NaNoWriMo
We’re one week out from NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month. I have characters. I have a vague idea of plot. Now, if we can just avoid the November Time-Sucking Catastrophe this year, we’ll be in business.
This year, we’ll be tackling an introductory book — introducing my “world” via some of the main characters, and using the book as a way to tack down how things work. It’s basically the same story and the same characters I keep trying to write, again and again. The characters are still “alive” in my head — that means the story is still in there. I just haven’t found the right angle to tackle it from. Everything I’ve tried so far has just been so inescapably dull and cheesy. I think I’ve got it this time, though.
I was puttering around the house the other day, getting ready for work, mulling over various thoughts. I think I had just finished up looking up quotes for my day planner — I have this day planner with a customizable cover, and I had been plastering it with neat quotes from various sources — some of which were from Granny Weatherwax of Discworld fame, and one was stuck in my head. There’s a bit in Wyrd Sisters where Granny says something to the effect of not believing in mythical things like gods and werewolves and vampires and so forth, and Nanny Ogg replies, “But all them things exist.”
”Well, that’s no call to go believin’ in ‘em.” Granny snaps. “It only encourages them!”
I thought to myself, it would be fun to write a character like that, and then thought of the Discworld character of Black Aliss, the infamous evil witch that Granny is often likened to — possibly related to, I don’t remember now. Black Aliss never appears in any of the Discworld novels, she’s only mentioned. She was the most powerful witch in Discworld, and the most evil. And I thought to myself, now there would be a fun character to read about.
All on it’s own, a scene suddenly unfolded in my head, of my character, Alice, bringing Irish and Vincent (fearless vampire hunter and vampire, respectively) back to her apartment, and instead of the tidy little efficiency I’d always envisioned Alice living in, it was a disgusting little hovel full of dust and books and candles. The kitchen had been taken over by an alchemy lab — alchemy being a forbidden magical discipline, and the whole place was just — yuck. Irish wanders into the kitchen and discoverers the alchemy set up, and proceeds to have a bit of a fit, and while he’s bitching and Alice is responding snarkily, Vincent says, “Something smells dead in here.”
”Um.” Says Alice. “Don’t look in the bathroom.” Of course, just as Irish is reaching said bathroom, to discover a zombie “sleeping” in the tub.
Later on, it will be revealed in an aside that the zombie, “Marvin”, is Alice’s late husband, whom she killed and zombified herself, who is “much happier that way, anyhow!”
Suddenly Alice became a much darker character — Alice became a bad guy. Not a good person, not a good witch. And I thought to myself, Well, of course she’s a bad guy. Who else could take on Vayle (my villain) and have any chance of winning except someone else who’s just as rotten, ruthless, plotting, planning, scheming, and generally evil as he is?
So, I’m looking forward to NaNo this year. It looks to be a fun 50,000 words.
