Wednesday, November 07, 2007

I Still Love Fall

Silly writer. Imagery is the sort of thing you go back later and fill in, after the characters are developed, after the plot's sketched out, after the NaNoWriMo word count hurdle has been met.

The weirdest change about Maggie during her pregnancy, though, was her hair. Mark had always loved Maggie’s thick curly hair, in that hard-to-describe color that was part chocolaty brown and part autumnal orange, all shot through with strands that shone pure copper and caught afternoon sun to turn her head into a burning pile of leaves. He loved to grab her hair in both of his hands and burrow his face into it, almost expecting the scent of crisp fall air and pumpkin pie spices. Maggie tended to choose shampoo based on continuously evolving criteria like price, bottle shape, brand name, ingredients list, and quality of marketing writing, though, so her hair’s perfume changed regularly, though it always overlay a smell that was purely, uniquely, Maggie.

While Maggie was pregnant, her smell changed slightly, and so did her hair. Her tightly wound curls became softer, gentler, still curls but more like paper links in a Christmas tree decorating chain than the springy store-bought ribbon on a child’s birthday present.


Wednesday's Word Total: 13,071
Thursday's Word Total: 15,086

5 comments:

Orange said...

I'd shave Maggie's head. :-)

Sarahlynn said...

Yeah, hair fires are dangerous. And stinky.

No worries. Although she doesn't shave her head or flame out like a match, her hair is not going to fare well.

Littlemankitty said...

Yikes! I haven't been here in a long time! Sorry. Congrats on the Novel writing thing, that's awesome. I would never have the discipline, but I'll buy your book.

Okay, for some reason, the stupid google people are not recognizing my account, so I'm going to sign in under my cat's account.

PPB

Jessica said...

You are doing wonderful, Sarahlynn...

Sarahlynn said...

Thanks, PPB. Discipline hasn't been my problem this time; I like the goal, the structure of the month-long event.

I'll buy your book, too, when you do compile it. See how I said "compile" rather than write? I'm sure you've got more than enough already, and I mean to lower the bar.

Thanks Jessica. It's hard for me to be objective about what I'm writing, especially in the moment. Sometimes I'm hit, sometimes I'm miss.

And I'm always looking for IRL critical readers! (I'm not interested in e-mailing out my work in progress yet.)