Goodbye, Raymond

Well, I won't be needing an excuse note today, because I did some minor but oddly significant work on my novel this morning.

I changed the gender of one of the characters.

Not a significant character, mind you.  But it occurred to me that the exposition this character provides could be just as easily be delivered by a woman as by a man and that having another woman in the room when the heroine discovers her destiny might not be a bad thing to have.

So Raymond Capello is now Diana Capello.  Interestingly, I see her a bit more clearly than I saw her as Raymond--when I dug through what I'd written so far I noticed that I skipped the physical description because I couldn't come up with anything compelling and decided to fix that problem in the rewrite.  The only things I had to change in what I've done so far were names, pronouns and a "sir" to a "ma'am".

I'm trying an experiment for working on my current novel, now that I have a full-time job to contend with.  Weather and time permitting, I normally commute to my job on MARTA.  I have a red composition book specifically for hashing out ideas for this particular novel.  (Classic composition books, I've found, work wonderfully in this situation because the covers are thick enough to bear down on easily.  It's like a notebook that comes with its own desk.)  So, in the course of my commute to work and back, I will bring my little red composition book to scribble in and use the transit time to ask myself questions about what happens next and ponder the possible answers.  When I get home, I will type as much as I've worked out in the course of the commute.  Then I will declare the day complete and relax and unwind from my labors.

Notebook scribble hereby counts as 'working on the novel' so any days I don't do that will require either typing on the manuscript or typing an excuse note here.  Since I've done something for today, I don't even have to work on my commute this morning.  But I am curious to figure out more about Diana now . . .

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