In early 2006, at a time when I thought I would not be taking a mission trip that year, I contemplated writing a novel which would be a fictional account of a short-term mission trip to Africa. Obviously, my own experiences would contribute to it, but the characters would be completely fictional.
I made a few notes about characters and plot, but within a week after I came up with the idea, Gail Drake had e-mailed me about an anonymous donor who had offered to pay my way to Africa. So I switched gears from writing about mission trips to getting ready for one.
But who says I can’t do both?
A week or two ago, I started thinking about the mission trip novel again. I changed my mind about some of last year’s ideas — for example, it will be third-person, not first-person. I actually couldn’t get to sleep one night because I had some ideas for the novel; I had to get up, fire up the computer and write them down.
Even so, I hadn’t really started writing yet. Then, tonight, I was watching “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” and Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) raises her eyebrow at the fact that George Peppard’s character calls himself a writer but doesn’t seem to have produced anything in five years. So I pulled up the file and started writing.
I don’t know what kind of pace I’ll keep; probably not my National Novel Writing Month pace, but I do need to be disciplined about it in some fashion. Feel free to harrass me about it if you’re so inclined.
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