Habituation

The Wolf Boy of Montana has been missing for more than two years, but an ambitious anthropology student at the University of Washington thinks she has found him. The now-grown man, Conner Price, believes he made a friend.  But she intends to use him to graduate with honors and make a name for herself. Her investigation will not only betray Conner but will uncover secrets even he did not know.

This novel began with NaNoWriMo in 2009. I “won” that year, doing it in a way I feel embodies the true nature of the project — I had no clue what I was doing, took an idea, and just wrote. I started with little knowledge on how to write a novel and next to no plot. A little over 50,000 words later, I was no more knowledgeable and had only marginally more plot. The unfinished project was shelved, and I didn’t look at it again for more than a year.

Then our hard drive died. This was the second NaNo effort I lost to failure of computer hardware and my own inability to back up my work. My tech-savvy husband was able to resurrect this drive long enough to save my documents and pictures, and I was very thankful.

Until I read my writing.

As Mr. Hemingway so wisely said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” That piece was better left in the hard drive graveyard. But I knew I had a good concept and still wanted to do something with it.

I read lots of books on writing and started over. The main characters remained, but much of the old, tenuous plot and all of the secondary characters went to join the hard drive. When my progress faltered, I took a novel-writing class. That resulted in my first small writing group where the expectation to have something to share pushed me to keep writing. Now I estimate 80% of the first draft is complete.

Soon… very soon… Habituation will be a title you can buy from your favorite bookseller!