Rainy Mornings

I finally managed to sleep in! I made it all the way to 8:30. I don't want to reset my body clock because I'm rather liking being a morning person. I seem to get more done. I also have 9 a.m. physical therapy appointments three days a week. But after two days of getting up extra early in spite of staying up late, and after a 4:30 a.m. thunderstorm waking me up this morning, it was nice to get a little extra sleep. Even nicer was the fact that it was raining, and lying in bed and listening to it rain is one of my absolute favorite things. I actually woke around 8 but lay there for half an hour. One of the luxuries of my job and lifestyle is that most of the time, I don't have to get out of bed unless I want to, and I don't have to go anywhere. When I had a day job that required a commute, I hated rainy mornings because traffic was always a nightmare. Now, though, I enjoy rainy mornings doubly. I enjoy the fact that I don't have to get on the freeway while I'm also just enjoying the experience of listening to it rain.

While I was lying there, I came up with a character who is now in search of a story. This character started as something of a hypothetical mental fanfic insert into another universe, but the element of the character that I came up with this morning is now really interesting, and I want to write this character, but that means coming up with an appropriate universe where this element can work.

I'm still fighting the good vs. great battle, and I think I had a breakthrough yesterday. I was working on details about a character. He's a character I really like and find interesting, but I worry that he'll come across as "boring" to editors and some readers. One way to get around that is to come up with a trait that's interesting and that adds a different element to this kind of character -- like Owen's extreme shyness, which isn't what you expect from a gorgeous, powerful person. When I came up with some things, I had to figure out how to incorporate those into his introductory scene, and then I realized that meant rethinking that entire scene. This was one of the first scenes I envisioned, back when I first started brainstorming the story idea and before I knew what most of the book would be about, so it was really hard to break out of my mindset about how this scene should go. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that some of the things that happened were not only a bit out of character, but also were distancing -- delaying things from actually happening. The way things happened also kept me from using those elements that make him interesting (and that should up the humor levels).

So, today I'll start with a new document and rewrite the scene and see how it works the new way before I stick it in the book.

In other news, they've released the trailer for the last two Harry Potter movies (two movies for the seventh book). I'm hoping it shows up OnDemand on my cable service (it's a Warner film and I have TimeWarner cable, so it's a good bet) because it was all jerky and almost stop-motion on my ancient, steam-powered laptop, and I couldn't quite pick out which scenes seemed to correspond with which scenes from the book. I need to look up the exact release date in November and put it on my calendar because that will be a day to walk up the hill to the theater (I love fall releases because I can do that without heat stroke). And then I'll probably see it again with friends.