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Real posts should begin again shortly. Thank you for your support and patience.

-Nate

You know how, when they release movie trailers, sometimes they put all the best parts of the movie into the trailer?  This isn’t one of those kinds.  This is a scene that wasn’t working out at all, draft after draft, and  I needed to move on.  The version you see here is nothing like what will be in the novel, but I had fun writing it and thought you might enjoy it.

Oh, and “Guard” and “Big Mama” are their names.  The main character is Jason. This starts out from his point of view, and switches to Guard a little way in.

Guard’s Story: Act III

Guard was already seated when I got there, so I sat down facing him,  and noticed how little it hurt to do things like sit down and move around these days.  I was almost whole again!  But now was not the time to worry about my side.  Guard was going to tell me what had happened next, and I was more than ready to find out.
He waited until I was comfortably seated, then began.

I was not popular around the village after that. (Guard said.)  The raid had been particularly savage, and the raiders had made it known that they were after me and my new little ideas.  Many accused me of wasting time talking when I could have spent that time breaking more of our attackers’ faces.  Many accused me of inviting their wrath in my pride, and my bad attitude.  I said that they were welcome to do what they thought best, and that all I had ever done was work for the good of the village, but nobody wanted to hear that again.
I really didn’t know what to do.  I didn’t want to go back to raiding, because I couldn’t see how it was right to take from others what we could get for ourselves.  I didn’t want to give up my studies for war training.
I wasn’t getting anywhere, and I knew that I wouldn’t, so long as I was trying to figure things out on my own.  I knew someone who could help, but I really, really didn’t want to go to her for help.  Still, I had no other option.  I went and found the fat bossy lady from the other village.
She was sitting outside her house, looking pleased with herself as usual, and not doing a whole lot.  When she saw me coming she nodded, then waited for me to take a seat before talking.
“So, people aren’t as easy to please as you thought. And sometimes you need to hit someone a little bit. The question is; what are you going to do about it?  How do you propose to handle your little problem?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did I tell you last time?”
“Something about pure force.  What happened to intelligence?”
“You need to know where to push, sure, but some things won’t go away by talking.  Sometimes you need to act. Sometimes what you do won’t work, but at least you will have tried.”
“This part of the story isn’t very easy to write, is it?”
“No, son, this part is getting pretty sticky and hard to get moving on at all.”
I looked at her for a second. Things weren’t going the way we expected.
“What should we do to make things work better?”
“Well, the Author’s had a hard enough time; why don’t we skip ahead to the real point of this scene, and go from there? And on the way, we’ll summarize what we are supposed to say in this section!”
I liked the way she was thinking.  It would get us out of a terribly slow and convoluted part of the story.  We started walking through the plot, ignoring narrative theory, and talking over what we should have been doing.
“So, Guard, here’s the part where you try to turn away from your true path, once again.”
“Yep. Here’s where you remind me of what I’m meant to be, and what I can do to really make myself what I’m supposed to be.  I mean, you know, where you tell me about protecting those who need it, moving against the evils that beset us all, and what I can do to use my brain to carefully and properly direct my force.”
“Oogh, I forgot about this part.  Why did you fight me so hard, anyway?”
I grinned a little, something I wouldn’t do in story.  “I didn’t want to believe that my whole purpose in life is to hit people.”
“Well, you’ve learned better by the time the story picks up, right?”
“Well, I’m still brooding, you see.  I’m angry, frustrated, and I want to know that I can do more.  I mean, look at this fight scene.  I don’t even remember it; because I’m berserk in that scene.” I watched for a moment. “I got some good hits in though, didn’t I?”
“That’s my Guard!” Big Mama laughed.  “Oh, be careful, you almost tripped over the burning building, where you weren’t able to save the crops.”
“I sure did.  That scene is some pretty rough ground. It could use some work before it’s really ready to be in any book.  I mean, burning crops? What is the Author thinking?”
“Well, as long as it makes the end symbolic, that’s fine.” She responded warmly, mostly so you could remember who was saying what.
“Okay, so, here we are at the beach where you decide to come with me, be my bodyguard, and learn the true and right uses of who you are and what you do. Are you ready to get back into the story line?” She asked.  I sighed.
“Okay. I don’t like this scene, but the Author just marked this whole section as a “crappy draft”, so we can at least rest in the knowledge that it’ll be changed before too long.”
“Thank goodness. Okay, places everyone!” Big Mama said, then we stepped back into the story line.  It tingled.

***

“So, kid, what’s it gonna be? You gonna stay on this island and hate yourself for fighting off attackers, or are you gonna come with me and learn how to do what needs done when it needs done?”

“Do I have a choice?”“Of course.  You always have a choice.  You can be a nobody or you can be your best self. It’s up to you. It always has been.”I sighed.  She was right.  I knew there was more for me out there with her than there was here, fighting people I didn’t want to fight for causes I didn’t believe in.  I stepped onto the ship, and the rest is history.

Ta-daaa!  I should be done in time, without even stretching too much. Oh, and the fourth wall stays completely intact in the real novel, don’t worry.  No post-modernism here! Thanks again for your support!

-Nate

While I was writing my little book I came across this site that makes a pretty cloud out of the words or RSS feeds you give it. So I fed it this site and this is what I got back…er, It’s a java thing, so I’m not going to embed it.  But here’s the link.

Book is going well, I should finish well before the end of the month. I’m talking, I’ll have hours to spare. Thank you both (okay, thanks to all the lurkers as well) for your patience.

So, the basic plot for this novel is one that has been bouncing around in my skull for, oh, about ten years now.  I’ve always had a pretty good idea who the main cast would be, what they would be like, and how the plot would go.  On November 1st I sat down to finally write this novel that I’d been ruminating over, and figured that it was all going to go just like I’d planned it for the last decade.

In the second chapter I introduced a few extra characters to fill out a dinner party scene.  One of them said his bit, bowed, walked off stage and we’ve never heard from him again, as is good and proper.  One of the other ones,  however, attached himself to my protagonist and rapidly became his best friend.

At first I smiled at this little slice of life, but as it became clearer and clearer that this interloper wasn’t planning on going anywhere I started to look for ways to gently get him out of the story.  The problem was that he and my protagonist were now fast friends, and what’s worse, this new guy was actually pretty well developed and fit into the story like a gear in a Swiss clock.  Trying to pull him out would bring the whole thing down on my head.

A few chapters later the new guy gave us his life story and to my astonishment it was better than some of the life stories I had been working on for years.  My attitude to this little me-tooer switched from a slight desire to chase him off to a more appeasing stance, making sure he was comfortable, got enough face time, because he’s made the whole story work better and has just quietly suggested ways in which he can be helpful in wrapping up all the loose ends.

So, the  moral of the story is: Don’t belive you are in control of fiction during a first draft. You can be in control during the later drafts.

The good news is that I’ve written over 32,000 words out of 50,000, which means I should be done with the NaNoWriMo challenge a bit earlier than the end of November and can probably get a few words about this whole Papermaster thing up before it blows over.  Is it just me, or does Papermaster sound like a terrible hybrid Print Shop/Filemaker program?  Everytime I see his name on news sites I wonder how he got it.  I can only think it was a joke at Ellis Island some years ago.

Anyway, be good, have fun, I’ll be back with some Not-Entirely-Sane Apple News soon.

October 30: I shanghaied a good friend of mine into writing a novel this month as well.  My method was roughly as follows:

“C’mon! Write a book. You’d write a good book! You should write a book!”

Eventually he agreed. I’m sure his book will be better than mine.  That accomplished, I next set out to perform the most perilous part of writing a novel: choosing a novel writing program.  This is no small feat.¹  There are so many good choices, like StoryMill, Scrivener, Pages, Mellel, WriteRoom, most of which I er, already owned.  So I decided to go with Scrivener, based on its amazing flexibility, stability, ease of use, and  the fact that I would then have an excuse to purchase a license.  So far I have been glad about that choice.

October 31: Fear set in: What if I lose my novel to a random and spontaneous hard drive failure?  I spent four hours setting up an SVN repository and making sure that I have copies of my novel on all three macs, my iDisk, and of course checked into SVN.  There. My ideas are safe.  Now I just need to actually have some ideas.

November 1, 1:27 AM: Gripped by insomnia, I get up and write around 500 words.  Later that morning I go back and change all of them.  “Don’t write under the influence of insomnia” becomes my new motto.

November 2: I start to get really sick, and notice that I may not be doing well when writing about my main character undergoing surgery nearly makes me lose my breakfast.  I lie down on the couch and write the next few pages on my laptop.

November 3: I am unable to go to work because of the Martian Death Flu that I have contracted.  I write about 2000 words on the third, most of them pretty good.  I eat roughly two bites of food this entire day.

November 4: Home sick again.  Worried about dehydration (one of the characters in my book suffers from it) I send my wife out for “eleven million bottles of Power Aid”  She returns with two, which is more than sufficient. Thus re-hydrated, I go back to writing.

November 5: I go back to work. My writing suffers, as I am still somewhat sick and not all that able to keep code and novel straight in my brain this day.  My comments in the code I’m writing start shaping up into a pretty interesting story featuring a guy named API and his girlfriend, Ruby.

November 6: Due to a sporting event at the university where I work I am unable to write more than about 20 words this day.  Not that I cared all that much about the sporting event; but I was required to do tech support during the event, and a crowded football stadium is not the best venue for writing about Americans recuperating in the Philippines. Fortunately, I have the next five days off of work.

November 7: I am back on track, novel-wise.  I have a pretty good writing day, and also buy a Coldplay album, a Jack Johnson Album, and an EP by The Flaming Lips.  Two of the three are good music for writing.  Guess which one isn’t.

November 8: I write the day’s 1667 words and realize I’m still about 3000 words below my goal for this point in the month.  I sit back down, and with Jack Johnson blasting through my headphones, fall asleep on the desk.  I wake up, switch albums, and get back to work.  By evenfall I’ve closed the gap to 1500 words, which I should be able to make up in the next few days.

So that’s where we stand.  There are all sorts of interesting things going on the world, and if I get caught up with the novel I plan to write about a few of them, like the AT&T dude’s predicitons about what iPhone 3.0 will be able to do for you.((“It’ll start your car. It’ll do your taxes! It’ll translate conversations you’re having with Japanese people on the fly, provided you don’t mind saying things like, “I would like to super-fun the racoons twice mostly” when you meant, “I’ll fax the contract this afternoon.”))  Thanks again for your patience!

1. Size 11… oh right, feat, not feet.  Sorry [↩]