Yesterday I wrote about 2500 words as a backstory to Shaun... this morning I wrote another 2000, and I only now have just picked up Shaun. Most of that was a story about a girlfriend they shared, Robin. I modeled her on the real Robin I slept with only once or twice back in 1980 -- a cheerful blond girl who had not lost all her babyfat, whom I met doing contact improv. There was one memorable moment in my affair with her -- the moment I came inside her. Other than that, I remember walking her to her place over on Parnassus afterward, and running into her and her mother on a Muni bus some time later after we had mostly lost touch with each other, and trying to keep up a correspondence with her when she moved back to Washington, DC. She was someone I never really knew much about -- I don't know whether that was because she was rather young and unformed, or because I was too self-centered to pay attention. Probably a little of both. Anyway, I kept the blond cheerfulness, the blandness, the strong body and the orgasm. Since I don't even remember her last name, nor do I make up one in the book, there is no danger in using her real first name. I ought to do that more often, I think.
Well, so far I have not had much difficulty writing sex scenes. I think that's four or five of them in the first 10,000 words of the book. At that rate there will be four dozen, and all it has to do is hold together as a novel. I won't know for a while how successful that will be, but I suspect that if I pay more attention to tone and less to plot, I will do well.
Having written a good 2000 words already before 1:00, I feel a little inclined to take a break -- as long as I actually do get back to the book this time and not abandon the work session like I did yesterday when, at about 4:00, I knocked off intending to get back to it and never did. Instead I went to Writers with Drinks and the Market Street Cinema, where I had a têecirc;te-à-têecirc;te with (again) a fleshy little blond not unlike Robin. I remember Robin as being distinctly a little taller than I was, and this girl seemed only an inch or so taller at the most. She definitely still had the baby fat; in fact, only a little over a year ago, she was still in high school, she said. I will try using my impression of her body for the stripper Marcie in the first chapter of my book.
