NaNoWriMo: collision course

[vaneramos]

Photo: Chicory, October 21.

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Brenna has Thursday and Friday off, so this afternoon I'm driving to Lindsay to pick her up for the long weekend. Meanwhile, my mind is trying to gear up for NaNoWriMo. I can't believe I've chosen the ex-gay experience as the main plot for my novel. I must be insane. I'm on a collision course with the most devastating five years of my life, and I don't know whether I'll survive.

No, I do know. I will still be alive at the end of November, probably reduced to a mass of inert, blithering flesh, but at least alive.

danthered has given me this handy fluorescent light fixture, which I've set up right behind my monitor. I'm sure to get bright, broad-spectrum light for at least an hour every day when I sit here writing. It's probably attributable to a combination of factors, but I feel better than last week. The light seems to be contributing. Thank you, Daniel.

So I've been writing an outline for the novel, which is more than I did last year. In Tendril, I only had some character sketches and an idea of where I wanted the plot to end. The characters were not as close to the reality of my life, and the story was fun.

I'm a lot clearer this year about what needs to happen, and that's a good thing. The difficult part will be writing the narrative. Last year, whenever I ran out of ideas, I would resort to dialogue and let the characters work things out. It was relatively easy.

I want this narrative to be more descriptive and psychological, and that's a challenge.

I'm putting myself at the wheel of a car spinning out of control down a mountainside. That's what creative writing is all about: letting your creative instincts run at the same pace as all the avalanche of words inside.

The story keeps starting to sound like an autobiography, which is another thing I don't want. That would be too negative and whiny, and I don't want the unpleasant aspects of this story to reflect on any real characters.

This is not about axe-grinding. It's simply a story of the unfortunate things we do when we don't love ourselves right.

A couple colourful characters have arisen. Particularly the wife, and I can assure you she will be nothing like my ex. The gay romantic interest is starting to take shape, too; an amalgamation of some characters I knew in university.

And the agony of wanting. I remember that so well. That part is taking shape. Wanting something you believe you can never have. The resignation that goes into surviving, thinking, "If I just get through this life, maybe God will reward me when I die and make eternity bearable."

My protagonist must reach the point where life itself is rewarding. I've arrived there myself, I think. Some days yes, some days no.

I don't know what to do with the main character though. Indeed, this will be a kind of shifted memoir containing many aspects of my life. But transformed to something a little different. More poetic perhaps, containing transports from the grim reality.

Yes, that's where I need to go, into the mystical tale that carries through all our minds and experiences. In fact, I might be running on a collision course with Jesus, not exactly the person I expected to meet in a shadowy corridor of the consciousness in November 2004. But Jesus stands there, codependently, looking like he needs me to knock. I don't know why we should become lovers again after all this time.

Comments

[leafshimmer.livejournal.com]

You wrote:
I'm on a collision course with the most devastating five years of my life, and I don't know whether I'll survive.

And you want to do this because WHY, again?

I'm looking at it from my own bizarre perspective, heavily influenced by Virginia Woolf's conviction that nothing sorts things out quite so well as writing them down--and presuming that taking this on is a massive act of self-healing on your part. And I can already see aesthetic motives coming forward, as well, in what you write here.

It's interesting that you may be headed for an encounter with Jesus. I find him a fascinating figure--as a poet and a lover and a speaker of truth. It is so very hard to get at who he was and what he taught, separate from the many-chambered mansion of horrors that has been erected around an inflated simulacrum of his image.

That's really sweet of Daniel to give you that light.

hugs, Shimmer

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Why? Because of the writer's maxim, "Write what you know." I had a few hours in the car to think about it today, and the whole idea has blossomed considerably. Part of the narrative will consist of the protagonist's journal entries, meditations or prayers: devotions, as I used to call them. His personal journey—psychological, spiritual, mystical, metaphorical, whatever you want to call it—will be much more central to the story than I had anticipated. I might as well go for the jugular.

[roosterbear.livejournal.com]

The story keeps starting to sound like an autobiography, which is another thing I don't want.

To some degree, it's impossible for it not to be at least a little bit autobiographical, because your characters come from you, and your head. They will teach you things about yourself that perhaps you could not learn any other way. That's part of the magic of writing. But don't worry about that. Pulling from your own experience, your own feelings, your own reality doesn't weaken the story. Quite often the opposite is true.

And it doesn't sound like it's going to be a straight biography, anyway. As one example, I remember you saying something to the effect of, your main character has an affair with a man while he was still married, and that never happened to you. But you can understand what that would have felt like, and in essence you're choosing to live it out vicariously thru your character. That can be painful, and scary, but also quite valuable.

"If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats."
--Richard Bach, Illusions

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

The problem is I find the protagonist struggling to become more and more like me. In fact I've been debating the question of whether he should really have an affair. I considered him having a one-night-stand with a stranger, and the main romantic interest being sublimated (I'm not sure if that's the right word) into a purely psychological experience.

If I'm going to make the character any different from me, I'm going to have to be fairly vigilant about it. But maybe that struggle is part of the process that will make him interesting and believable. If my writing process turns out anything like last year, I'm bound to run into some surprises, when my own inspiration calls for a sudden twist. That's probably a good thing.

[roosterbear.livejournal.com]

The problem is I find the protagonist struggling to become more and more like me.

Heh. Just wait till you actually start actually writing. :-)

I suggest leaving it open for now, if the character seems to have ideas of his own. You might write the scene for the one night stand and discover that the character is wracked with guilt, or dissatisfied, or something else. To some degree, at least in my experience, letting him do what he wants or needs to do makes for a more realistic story much of the time. I try to have a beginning point and an end point in mind, and then let the characters figure out how they're going to get there. That's when the real magic happens.

If my writing process turns out anything like last year, I'm bound to run into some surprises, when my own inspiration calls for a sudden twist. That's probably a good thing.

Exactly.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I have worked out a relatively detailed plotline, but I was intrigued with how the characters threw me for some loops even as I was writing it down. And it isn't so complicated that I can't stray from the plan if inspiration dictates. I just wanted to work a few things out, because I was frustrated last year with how some of the interesting subplots failed to resolve. This time I have a couple things going on behind the main narrative that won't appear until later on, but I had to work out some kind of timeline for them.