NaNoWriMo 2011: Characters, Part 2

LETH

This spirit is so mysterious, it hasn't been indicated if he even truly exists. However, he does seem to exert a lot of control over Natalia's mind, and according to her he is a very intelligent master among the dark forces.

His plans can be complex or deceptive, or as simple as ordering her to beat up the next person she sees. His ultimate goal, naturally, is unclear for now.

STEPHEN MCENVAR

This young man was nice enough to supply Matt with food and clothing when they met at Stephen's campsite.

He seems friendly enough, but claims to have a shadier side. For one thing, he smokes underage, and apparently has a rocky relationship with his parents, which is why he camps out rather than staying at home.

It's almost as if he doesn't like getting compliments at all.

DANIELLE FANG

Chief of Police in Smelton. There's not much about her, but she seems to be very serious and efficient when it comes to her job. However, because she's done so well in the past, she has the idea that Smelton is now a safe place. This complacency may just be her undoing...

NaNoWrimo 2011: Characters, Part 1

MATT LOTHYRE

This down-on-his-luck man has nothing but his strange-looking hat and a neverending supply of trouble. He has no ties to the world and nowhere to go.

He's 24, but stress has made him look older already. He is scrawny from starvation, with short brown hair, a long nose, and thick, pouty lips.

He dreams of living in a small house near the library, but he has trouble finding a job due to his complete lack of any known skills. He could probably get something if he was willing to give up his hat, but it appears to be far too important for him to part with.

NATALIA DERINDE

This gothic-dressing woman lives in luxury near the lab where she works as a data analyst. In her spare time she relaxes extravagantly and performs dark rituals in the occult shrine in her basement.

She has pale skin and grey eyes, with long, very straight, silvery white hair. She always wears black, usually complete with a cloak that she carries. She is very concerned with appearance, and seems to be attracted to herself.

The most important thing to her is pleasing the spirit Leth, even though he often tricks her.

PAT

Not much is known about this strange person--not its gender and not much of a name. (Pat doesn't mind being referred to as an it.)

It owns a car and is quite fascinated with hats, as well as beer. These can sometimes get in the way of its job, apparently in some sort of office, working under its mean boss Bob.

It's trying to steal Matt's strange-looking hat.

More Fun With Natalia

It's been a couple more days and a couple thousand more words. Natalia is still completely taking over control of my novel while Matt lays in the hospital doing nothing.

She started off as a detestable foil to Matt, having everything while he has nothing. The house he wishes he could have is nothing compared to the one she lives in, yet she stays there by herself and never has any friends over. She's too lazy to even clean up after herself, and she's convinced that what she sees in the mirror is the most beautiful thing in the world.

But Natalia's main appeal is in her occult obsession, which has been connecting her with a spirit named Leth for a long time. At first he's just giving her instructions (and letting her forget them), but yesterday he did something new: he lent his power to Natalia to make her into a suddenly feral creature, escaping her kidnapping, and murdering everyone involved.

This settled a question that I've been asking myself for a long time: is Leth real, or is this story firmly rooted in a strict realism with a bit of silliness on the side (making Natalia simply crazy)? Obviously, since she was able to bend her limbs in ways she's not supposed to and bite through someone's spine, this has become very, very serious.

Oddly, there's now a chance that because of the killings she'll have to leave her home and run from the law, which puts her in about the position that Matt was in from the beginning. That could mean our two main characters, who after 16,000 words still haven't met, are about to start working together. But who can say for sure? We'll just have to see.

I want to start posting the notes I've been taking that are mostly just to test this year's writing implement, which is PangurPad. Still, I wrote those notes in such a way that they are to be read, and there's not any information in there that would really spoil my story... yet.

Hats and Their Owners

A week has come and gone since NaNoWriMo started this year, and I've mostly forgotten to keep this blog updated with my progress, but luckily here's some more about it beyond that little bit you got in the first post.

I was thinking about calling it "Hats and Their Owners," and that's the tentative title I'm using for now. However, it's actually only half about the man in the strange-looking hat now. Although the next character to be introduced was a creepy, nongender person trying to steal the hat, it was the one after that who managed to take over at least half of the story.

Natalia is pretty much the opposite of Matt, the main character. She works in a lab making tons of money and spends almost all of her time in her lavish home, either relaxing or... communing with occult forces. It's one of these mysterious spirits that drives her half to madness as her story begins to play out: she's been given a very important mission by one of them, but she can't remember what it is!

Other things that this novel has proven to include are a near-drowning experience, extreme vanity, a campfire, a rage-induced beating on a store worker, fantasies about the perfect tiny house, kidnapping at the hands of small children, and finally, a short car ride taking place entirely in rhyme.

Despite all these fun shenanigans, I'm starting to have a bit of trouble. I had no time to work on it on Sunday (yesterday), so now all my hard work getting ahead has been canceled out. Unfortunately, I'm starting to face the reality that every Sunday might as well be counted out of my writing schedule. That takes away 4 days total, increasing the amount of writing I have to do each day as I go on. But today, for whatever reason, I can hardly seem to get out even the normal goal. I'll keep trying, but I still have a ways to go.

Of course, this is about where it usually gets kind of difficult each year. There's nothing new about that. I have to remember this, but I also can't use it as an excuse not to do my best right now thinking I'll make up for it when the end is near. Being behind doesn't feel good, and I have more people watching for my success than ever.

One Hour of NaNoWriMo...

Tonight I stayed up past midnight so I could get an hour of writing in before I head to the kickoff event tomorrow morning. It turns out that I was able to get exactly one day's work done in that time. I'd like to celebrate the beginning of this event by sharing part of that with you.

The man was not so concerned with his appearance as that of his rather strange-looking hat. You see, his hat had a special function. It was a secret function, so secret that even I, the narrator of this novel, have not been offered the privilege of knowing anything about it. But it would seem that this secret function was very important.

As I have said, the hat looked very strange. It had what appeared to be a golden satellite dish sticking out of one side, and a purple feather on the other. He changed this feather every day, but this purple one happened to be his Thursday feather, and today was indeed Thursday. Not that that mattered, as he had no job or anything that depended in any form upon the days of the week.

In fact, he only owned the raggy clothes on his back and this very hat, which in structure seemed similar to some sort of pirate hat and was black like one. However, it did not have a design on it, much less a skull and crossbones. So it would appear that its very secret and special function was not to serve as any sort of sign that he happened to be anything such as a pirate.

He did love the sea, however, but it was not for sailing or treasure or anything on a ship. He did not want to be involved in any naval battles or anything fancy like that. It was just that he liked going to the beach. In fact, he liked the beach much less for the water than for the sand. Sand was his favorite substance, and he enjoyed it much more than anything. He sometimes wished that he had a house with sand for the floor, although he then admitted to himself that that would be far too dirty a dwelling.

Still, he wished he had any house at all. As I have already said, he definitely did not have one because he did not have anything at all besides his strange-looking hat with the very special and secret function that neither you or I are likely to find out about any time soon.

If it had been that useful, however, he would have had some way of making money, I would think. And he really didn’t: he had no education and no family to speak of. Well, he did have a high school education, but this was today’s world, in which that hardly counts for anything when looking for a job. He had tried donating blood plasma for a small stream of income, but that was barely enough to feed himself with, and he wasn’t able to do that anymore now because his impoverished state of being was having awful effects on his health.

He was only 24, but he had the face of one who was 42 instead, due merely to his aforementioned health problems. His short brown hair was disheveled, at least as much as could be seen under the strange-looking hat with the special function. Which, by the way, he never ever took off, no matter what. Even when he slept he left his hat on.

Anyway, back to the point of the preceding paragraph, his wide brown eyes looked around the underside of the bridge he happened to be standing under. I don’t know why he was standing under a bridge, but we will get back to that later, once I’ve finished describing his appearance.

He had a long nose and thick, pouty lips that hadn’t smiled in weeks. His half-starved body was encased in a plain brown t-shirt, the only one he hadn’t been forced to sell for his survival. His jeans were ragged and covered in patches made from half of an old, ripped-up sweatshirt he’d been using. The other half was currently being used as a scarf, and was a faded black. There had been a little bit left over as well, so he had lined the inside of his worn sandals with it.

Preparing for NaNoWriMo... or not

It's been months since my last post on this blog. It's alarmingly late in October, and that means it's almost time for National Novel Writing Month, the biggest and most chaotic, fast-paced event in writing.

I haven't written one paragraph of a novel or short story since that last post.

Suffice to say, this will be interesting. I usually come in with a pretty good idea of what I'm going to write about when November begins. But this year, despite everything, I have decided to go in with no plans at all, writing aimlessly until something comes together. As a result, expect me to start talking about how silly it is.

That is to say, I'm expecting it to result in many more blog posts over the course of the month. That's really not something I've ever tried to do before either, but I'm hoping with no plot ready I won't mind doing crazy things with my novel rather than spending 5000 words on "metanovel" where I literally write about how frustrating it is to keep writing.

So come back and check this blog throughout November. I'm resolving not to disappoint you.

Update

After that last long, formal post with all those fancy techniques, it's a little embarrassing to do this one.

You see, after all this time, I think it's safe to conclude that that stuff doesn't work at all. What was I thinking, anyway? I was sitting there trying to make myself do things, so my solution was to try to make myself do more things in hopes that that would somehow help.

Maybe there's some psychologist or something out there that can mess with my mind until it likes work! In all seriousness, though, this is where I admit defeat and look for some kind of alternative. As excited as I am about writing, and as much as I want The Third Face to see the light of day, maybe it's time to just... give it a rest for a while.

Let's see what happens if I pursue other things in life for a while. Just... don't let me forget how important this has been to me.