Aridi Writes

I have to say, immediately after I hit the halfway point (notably at work), I felt relieved. I didn’t know if I’d reach this point at all, let alone at about the right kind of time in the month; because we’re about halfway through November, right? I think it can work.

It’s going places, this book.

Hell yes I just hit 10k. I did so right at the end of a war with Relly. My main character is having a bit of a discussion with a forthcoming spook.

I’m hopeful. Second day, ten thousand words. If I keep up this pace, it means I’ll have hit the 50k goal by the end of my two weeks off work. Probably a bit more besides.

Woot.

Okay, so.

Two weeks ago I was going strong. I had two different ideas for NaNo; a rather deep look into depression and apathy heavily inspired by the grunge scene called In Chains, and a sci-fi effort set in a setting I’ve recently developed named Sanctity. And all was going well. I’d charge head-first into In Chains and if that didn’t work, default to Sanctity. You guys know I love me some sci fi asskicking.

And yet…

…and yet the scifi, while looking awesome, isn’t necessarily something I want to go into – as it will be a companion story to a full-length novel project I’m working on…in which humanity ENDS, aside from a new colony in another galaxy. Which is somewhat depressing. And In Chains, while I know it would be interesting, is starting to look…well…like something I don’t want to write.

And two other ideas are fighting for my attention.

One is a long-standing idea I’ve had about a man who lives a boring, repetitive life…who one day just decides to step out of it. Just on a whim. And in his travels he finds a notebook and starts writing, and meets some interesting people.

The other has just occured to me. A piece about the forthcoming draconian anti-downloading laws that Peter Mandelson wants to enact in this country. I’m not sure where I am going to take that. But…

Well, we’ll see.

…but there should be a lot more posts around NaNo season.

My primary project is a lit-fic piece about a young man in Des Moines, Iowa. It’s heavily inspired by the music of the grunge scene, and the title is In Chains. It’s musical, kind of – each chapter is the name of a song, loosely follows that song AS WELL AS the narrative, and will include at least one line of the song as dialogue.

…the other thing is a scifi war thing but we’ll get into that later HERE CHECK THIS OUT

Overall, I could convince myself that this year wasn’t a total failure – and in truth it wasn’t. I wrote almost 50,000 words this month – unfortunately in something like six different stories, ten to fifteen thousand in three, far less in the other three. I came up with an excellent sci fi setting idea, but couldn’t execute anything with it. I could use that sometime soon…

Why did I fail? Lack of attention. A new relationship that is…frankly, wonderful, but distracting due to it’s newness and unusual agreeable nature. Work and all its little nuances. Gigs, parties, a social life…all things that I should, really, have seen would messed up my word count.

The real crippler was being unable to settle on a story. I had ideas, lots of them; but I didn’t particularly feel like writing any of them. Not like I want to write Minute Silence; a contigious setting that I already know very well, with an overarching plot that I can still tweak and develop. Let’s face it, I also love the characters. Anyone that’s listened to me prattle about Cal, Black Swan or Mark can testify to that.

So the lesson? Make sure I know what I want to write. And if I don’t want to write it…change it. We all have to write things we don’t particularly want to but we can always make it more bearable.

It’s like a good book and a glass of water on a long-haul flight. You’re still in an uncomfortable situation – but it could be worse.

In The Presence Of Enemies has an excellent setting. The plot was just rubbish. SO I have a new plot. So there. I may not get finished but I want to TRY, damn your hide!!!

…also, I’m now Creative Commons:

The galaxy is in turmoil. There is no such thing as peace – a million different factions fight a billion different wars, constantly jockeying amongst each other for territory. The weapons of this eternal war are the Transhumans; vat-bred men and women with vastly improved capabilities and no rights whatsoever.

When a project is discovered to leave the galaxy and start afresh, the Overseer-General of the Armed Pleiades Defence Force wants to know why – and if possible, take the project over himself. In order to do so he assembles a small strike force, led by a group of Transhumans pulled together out of convenience and chance.

But all is not so simple. They are not alone in their attempt to secure the vessel destined to bear humanity’s legacy beyond the Milky Way, nor is their mission everything it seems.

Okay, well…that second one didn’t work out so well. Primarily because I designed a gorgeous, deep, interesting fantasy world that 1) Is too big for NaNo and 2) Is too big even for the “guy visits from real world” plot. So that goes into the idea pile.

This third idea is a simple contemporary lit-fic piece called All Change. I haven’t written an official blurb for it yet…but it’s about a young man that is about to throw himself in front of a train when a mystery girl stops him. They talk, and she leaves without ever telling him her name or giving him her number. It is about how his life changes – how he makes it change, and decides to turn everything around.

Another graphic.

It seems I was a little, ah, premature with my NaNo plot.

See, it’s an excellent idea. The setting is good, the history is good, hell, even the themes are good…but I totally lost the love for the characters that would have come from it. I wouldn’t really want to write them. I found it difficult enough to even think about them.

So I decided to try something…else.

As a boy, Alexander Tierson has an imaginary friend. While he is awake, Ciara is only around a little in the real world. When he sleeps, he visits her in the Elserealm – her own world – and has the most fantastic dreams…until his younger sister is killed in a tragic accident when he is 13. Then Lex stops having pleasant dreams, and Ciara seems to desert him. Over a decade passes in which he falls into a menial office job, meets his tiresome but unthreatening girlfriend, and makes a group of friends that he doesn’t need to be close to. His life couldn’t be more banal – and thus, he is taken totally unaware when he is visited by Ciara again. She has changed, grown, and become a warrior. Ciara needs the man’s help. The Elserealm – which to Lex seems to be just a dream but to Ciara is very, very real – is under threat, and she wants his help in saving it.

Yes, another ickle graphic. This one is for the document itself as a chapter break: