Saturday, November 8, 2008

Whole Foods and New Characters

A new Whole Foods opened up near us today. From how excited I've been about it, you would think they were going to hand out free books and have agents hoping to meet me in attendance. Okay, maybe I wasn't that excited. The store is huge (I think all Whole Foods are) and carries more varieties of organic and specialized foods and household products than I knew existed. For instance, did you know there's such a thing as goat ice cream? Fresh spices sold by the ounce? Frozen cheeseless pizzas? Hemp oatmeal? More than the one kind of environmentally friendly dish soap that my local, national-chain grocery would like me to believe is all that's out there? I tried my first persimmon today, and liked it. I was hoping to sample some wine, but that was a no-go. I was also hoping for more samples in general, but with how packed the store was, I don't think they would have fit.

We came away with just a few items, and only the wine was an impulse buy. It's an Argentinian Malbec. If it's good, I'll let you know. I could have spent my entire savings there today, and most of it in the sweet-filled deli. I was strong. I remembered that there are only two of us, and our pantry space is limited. It was tough, though, when everything looked so good.

The rest of today has been odds and ends, and Nanoing. I barely made it above my word count today by a hundred or so words. I felt like I'd written double my word count. I'm bringing new characters into the book, some of who will be sticking around through this book and several in the future, and that took a lot of energy. Suddenly I'm back to building entire people, with personality quirks, fashion tastes, and agendas that sometimes have nothing to do with Madison and sometimes have everything to do with her. It took more energy than I thought it did, and made the six pages I wrote feel like ten or twelve. Tomorrow will be more character development. Maybe I'll work on it before I write so that the characters come through stronger, faster. We'll see. That was the plan today, and when I sat down to write character bios, the story was there, at my fingertips, so I went with it instead.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yay! The new Whole Foods is so cool. We went there yesterday and I loved it. I bought some persimmons too :) and we got a bottle of wine (Chenin Blanc from somewhere near Napa, which we have yet to try). It is big as you say--bigger than a couple one's I've been to L.A., and I think it's bigger than the one in Sac. One day when you're not too busy, we should meet there for lunch. I think I might go tomorrow BTW :)

Anonymous said...

I love the new Whole Foods too! I'm going to do one of their "Shopping on a Budget" tours someday, so that I can get in and out of there without going broke. I also really like their organic, eco-friendly wine section, all with suggested food pairings. I've read that Malbec is the new Syrah...how did you like it?