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What Smack Said #27.5
Oops, it's November �� 
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Yes, it's November. Oops! May none of you ever suffer from a Santa Ana, though. The air out here is full of all the detritus that bloomed like crazy after the sustained rain we had earlier this year, and now it's all died and been cast out into the winds (and down my throat, up my nose, etc. Lots of fun.).
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This edition is a little long, so have a pic of my dog Loki before we get too far in. :) He gets leashed and tied to a leg of the coffee table on Halloween due to prior bad behavior. Don't let those big brown eyes or floppy ears fool you.
(Imagine, the
nerve of people coming to our front porch!
And ringing the doorbell, too! How dare they!)
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It's hard to believe 2023 is almost over. Thanksgiving is on the way, there are gifts to start thinking about for loved ones, health insurance plans to consider, and of course: Nanowrimo. Nanowrimo is short for national novel writing month, as a number of you are already aware. It's a breakneck pledge to write 50,000 words between November 1 and November 30, which equates to about 200 pages. (So a short novel, or long novella. But "national novella writing month" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.) The daily tally comes out to just under seven pages.
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I've participated on and off since 2006, and though I've hit that 50,000 word/200 page mark more often than not, this year I'm going to do an abbreviated Nanowrimo project beginning November 15. I'm in the middle of a freelance gig until shortly thereafter, and while the money is good, it's taking up most of my waking hours.
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I'm excited to get started, though. I recently read
Scarlet by Genevieve Cogman, which is essentially
The Scarlet Pimpernel with vampires. There was something so genuine about the way the main characters had to travel from the southern coast of England to Paris. They had no cars in the late 1700s, of course, and I don't want to equate the characters' travel to a contemporary road trip novel, but the fatigue and attempts to make the best of a long, arduous journey felt just like the kind of road trip we might take today—one where there wasn't time to stop for more than food and a bathroom, where there was an outside pressure bearing down on everyone in the car to make it to the destination as fast as possible—rang true and, in fact, felt deeply familiar.
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And then (in both
Scarlet and real life) when you reach your destination, you don't know your way around. You're not sure who will try to fleece you, but you know you're a good target for it. And you're left with an anticlimactic sense of disappointment, because no matter how urgent the need to get from point A to point B was, there's always some waiting around at point B.
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So yes,
Scarlet was the best book I read in October.
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I've had the opportunity to visit Paris several times in my late teens and early twenties, and despite the obvious differences in technology—again, no cars during the French Revolution, nor any phones or other easy ways to coordinate with the rest of your party—I enjoyed feeling like I'd returned.
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Then, while I was going through old boxes last week, I found a short, nine page story I'd written in late 2011. I'd submitted it to a creative writing workshop and for some reason saved every critique and response from my professor and fellow students. It was a lot of paper.
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Some of that feedback was useful, which was a pleasant surprise. Even better, the story itself wasn't all that bad. It was very clearly a ripoff of an actual weekend trip I'd taken with a friend, but the story's core is an examination of a complicated friendship taken out of everyday life and put under the unrelenting pressures that can accompany travel.
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Since rereading it, I've come up with an entirely different story that still contains that core, but takes place in a secondary fantasy world that involves characters very different from my twenty-something year old self and my old friend. The plot is unrecognizable from its original, with higher stakes, surprise magical ice powers, and demonic books. The relationship will doubtless change during the first and then subsequent drafts, but that core is what I'm starting with.
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And that's what my Nanowrimo project will be this year. I think it will top out at approximately 100-120 pages, which will make it difficult to publish traditionally, but that's okay. I'm still looking forward to starting.
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This has been What Smack Said, a monthly newsletter about books, fiction writing, and everything else. If you don't want to receive these emails, please use the link below to unsubscribe from this list. |
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