NaNoWriMo

It happens every year.  Like Christmas and Birthdays.  NaNoWriMo once again.

In 2009 I began a novel that started its life called Darkness Falls, but will likely see another title should I ever go back and finish (which I fully intend to do).  It was my second earnest attempt at fantasy.  My first attempts so much high school drivel.  Seriously dreadful stuff.  Not that Falls was much better, but at least I managed to get rid of the Dragonlance influence that colored so much of my teenage writing.  I'd been reading a lot of George RR Martin and Joe Abercrombie, and so found myself impersonating them.  It was not a very good story, I think, but I love the characters. It's the characters I think of more than the story.  I went back to look at the story just now.  You know that picture you have.  It's one your parents or girlfriend have of you in that outfit you hated, or making a face under duress.  And then when you see it, you wince.  That's what it's like when I go back to old writing.  It's just...not good.

Cain pulled from the chest a tattered book, its cover the color of rotten apple cores.  Cain stroked the cover, poking with a finger at several maroon splotches that stained the book.  A single word was written there, “Verus.”  Cain read the word aloud, his name, his family’s name, and felt as always a chill run through his spine and making his legs weak.  It seemed that he could hear the line of kings from which he came when he said his name.  Before closing the chest Cain cast his gaze around the room.  The door remained shut.  Shadows danced on the stone walls of his study, cast by a flickering candle resting on his desk.  Bookcases lined the walls of the room, brought to him from the farthest reaches of the world by all manner of men.  The books themselves were riddles, each word, each volume more rage inducing than the last.  None moreso than the book he held clasped in his hands. 

I mean, I know I wrote this in November with no editing, but geez.  "Cain stroked the cover, poking with a finger..."  ""felt as always a chill run through his spine and making his legs weak..."  (all kinds of cliches and verb tense problems up in here"  The rest is not much better.  It is, in fact, embarrassing to read.  But real writing is revision, so I'm told, and this story never got the chance.  And now that I've had time to sit and think about it, the story I get to writing will be different than the one I started.  

In 2010 I wrote "Greens and Other Short Stories."  This was a mostly autobiographical piece, although I did write some short stories from the perspective of my family.  I also wrote one exceptionally long piece that was more of a "what if," in which I my mother was ill in the hospital and, unbeknownst to me (at first).  It ended up being mostly cathartic, horrible fiction, but useful to me in that I got a lot of stuff out of my head on to paper that I never knew I wanted to say.  I "won" NaNo in 2010 with Greens.  I haven't looked at much of it since then, however.  A lot of this was much better than Falls.  Part of it is because I'm better writing literature.  Part of it is because I'm bad at writing fantasy.  Going back, reading some of this, I think, "I like reading this."  That doesn't happen often with things I write.  I look to my friends for affirmation.  This passage takes place after my mother and father tell my grandparents that she (my mother) is pregnant: 

Roots fell to the floor, its hollow thud swallowed by the bellow of my first grandfather.  Standing over six feet tall and weighing over three hundred pounds, Michael never expected John to have the ability to move with the fluidity of flowing water.  The strength to crush Michael’s neck, the young man had surmised from John’s size and did not appear at all surprised to find the older man’s hands currently gripping his throat.  Michael’s hands found their way to my first grandfather’s, but his own hands were but weeds to the man’s oak, and almost as annoying.  The look in my grandfather’s eyes, so my grandmother says, stole the mobility of every person in the room.  Michael James Ferguson, convinced he was soon to die, could only choke out sounds.  He believed he said, “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.”  What he actually did was cough, slivers of spittle trailing down the sides of his mouth, pooling at the skin between my grandfather’s hands and Michael’s neck.  Lisa, for the first time in her 16 years on God’s green Earth, was shocked into silence.  One hand found its way to her mouth where it stayed positioned as if she smelled something foul, the other on the burgeoning swell of her belly.  My grandmother moaned, “John, stop.”  Repeatedly.   

                And my first grandfather did stop.  He released Michael’s neck, holding his hands above his head and looking down at the young man in disgust.  The look he spared my mother was coated in disappointment.  Lisa had the grace to look down at her feet, ashamed. 

                “Sixteen years old,” was all he said.  And left.  The sound of his car starting came through the door. 

I read a lot of comic books.  My favorite super hero is Spiderman.  Ultimate Spidey to be exact, but 616 Parker has a lot of good stories.  The reason I love Spidey is because of the balancing act between Peter and Spidey.  I love the human aspect of comics.  Yes, Cyclops can shoot beams of energy from his eyes and that's great, but what does it feel like for a man to be able to do that.  What would it do to a person's psyche to know that if he opens his eyes at the wrong time, he could kill dozens of people.  That's the kind of super hero story I want to write.  So the idea for my story was that somehow, and I never really worked it out, I was thinking something along the lines of some alien meteor on display in a museum, but somehow super heroes start appearing.  There were none before, and now we have people with powers popping up all over earth.  There would be heros, but it is my experience and my belief (and more interesting stories) when evil has the upperhand, and so the heros will be routed, and my story was going to begin with a villain who realizes that the villains are destroying earth.  He has no grandiose plans to save earth.  He just wants to carve out a little niche where he and some like-minded friends can have a bit of civilization.  

Months later the first super appeared.  Nobody knew the world had changed.  Who would think change would come with a grandmother.  She lived in a small town in Tenessee.  Johanna Johnson.  A small name.  An inconspicuous name.  An ordinary name.  An ordinary name for an old woman who lived her life, raised her children, retired away from people so she could die quietly like her husband before her.  She went into town on the third Tuesday of each month to buy groceries.  It was at the King Soopers, or the Piggly Wiggly, or the Walgreens.  Or whatever they called the grocery stores there.  Johanna was buying her supplies, Benadryl, milk, grapefruit.  I don’t know what old people need.  She was there and she could hear people who weren’t talking.  She heard the cash register talking about how he would like to fuck the new bagging girl.  She heard the manager complaining about how lazy everybody was and that his wife was cheating on him.  She heard a father who couldn’t remember if his wife had asked for swiss cheese or cheddar.  She heard all of these things but nobody spoke.  Johanna approached the clerk and told him it was not polite to speak that way in front of his elders.  She told  the father to buy both and save himself heartache.  And she asked if everybody wouldn’t stop talking all at once.  Everybody looked at her and the voices got louder, they were all thinking the same thing.  What was wrong with Johanna?  Had she finally gone crazy.  Don’t know how she managed to stay sane living all the way out in BFE by herself.  Mrs. Johanna noticed then nobody moved her lips and when somebody did, nothing matched.

            “Are you okay?” The manager asked.

            What the hell is wrong old woman, he said almost simultaneously.  Get out of my store.  Last thing I need is an ambulance blocking the entrance to the store.  All these lookie-loos not buying anything. 

            It was all Johanna could stand.  She put her hands to her face and began to scream.  She would stop for a moment, hear more voices and continue screaming.  She told me it was the only way to block out the voices in her head was to use her own.  She died shortly after I spoke with her. 

            Most people do. 

I didn't get very far into this story, but I will definitely be coming back.  It hasn't changed much as I've thought about it like Darkness Falls has.

And so this year, 2013, I will write another non-fiction, fictional piece.  It will be continuing and expanding upon what I began with Greens.  I plan on writing a cohesive story this time instead of a bunch of shorts.  It will be called Survivor's Guilt.  NaNo isn't easy.  I am a student, I have a significant other and kids.  The PS4 comes out in November, Thanksgiving and time with the family.  Time is at a premium.  But I think I can do it again.  The stories are all in my head and the rest is just scribbles.  But mostly, it'll be good to write consistently, even if I don't make it to the goal.  It'll be nice to write something other than essays about Shakespeare and books I did not choose to read.

So yay for NaNo.  If nothing else, I will write.  Hopefully I will write a lot.