Last night was pretty good, writing-wise. I've taken on the April Hour-A-Day Dare to write for at least an hour every day. I'm not officially on the site, since I came to the idea about a week into April (after hearing about it from Mike Jasper), but I am following the Dare in spirit. Last Sunday, I finished Chapter 3 of An American Symphony, and last night I finished Chapter 4, writing about 1200 words in a little over an hour.

It's turning out to be a lot more fun than I realized, writing this novel. I have a general idea of where I want things to go, but I'm focusing the majority of the attention on my characters (my former writing teacher William McCranor Henderson would be so proud), and taking a cue from Jonathan Carroll by throwing in some seemingly unimportant things to spice up the plot. Like in Chapter 3, when Sheriff Calhoun is driving Audi to the police station, a call comes in on the CB saying there's a car stuck in a ditch by a drunk driver. I had no idea that this would happen. So they go to investigate and end up having to drag the driver (who is passed out, very fat, and slippery as a fish) up to the squad car to sleep off the night at the jail. And by doing this Audi must get cleaned up the following morning at the sheriff's house, which is how he meets Florida. It's like a game of Tetris, trying to get all the pieces to fit together, and man when they do...what a feeling!