My First Plugin

My First Plugin

Hi, I'm Mikey, I'm new to jquery and I'm looking to creating my first plugin.

I'm doing a quick textarea limit, however im not sure how to do it.

index.htm:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>
   <title>Textarea Limit</title>
   <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="txt/html; charset=utf-8" />
   <script language="javascript" src="../jquery.js"></script>
   <script language="javascript" src="limit.js"></script>
   <script type="text/javascript">
   $().ready(function() {
      $(".limit").limit({
         limit: 100,
         location: 1
      });
   });   
   </script>
   
   <style type="text/css">
   * { margin: 0px; padding: 0px; }
   body { padding: 0; font-family: verdana, arial, tahoma; color: #000; font-size: 0.8em; margin: 0; background: #fff; }
   #wrapper { width: 750px; margin: 50px auto 0 auto; background-color: #fff; line-height: 1.2; }
   h2 { clear: both; border-bottom: 1px solid #000; padding: 2px; width: 760px; margin-bottom: 10px; }
   #form {  width: 750px; padding: 5px; background: #eee; border: 1px solid #ccc; }
   #form textarea { width: 747px; height: 200px; margin-bottom: 5px; }
   #form input { float: right; }
   .spacer { clear: both; }
   </style>
</head>
<body>
   <!-- Wrapper -->
   <div id="wrapper">
      <h2>Textarea Limit</h2>
      
      <div id="form">
         <form action='index.htm' method='post'>
            <textarea name="limit" class="limit"></textarea>
            <input type="button" name="submit" value="Submit" />
         </form>
         
         <div class="spacer"></div>
      </div>
   </div>
   <!-- /Wrapper -->
</body>
</html>


and then limit.js:
/**
* This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
* it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
* the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
* (at your option) any later version.

* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
* GNU General Public License for more details.

* View the GNU General Public License <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
*/

(function($){
   $.fn.limit = function(options) { 
     
   var defaults = { 
   maxlength: 300, 
   position: 1
   };

   var options = $.extend(defaults, options);
   return this.each(function() {
   
   };
})(jQuery);


What I'm asking, is if someone can instead of completing the script, just find a way to show me how to use a variable as a simple test, and add a span tag with the word "test" either before or after the textarea,

Thank you in advance. :]