The Road Ahead

I had an idea, recently, about naming chapters or sections in my NaNo novel after road features. I picture, in a print version, at the beginning of each section is an image of a road sign, and then the applicable title.  Like this:

So the bit with the diverging timeline would be called Fork Ahead. And Roundabout, pictured above, has something to do with a time loop. Those are the only ones I'm sure of at the moment. As though I'm ever sure of anything.

Wondering About When

I have questions.

Boy, do I have questions.

What year is it? Who are these people? What's going on?

I'm, of course, talking about my NaNo novel. Of course. I'm certainly not asking that about real life…

Anyway, and I don't know why I'm using such short paragraphs, I've been thinking about the time and place in which this story is set. Now, there's this, I don't know, assumption, that unless something is explicitly a period piece, it must be happening right now. Like, you figure a movie made in '98 is set in '98 unless told otherwise. (I just watched The Faculty. It's from '98. I'm not just picking random years.)

Forks in the Road

I haven't made a lot of progress lately, but ideas continue to swirl around in my brain. I've also just watched the first season of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which is just the amount of weird I need in my life right now. So I think it's helping.

A bit of advice. If ever you're stuck on a creative project, do some mindless, menial task. Your mind wanders, and you start getting ideas. Science says so. So these days, most of my ideas show up while I'm mopping floors. Which I do a lot. So things are going fairly well on the creative front. It's a good job to have during NaNo, it seems.

So what I was thinking about, while my shambling husk was cleaning something, was concerning the different worlds that our three heroes might encounter. Now, I already have this concept of diverging timelines. There's the little one that Tony creates by dying but also not dying. From what we'll see of it, there aren't a lot of differences from the prime timeline, since it only broke off a day or so ago.

A Cornucopia of Nonsense

I don't know if I have anything new to add today. I've been slacking lately.

I've been trying to put the random events I have in some kind of order. You know, so I can build a plot or something. So far I have:

• The ominously buzzing gas station speaker
• The weird mirror town that seems familiar but isn't
• Tony wanders off, gets killed, wanders back

And other things can happen in between those. Additionally, I have the temporally homeless:

• El Stevo - worshipped as a god
• The hitchhiker -aka- One More Troubled Soul
• The sheriff - a harbinger of probable doom

A Strange Moment of Inspiration

I spent the weekend preparing for NaNoWriMo, but not so much for my own story. As I've mentioned before, I'm a Municipal Liaison for my local region, and so I was making stuff for our Kick-Off Party. Like plot bunnies. I've been sharing that picture everywhere because it's adorable and I think I'm hilarious.

But, I did accomplish something story-wise. I have continued my trend of finding story inspiration everywhere. Even while performing the most mundane of tasks.

Let me set the scene. It's about 11:45pm, at a gas station that's long since closed up it's little kiosk. There's no one around. I turn off Bullet For My Valentine or whatever I was listening to, leaving me in relative silence. Until my ears perceive the mellow pop song that's playing over the gas station speakers, which at first sounds like the voice of some creepy little child singing in the dark. This momentarily scares the shit out of me, naturally.

This is where I was. This was the mindset I was in. So, when I got out to pump my gas, I noticed that the speaker right above me didn't work. It was just buzzing. And at this deserted gas station in the middle of the night, that was the most sinister god damn thing ever.

Picking Up Strays

I've been thinking about additional characters. What sort of interesting folks are our three heroes going to come across? Will any of them tag along for the ride?

My reason behind this idea? Well, I've been listening to a lot of Fall Out Boy lately, for some reason. And so all these bits and pieces of songs keep popping up in my head and giving me ideas. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but music is a huge inspiration for me, for writing and otherwise. The inspiration for the current idea? This:

"I don't know where you're going but do you got room for one more troubled soul?

I don't know where I'm going but I don't think I'm coming home"

- Alone Together

Some New Information, Maybe?

I wrote a good deal of a post concerning what I did over the weekend, which was work on my fake language. But once I found myself explaining how various letters were pronounced, I needed to put a stop to that. Suffice it to say, I made up some verbs, but for some reason pronouns are really hard.

I'm not going to spend too much time talking about that, since I'm not even sure if it's going to be used right now. I have a vague idea about a post-apocalyptic dimension where the inhabitants speak this language, but I don't know at this point. They won't be able to say much at the moment anyway, since they don't have any nouns. It's all just, "I want. You go."

The Return of Steve (and Other Stories)

The weird things that are going to be encountered in this story just randomly appear in my head, with no rhyme or reason. I carry a little notebook around with me for that very reason. I literally stopped in the middle of what I was doing at work to write the following very important note:

El Stevo - worshipped as a god.

Every story needs a Steve, you know. And as I was wondering if Tony who gets himself killed was going to be the new Steve, I had the above thought. I'm not certain what it means. I'd like to think that there's some town somewhere, in a little pocket of oddness, where this is happening. There's just this guy, named Steve, who tastes the rainbow, who puts foil in the microwave, who doesn't read the warning labels. And for some reason, he's worshipped as a god. Does Steve know about his divinity? I don't know. I guess we'll find out.

Weirdness: Now Pocket-Sized

I think the real question about the journey story that we need to answer is just how many L's "traveller" has. Spell check tells me it should only have one, but I'm defiant to the end. It's my understanding that that's the British spelling. I think it looks better. I've spelled it that way since I read H.G. Wells' The Time Machine in 12th grade. Originally only in the context of time travelling, but now in all instances.

I guess I just want to warn you. If I write this story, and share any excerpts, I don't want you getting all upset that I'm spelling "traveller" wrong. I know what I'm doing.