Word-Count Wednesday #1

My goal is to spend at least 30 minutes, or perhaps more, per day writing something creative.  Not counting my homework from American Lit.

What am I working on?
It's a story, set roughly 20 years from now (give or take), about how humans have moved from being conceived 'naturally', to ever increasingly being 'genetically engineered' because it has become harder and harder for women to get pregnant the old fashioned way.   Because of the changes in the environment or the world's food supply being tainted with more and more chemicals which have an unintended consequence on human development or something like that.

 A company (the lab) has taken human conception to another level, but there is a consequence. Something bad occurs to the genetic make up of a person created by these means.  The lab's methods are controversial and the program was supposed to have been shutdown but they didn't shut it down. Rather they exploit, in secret, a couple's dream of becoming parents at any cost.  (Like a component in the shots the women have to take in order for the pregnancy to stick, affects the fetus and alters them in some way).

These humans are different (need to work on how or what exactly it is, somethings not right with them but its bad though).   The main character, Gabriel or Gabe, is one of them.  His mother dies in childbirth giving birth to his younger sister who is stillborn.  Raised by his father, he had no idea that he was a 'GEH' (genetically engineered human) (his father kept it from him) until he started to notice "X" (TBD) and figured it out in college.  GEHs have something in their eyes that give it away, but it doesn't show up until adulthood.  Gabe wears contacts to conceal it.
He makes it his goal to become a scientist and to work at the lab to try and stop this secret practice now starting to affect a whole generation of people.

Victoria is a scientist at the lab and has no clue this practice is still happening.  She's happy miss sunshine and thinks the lab is fabulous, until she begins to figure out something isn't right.  She works with Gabe, and thinks he's a jerky crab ass because he's always grumpy and slamming things about.  She stares at him, she thinks he's cute despite his disposition and begins to notice he's different, but can't quite put her finger on it.  Gabe doesn't like Victoria because she's little miss sunshine, geeky girl, but he will need her help to stop the lab's secret practices.  Gabe struggles with his existence and is trying to figure out a way to be whole when he shouldn't have existed at all.

How do I feel about the process?
Each day or class is getting better.  I've never taken any sort of creative writing class before this one, only two screenwriting classes that focused mainly on the structure of what constitutes a screenplay.  I love how this class is set up with our "Houses" and each 'experiment' to try something new.  Just in preparing this week's experiment, and writing this post, I'm finding that as I type and think the story out, ideas are flowing to me.  Good or bad, who knows, but I'm going with it.

In an earlier English class with my favorite English professor (besides Wade :-) Kara Lybarger-Monson, one tip I learned from that class was never finish writing anything before you know where you will go next.  I think that philosophy came from Hemingway, I think, but it's worked for me in writing essays, ect.

What am I reading now?

Kate Chopin "The Awakening" for my American Lit class

Stephen King "On Writing"

My son and I are also taking turns reading from The Magic Tree House series.