I made another must-do list for the things I let get behind and spent all morning carrying them out. A lot of little tasks, but a mini break from writing. I actually got outside to walk to the post office and stop at the local Starbucks to get a refill on ground coffee.

Then I watched TV (kinda hard not to now) as I went through my character sketches. I wanted to go through each character and revise to fit what they had become and what new habits that had come about in the story. I tend to get very detailed in my character sketches. I include background information like who their parents were, what they did and where they came from. Who their brothers and sisters are. I outline the usual physical attributes (height, weight, shape, hair/eye color, imperfections, age, birthday, sign, etc.) as well as their personality and preferences (personality traits, habits, musical tastes, hobbies, books they read, etc.). Other stuff like marital status, education, employment history, any funny little quirks they have or phrases they use.. I also sketch their issue in this story, their perspective, their goals and desires, their greatest fears, and their motivations. Then I sum it all up around the current issue by writing a paragraph on their upbringing and how that affects their issues in this story.

So, I fill out this form for all the main characters (Excel spreadsheet). I also do a sketch on the minor characters, but not nearly to this detail. Then, as I'm writing in each chapter, for the characters in the scene, I constantly review their characters sketch to see how they react, what they might say, how they feel about whatever it is that's going on, how they try to come across and how they actually come across, etc. I only have to keep referring to the sketches in the first few chapters. It seems like after that, they come so alive that they just do what they do.

In addition to all of this, I make a story sketch too (theme, conflicts, setting information, etc.) and refer to it periodically while writing and revising.

All right. Time to get to revising chapters one and two! :-) It's going to be a long day.

And I accidentally left my cell phone on yesterday and picked up a call from a friend, who, as usual, began chewing me out for not calling--even though I've made friends aware of my deadline and I will be in touch after I meet it--say that "you don't write ALL day. You gotta eat. You can call me then." True, I gotta eat. But when I eat, I wanna eat. Not talk. Then it's "You can take 2 minutes to talk to me." When I point out that all my friends say this, they all will reply, "I'm not talking about everybody else, just me." So argument ensues (I have no idea why I'm arguing) and the conversation ends on a negative note of the friend saying, "Well, FINE. I'll tell you what then. Why don't you just call me when you're done writing the book?!"

I guess they feel better with it coming from them because that's what I've been saying since I started the book. In any respect, this is why the cell phone remains off. LOL