The First Day

Ahh, NaNoWriMo! I love starting a new project. A blank page means anything goes. You can’t do anything “wrong” in the first few days because none of the rules or forms of the story are set. It’s a time of total creative freedom. The more projects I do, the more I realize it is this early part of a project that I enjoy most. I feel really energized and positive about this year’s novel! Let me say now, this is going to be a crazy month. I have two other writing projects that need to be completed this month!
I have had a story bubbling in the back of my head for a few years and this is the month to get it all out. I outlined the story a few months ago so I know all about where I intend to go. It seems like a good idea to have at least some kind of stick to measure against as you go along. This year I am attempting a fantasy adventure story in one of those story worlds where it could just as easily be the distant past as the far future.
For today I will just tease you with a list of my inspirations for this story:
Disney’s Gargoyles
Conan – as written by Robert E. Howard
Heretic II
Starcraft
Hellstrom’s Hive by Frank Herbert
Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare
The Gunslinger by Stephen King
Verde Valley in Arizona

The benchmark word count for today is: 1667
My total word count so far is: 1793

I Wrote a Dinner Scene

I just sat down and worked for 1.5 hours. In that time I produced 1,252 words. About a typed page and a half. It’s the first time I have sat down an written in days. That’s been my problem this year. I’m not having too many plot or character problems. I don’t see my output petering out. However, it seems that I have not made NaNoWriMo a priority this year. I’m constantly thinking of another errand that could be run or another project to work on. Seriously, I haven’t thought about knitting in months but today I went to a knitting store and bought some new needles for this project I have in mind. Why now? Who knows…

By now I should have 15,003 words.
My current count is 6,573 words.

Ramble On

I did decent work today. Mostly I just spilled various ramblings out onto the page, but I think that is okay. I am starting to get some voice for my different characters. I am starting to see how the different voices will interact. I am also getting my head (a little bit) around what I want to wrestle with in the story. Really this whole plot is a vehicle for my own ideas about the world. I don’t want to be so obvious about it, though. I might be seeing the first glimmer of how to do that. Still excited. Still see potential. Just got to spend more time writing!

By now I should have 6,668 words.
My current count is 3,613 words.

Uh…

Yesterday’s in-auspicious beginning continued today. I wrote nothing. I still plan to. So, um, let me get started on that...

By now I should have 5,001 words.
My current count is 1,879 words.

Year Four Begins

I won’t take long as this blog is eating into my noveling time, but I would like to report that I have actually started my NaNoWriMo for this year. I am off to a slow start. I didn’t write at all on day one. I spent 4 hours at my desk today getting only 1,879 words down. Part of that time I was deciding on names for all my characters and the rest I worked very in-efficiently owing to it being so cold in my office. Although now that I have wised up and put on a sweater things are much better. This year I’m going for the win!

By now I should have 3,334 words.
My current count is 1,879 words.

A Review: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

4 / 5 Stars
An evocative blend of compassion and cynicism. Vonnegut loves people. His compassion for humanity is evident in the character of Eliot Rosewater. Rosewater is heir to the Rosewater fortune and he spends it on helping anyone and everyone who calls him. Vonnegut hates a good many cultural institutions. In short, thoroughly arresting prose passages Vonnegut dismisses nearly all of the systems by which wealth is acquired and passed on in America. The passage about the “Money River” is the key passage of this nature. It’s painful to feel so helpless before the crushing weight of cultural tradition. But there is hope, because people, individual humans, still live and love and have sex and fall down and cry and stand up and carry on. If you have read Vonnegut, you know his message. This book is, perhaps, the most distilled version his message. Dresden and the Tralfamadorians are mentioned, some characters from other works get cameos and this is the first book in which Kilgore Trout appears. It’s the perfect place to start (or continue) your torrid love affair with Vonnegut’s original voice.

Han Has it Just Right

As I mentioned in my review, I could not stop reading A Dictionary of Maqiao by Han Shaogong. I think it fits within the definition of magical realism. The story is based on personal experience, so there is some amount of reality to it. But Han is not exactly writing his memoirs, he’s trying to convey the voice of the people of the village. What they believe about dream-women and maple demons and purple-teeth soil is real for the purposes of the story. It’s stronger than that, even, because belief is as good as reality to the extent that people act on their beliefs (and who doesn’t). Belief IS reality from each person’s point of view. In that way, all reality is constructed. The very best of magical realism makes one question one’s own point of view. That’s my understanding of what magical realism is.

My point is this: Han’s book has served to convince me that I want to use magical realism for this year’s NaNoWriMo. It’ll be the Iceland / melting glacier / Norse Mythology idea I mentioned before. Is the glacier melting because of climate change? Yes, for the daughter. Is the glacier melting because the kids don’t visit anymore? Yes, for the father. Is the glacier melting because it’s time for the Age of Fire and Gravel? Yes, for the older son. Something like that.