I'm a winner!

A NaNoWriMo winner, anyway. National Novel Writing Month doesn't end for another two days, but I'm done. I passed the requisite 50,000-word mark on Saturday, and I needed just a little more time to figure out how to properly end my story.

If you'd like to check out the crappy first draft, here it is: Waypoint Kangaroo, a robust tale of interplanetary intrigue in which seafood makes a brief appearance.

The funny thing is, I didn't understand until last week what I was actually writing about. As accomplished TV writer Jane Espenson points out, any script can be broken down into two loglines (brief descriptions): "what it's about" and "what it's REALLY about." The first one tells you the literal events that take place in the story. The second tells you the reason for writing that particular story.

In my case, the literal events are an obvious allegory for 9/11, and writing this story was very therapeutic. The reason for writing this story, however, is less temporal; it's about family and finding your place in the world. The second draft should reflect that better.

~CKL