NaNoWriMo: Day ?

I spent the first three days of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) agonizing over what to write about. I had two concepts but neither were complete and I refused to start writing until I knew where I was going. I know not everyone feels that way about NaNo. I think the originator even encourages you to just sit down and write without thinking about it. I know he says to turn off your inner editor. I just can’t do any of that and that’s what works for me. I can almost double my word count by editing what I’ve written. When I did NaNo in 2005, I finished only because I added a ton of words every day to what I’d already written because every day I would start by reading from the beginning.

So anyway, my torture began last Monday or Tuesday when I began to really not like the idea I had decided on. It just wasn’t me. It was really more Casablanca, a movie I despise, set in a fantasy world with a few changes as someone pointed out on the NaNo forums. Of course, once he did, it ate at me and I couldn’t have it.

But then what would I do in my fantasy world? I knew I wanted the majority of the story to take place in this miserable, seedy border town between civilization and the heathen territories and I knew I wanted the main male character to have loved the female main character in an unrequited way. What I couldn’t figure out was why she would be in the border town looking for him, needing his help.

So, I dropped that idea and I considered my other favorite genre, inspired by the fact that I’m listening to Salem’s Lot on audiobook currently — horror, particularly supernatural horror. At first I thought I wanted a team of supernatural investigators who have a well-put-together shop based out of post-Katrina New Orleans to be hired by a wealthy old man to find his granddaughter, the only child of two dead Hunters; he hasn’t seen or heard from her in six months and she is also the guardian of an old family treasure, but he’s recently been attacked by demons after the treasure. Since he’s too old to travel himself, he sends them to find her. I figured out that she actually had a connection to the owner of the agency as their fathers had worked together and she also has been astro-projectally working with their newest, youngest member as a spirit guide to help him with his new psychic abilities, but they won’t know that until they meet in person.

However, I couldn’t figure out what the treasure was that demons would want. I did know that the grandfather had been dead for six months and that she was hiding on sacred ground, perhaps on crossed ley lines.

So, I dug through my fantasy novel collection for inspiration. Nothing. I glanced through my DVDs. Apparently since getting rid of my VHS videos and getting a subscription to netflix, I don’t have nearly the collection of bad fantasy and really bad psychic supernatural movies I used to have.

I skimmed through my book of children’s fairy tales — you know, those are some sick stories. The version of Cinderella in there had the stepsisters cut off a part of their feet to be able to fit into the tiny shoe. In the story of the goose girl, which was one I really liked as a kid, a talking horse gets his head cut off and hung over a gateway and he still talks to the goose girl and at the end, the handmaid pretending to be the princess is put naked in a barrel with nails driven in it and dragged through the streets behind horses until she’s dead. (Incidentally, after I read those, I saw the episode of Supernatural this week where they talked about the gruesome fairy tales and how in the real ones they turned out badly.)

I was about to give up, when an old idea from my roleplaying days came back to me for the fantasy story. Originally, I had written a futuristic Celtic-type female bodyguard in charge of the King’s heir, but during a coup, she loses her lover and her charge and she is exiled from the world until she can find the murderer. So, I thought, what if in the fantasy world, the coup is successful, but she escapes with the charge. She has to get him out of the country to keep him safe. To make it extra dangerous, the enemy has to have been her fellow military so she has to hide both of them while traveling. So, she goes to the old friend who believes she chose the other guy over him to get his help.

I’m still not sure it’s going to make 50,000.

So, I was all set to write that yesterday and decided to mull it over and start writing it at today’s write-in, but then last night, I figured out that it’s not demons that are after the treasure the missing woman has in the modern supernatural story. It’s vampires. Of course, she has two things, made by the same ancient alchemist. One is a ring that will allow a vampire to survive in daylight, though he will have none of his powers while there. The other is a dagger which is just as dangerous as a stake, but it has two extra goodies — first, it can kill demons just like vampires and the demons cannot come back to earth if killed with it; second, if it’s used on a freshly made vampire before it has made it’s first kill, it will reverse the transformation — the vampire will slip into a trance and three days later rise as a mortal again.

I also realized that while the investigators have a really cool female IT geek who’s a little bit like Garcia on Criminal Minds mixed with Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they lost their healer/lab tech/witch, possibly in Katrina. So the woman they’re seeking would make a good addition to the team as I believe she comes from a long line of witches.

So, then last night I was set to write that story.

This morning after exchanging email with Linda, I was back to wanting to write the fantasy novel again. Then I listened to Salem’s Lot on the ride over to the write-in. When I got to Panera, I was very conflicted and I told them to tell me what to write and they were unwilling to do so.

So…not long after I arrived at Panera, the group had a 15 minute “word war” and I had this blank page open in MS Word. So I wrote 169 words about the fantasy story.

So I guess that’s what I’m going with. I’ve written 2,005 words of the story today. I’m still not sure it’s a 50,000 word story, but Bronwen and the boy aren’t out of the castle yet, so could be.

I still want to write the other story, but I guess it’ll have to wait now.

Tagged as: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Criminal Minds, nanowrimo, Panera, Salem's Lot, vampires