I have a playlist that is exactly fifteen minutes long. I use it to filter out the noise of the household as I am attempting to write. I also use it like a timer to measure how long I have been writing for. I am not giving up on NaNoWriMo. I'm just being a complete NaNo rebel. I am working on a manuscript that I started last month and had 22k on it to begin with. It's made my numbers look real good for daily word count but I am not going to worry about that. I am just going to focus on getting the novel done by the end of the month.
I don't even know what kind of novel this thing is going to turn into. It is based on fanfiction I had been writing. I started it as a speculative bit of backstory for the two characters. Now I have 27k worth of writing in on it and no clear idea what direction it is going in. I'm just going to follow the story and see where it leads. This version of the characters from the fanfiction I was writing is entirely different from the fanfiction version of the characters. There is just vague mention of the strange gifts and magic that is in this world wielded by the knights and nobles.
I think that is going to be coming up more as the story progresses. I also think that this is going to be longer than 50 k words. I feel a little foolish using something I started as fanfiction for this. But, I have the feeling that I can turn it into a reasonably good story. It will take some editing when I get it done, but it will be a fairytale of sorts that I think will be a bit lighter fare than what I usually write. Which would be good because I'm kinda tired of writing super dark stuff and writing about traumatic experiences.
Speaking of traumatic experiences, my son has taken an interest in the events of September 11, 2001. (I refuse to call it 9/11.) I tried to read the book he signed out from the school library to make sure there was facts and not propaganda in it. It opens with the accounting of what happened on the planes and at air traffic control. I got about four pages in and I had to close the book. I was almost ready to start sobbing. Every time it comes up, and it has been coming up a lot since September, I feel this overwhelming urge to weep. It doesn't help that I had many friends who lost family in the events of that day. Some were in New York city and some were at the Pentagon. It doesn't help that I watched the towers collapse on live television and heard the city's scream of anguished horror. It is a scream that was echoed in the dorm sitting room where we were watching it happen. It is a scream that haunts my nightmares.
It doesn't help that I met one of the hijackers of the plane that was flown into the Pentagon just a week before and thought he was just another college student who had shown up for a dance being held at the college I attended. I remember him telling me that I was going to make someone a good wife someday. He said it with such a tone of regret. I thought it was because I had turned down his request for a date. Looking back, a part of me wonders if I had taken him up on that offer for dinner if he wouldn't have been so quick to have carried out that 'mission'.
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