I have officially signed up for nanowrimo. I have been checking out the site for a couple of years now, trying to work up the courage to do it. With no tangible prizes and not even anyone throwing tomato's at those who fail to hit 50,000 in 30, I am unsure why it was such a scary thing to finally sign up. Well, yeah, I do.
It is the fear that I can't do it. C'mon, it doesn't even have to be good, so if I can't write a bad, plotless, disjointed novel in 30 days, then I truly am a hack trying to live out the dreams of my misguided 12 year old self. It's pretty harsh to have your dreams shattered at 12, more so at 31. So what finally made me face these fears and sign up?
A few things actually. On a whim I sent a few non fiction articles to the Dollar Stretcher, and they liked them, they really liked them! Enough to send me two checks actually. Then, at the urging of my better half, I began a work of fan fiction and have been posting it on two separate fan sites. The strange thing is, people are begging for more, and the most popular part of the story is a character I created. In fact, the old man is so well loved, I have had several requests for permission to use him in their fics.
Now fan fiction is not the road to take to be a respected author, or even a moderately fed one. Yet it gave me two things- The knowledge that I can finish something I start, and that I can rig up a workable plot line. Those are great gifts, my friend.
So what am I writing? Well, in respect to the rules I have only the idea's knocking around in my head. It will be fantasy, of a more real nature (no talking unicorns, no offense to those who write talking unicorns, but a unicorn would come nowhere near me, if you catch my drift.) I have my main characters, three of them actually, with two supporting characters. The first comes from a short work of prose I posted up on my DA, "Someone New", and no, she is not a vampire:
It had become too easy to turn into someone new. Memories are fluid things, twisting in a current until they became different and molded to a new life. Names had always escaped her, so it was no surprise when her own did too. So here she was again, in a different place with the same face and a new life. Eternity would be boring if it was otherwise.
She smiled, feeling clever. She felt clever so often it seemed a shame there was no one there to witness. They all died, one by one, leaving her orphaned from one life to the next. That’s why it was so easy. She filed their faces away as beloved characters from airport romance novels. Never real, if they became real so would she and that just wouldn’t do. To be real was dying and to die was to stop. She was to busy starting to ever stop.
She wondered if she was mad in the twilight times between one death and the next. Madness would be interesting if she could don it as a mask, but masks had never suited her. She contemplated the dust on the air before realizing she wasn’t deep enough to meditate to madness. Just as well, she had enough voices in her head to go out inviting more.
Another child came to her. This one hungry and next to broken. She felt pleasure at the anger. To snap a neck was a simple joy. The fetid alcohol on the breath of her victim the victimizer left her giddy. Another orphan freed to orphan her. Another name to be forgotten. Another child to regulate to the time between memories.
This child would die. They all did eventually. They reached a zenith, a perfection, before the skin began to crumble in the years that were minutes that were an eternity too quick to grasp. The child, the grownup, the girl would hate her. They all did eventually, calling her mad which she wasn’t so she would laugh and become someone new. They would hate her because she had released them and had given them life only so they may die while she lived and lived and lived.
And the child would become a memory to be forgotten to be remembered and start all over again.
She knew she had begun somewhere at sometime but she couldn’t remember when. She was always herself, even when she was someone new. She was a child that became a woman that stayed a child and she wondered if she had forgotten something in the twilight. A piece was missing and she wondered if maybe she had finally found the key.
Laughing, she twirled in the street. Yes, it was easy to turn into someone new as long as you remembered to stay exactly the same.
The other two characters have been banging around my hard drive for the past eight months reusing to fit into any story I've tried to shove them into. As for the plot, no frickin' clue, and that is just dandy with me.
