I know I risk a bunch of pervy late-night surfers finding my site after Googling 'booty', but that's a chance I have to take, my friends.
My insomnia is back. And although I harbor the illusion that on nights like these, I'll get thousands of words down or 10 articles pre-written, the reality is I often surf, play FreeCell, watch MTV melodrama and generally fall victim to ABS all over again.
But for once, my ABS has been fruitful.
I was trolling through my old files, curious to see what little gems I could unearth, if any…and then I found it.
An old novel on the go.
I can't believe I forgot about it. I think I started it in '98. I've plotted up to Scene 22, and have written just over 15,000 words so far (I just took a quick glance at the main file. There was a 2nd file that may be edits of the first few scenes, so I'm not sure how much it differs from the original draft…) It's a supernatural thriller based around twin brothers. I took a quick read – and I don't hate it!
Of course, I'm sure my skills as a writer have improved since then (I'm hoping!), so there will probably be lots of tweaking and a reworking of the plot and all that.
But that's the fun stuff. The reworking. The piecing together of the puzzle. The bending and shaping and sculpting of this malleable lump of characters and plot and conflict into something tangible.
Could it be that I have my NaNo 2010 project?!
For now, however, it's staying put on the back burner. As i start to remember the nuances of the story, I'm going to need to let it brew a little while longer as I think of what I want to do with it.
This weekend, I'm hoping to pick up my NaNo edits. I still feel like I'm on the outside looking in on the current piece, so if I can't make it work, I'm going to shelve it for now and move on to one of the other ones.
The thing that sucks is I know how I want this story to be. It's kind of similar to those mornings you wake after having a strange dream and you don't quite remember it but the residual strangeness seems to remain with you the rest of the day. I feel like it's just out of my grasp. I know eventually, I'll be able to push through the gossamer veil between the dream and reality. But right now, I'm still waiting…
[NWC]
Mary’s eerie tales inspire in readers the urge to double-check the deepest, darkest closets, to peer anxiously under the creakiest of beds, and to always sleep with the lights on.
Awesome! I’m always amazed when I unearth some old piece of writing I’d abandoned and discover that it’s not quite as terrible as I had thought. I can’t imagine rescuing anything of mine from as far back as 1998, though… I think at that point I was still in the “starting novels and abandoning them after 2-3 chapters” stage in my writing.
I’m excited that you’re already thinking ahead to NaNo 2010, though!
(ZOMG – what am I going to write in November??!?)
Sorry to get you panicked about November
If I learned anything this year it was “It’s Never Too Early To Start Planning”.