layer in some hints of what’s to come. It’s no coincidence that Abby ends up dressed like a witch and Robby like a wizard, or that Tina had something to do with Abby’s witch costume, or that Percy the iguana acts a little more like a cat than is, perhaps, strictly natural. And the reason for Robby’s obsession about the haunted house will definitely be central to the plot as well.

So anyway, that’s how it starts. I probably won’t post any more excerpts till I’ve finished the whole first draft and can start polishing a little.