Report from the NaNoWriMo Front
The month of November is gone, done, over! NaNoWriMo this year was, at first, a complete drag. I had no idea what to write. A pulp fiction theme zapped me, though it is a new genre for me. By about fifteen thousand words, I thought the main character was going to make me as depressed, screwed up and jaded as he is. Mac Grabes (his working title name), is the detective for profit, 1930s middle-aged male, alcohol consuming bachelor. He is pretty stereotypical for the dime detective character.
Mac’s secretary, Janelle Atrish (working title name), is also pretty, and pretty typical. The other characters, some of whom I drew from a story written when I was in grade school. I liked solving mysteries when I was in my pre-teen years. Now, I like killing off characters. One of my beloved characters from my youth did not make it through the story alive. She did not even start the story among the living, but something has to motivate a main character.
Sticking to the rules of the noir fiction, playing in a 1930s era setting, and killing a few dames, and my feminist sensibilities, was amusing. The challenge was not enough though, not by random NaNoWriMo standards anyway. The new twist, an otherkin populated world parallel to that of my human primary characters. More than halfway through the story, with no prior plot planning, I still did not have a device to reason why the two worlds crossed into one another. Why? It is the second most important question, right after, who, in a crime fiction piece. My answer dropped into my mind after recalling some research into some of the “crazy” stuff that I find amusing. Vril.
Vril is a substance, energy, unseen force, The Force(?). There are many more theories than facts. It is something that was a big deal in the 1930s though. Vril meant power, fortune, a step closer to becoming god-like. There is so much fun to be had with this sort of plot device! So there it was, my toy to play with, a Maltese Falcon. More than half way through the story and I am starting to enjoy the game!
The last two weeks of the month went by the complete one eighty from the first two. And, believe this, this year, most of my impressive word count leaps, done at work. Inspired by the monotony of working in a smoke shop that has the same customers stop in on a primarily daily basis, at least two nine-hour days became four thousand words in a very un-boring novel. In a way, I was paid minimum hourly wages to be a writer, with smoke breaks.
So, there it is, another National Novel Writing Month down. I want to give extra special props to my gal, Buz, in Upstate New York, for competing in and completing her first NaNoWriMo! She inspires me as much as, if not more than, she says I inspire her. *Much Love*