The past few days leading up to NaNo have been spent trying
to flesh out my story (without actually writing about it). A LOT more difficult
than it sounds. What am I supposed to do, just write it all in my head and then
come back and put it “on paper” in a week (now three days?). Doesn’t fly, or at
least not well. And now that I’m in the mood to write, it’s like the words just
won’t stop. I've yet to decide if that’s actually good.
I've fleshed a semi outline out (I call it my “concept”
outline) and I've started a character sheet. The idea/concept itself is going
to be drawn out of my Memories blog post from two years ago, as well as a quote
I recently read “…sometimes the only way to know how far you’d come was to
return where you once had been.” A lot of my main character’s emotions will
pull from my own experiences, but will not be
me. It’s an idea of, not that you can’t
go home again, but that sometimes what you think you want as a teenager lives
on in your head as an idealized version and many of us never get a chance to
actually face what we thought we wanted and stare at it and go “yet, I wanted
it, this is exactly what I wanted,
but – my life - who I am – has changed enough that that isn't what I want now.”
Out of all the stories I could possibly tell, of all the
plots I’ve ever started to write, I’m not sure why this one, now is the one I want to tell. It’s
more literary fiction than suspense or fantasy or paranormal. It’s actually a genre
that I usually find rather boring to read. Somehow this, this just fits.
Perhaps it’s because I know the ending? Perhaps because the outline is so easy –
she goes “home” and visits – for how long and why I’m not sure of yet – decides
the life she’d always dreamt of having wasn’t the life she wanted anymore and
goes back to her other “home”. Perhaps I’m
just writing it because it’s one story I already have sufficient experience
with and knowledge of and can draw from all of that? Is it to purge my own
memories? Perhaps. Is there a good answer to any of this? No. It just
is. Is that okay? Yes.
Oh, and I’ve also decided how I want to write, maybe the
style I want to use for writing, I should say. The Great Gatsby comes to mind,
although I’ve never actually read the book. However, I did enjoy the narrative
from the recent movie. It may have been the “looking back” aspect of it that I
find appealing to use for this story, using the book itself as a narrative, memoirs,
letters, something. Maybe it’s because I’ll be delving through my own memories
for the story and I already feel like I’m looking back on my own saga of could have been.
However prepared I am to actually start writing, November 1st
will not be a full writing day, I’ll be spending the day with my mom and
then the evening with my rescue group for our Halloween fundraiser. Writing
is important to me. Winning NaNo (winning being completing a 50,000+ word
novel) is a goal for me this year, but family and my rescue group are important
to me as well. Of course, I’m also lucky in that I’m able to schedule
everything in advance and if emergencies happen, well – they happen. I’m also
not too worried about it as it just means I’ll write more the day after, or
have written more the day before.
This is going to
happen. And – before you ask – I haven’t yet decided if anyone will be reading what I write this next month. TBD
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