No Excuses in a Small City

The Boise Speculative Fiction writers have declared March "no excuses writing" month, or NEW. This means we who are participating post to the loop every day with our page totals, whether that's editing or fresh pages, and if our total is zero, it's zero, and we don't get to say why. I'm actually pretty happy with my totals so far, and of course it means I'll have pages to present to the Moxie this weekend at our crit group meeting.

The only hairy thing that happens is when you write something and then find out you have to scrap part or all of it because it isn't working for the plot. Take this new novella I'm working on. Two pages into the third chapter, I had a conversation with the Huz that involved the fact that a large paranormal conference would probably not be held in Boise, ID. His contention was that Boise is not a conference destination. Hmph. How many urban fantasy writers write stories set in their home cities? Many. I could name at least five or six right off the top of my head, right now. But they all live in bigger cities, and my poor little city just isn't quite big enough for the situation I wanted to describe. (C'mon, Boise, prove me wrong. Hold a big conference here, I dare you!) So I had to lose most of my first two pages for this chapter and take my characters out of town to a bigger city for the conference. The Huz suggested Sin City. Ultimately, I decided on something still bigger than Boise but a little closer to home. Now I'm back on track. But I hate having to scrap pages based on the fact that my home city doesn't quite measure up to size.

If Boise ever decides to host a decent-sized paranormal conference in the future, I'll expect the Huz to eat his words....