Works in Progress: Fashion and Thievery

This week I'm writing the final scenes of Fashion Undertow, a first draft for Caffrey Conversation. The story takes place during Fashion Week in New York and includes a few Easter eggs to the canon episode "Threads" which also featured Fashion Week. Writing the draft in October seems fitting since the eleventh anniversary of White Collar's pilot episode was on October 23, and "Threads" aired a week later. Will my story also include supermodels and a chase through Central Park? I won't hazard any predictions. Like Neal, I've come to accept that no matter how much planning I make, I know the final product is going to change.

I only have a few days to finish the draft. Starting on November 1, Penna and I plan to start new writing projects. We'll track them on NaNoWriMo's website. The nonprofit organization has achieved fame in the writing world for its annual challenge of writing a 50,000-word manuscript during the month of November. Penna participated successfully in last year's event. I toyed with the idea of doing it this year, but decided it wasn't a good fit for my writing style. Luckily, NaNoWriMo provides many opportunities in addition to the main challenge. I use my NaNo project page to track my first drafts. Month-long camps are held biannually for projects of any length. To encourage writers, the website has a collection of badges, some of which you can assign to yourself, such as for having a Eureka moment. Other badges are awarded to you for milestone achievements.

This year, Penna and I decided to award ourselves the "NaNo Rebel" badges. We're going to participate in the November event but instead of writing 50,000 words, we've set targets of 20,000 words. My project will be a first draft for the Crossed Lines series. The story includes a sly Japanese raccoon dog known as a tanuki.

A couple of days ago, Penna tweeted a response to a question about the first books she loved. Her tweet caused me to wonder what my response would have been. I realized the answer was a psychic link to the tanuki in my upcoming draft. When I was a child, I couldn't get enough of the animal stories by Thornton Burgess. Those stories helped spark a lifelong interest in wildlife and conservation. Have the adventures of Bobby Coon, Johnny Chuck, Danny Meadow Mouse, and their friends been lurking all these years in a hidden forest of my mind, waiting to appear as plot bunnies? What signal is it that Dean and Sam's surrogate dad is also named Bobby? Dean is known to be fond of rabbits. Will a rabbit pop into the story?

Although I write an outline before starting a draft, it's not very detailed. I've learned that my best ideas often come in the midst of writing. I'm eager to start my draft for Thief in the Woods and see where it takes me. Having Penna along for the adventure makes it doubly exciting.