A Slurry of Possibilities

Here I am, posting late again and pretending I didn't. I should be done with all the crazy distracting stuff, so I can get back to posting on time next week.

So where are we?

I've been trying to get going on a new project, whatever that might turn out to be. But then I was thinking about old projects, through the novella lens. That is, stories that maybe I couldn't edit/expand into a full novel, but could probably make into a novella. I have a few rough drafts that range from 10,000 to about 26,000 words that have enough raw material to eventually turn into a solid novella.

Words, Words, Words

I certainly meant to post this on Friday. And then I meant to post it on Tuesday, and now it's technically Wednesday, but I'm going to backdate it to yesterday so the whole thing doesn't fall into anarchy. Suffice it to say, I had a lot going on. I continue to have a lot going on. I've been seriously considering putting the blog on a hiatus, but I'm a little afraid that if I stop, I'll never start again.

The space story and its space cops continues to churn around in my head. I also caught a bit of a Discovery  Channel thing on Nikola Tesla's death ray, which gave me an idea about a time traveller. That's just how my brain works.

Murder! In Space!

I don't know if this is going to come into play in my next project, but lately I've drawn to the trope They Fight Crime. As in, "She's a by-the-book detective. He's an amorphous blob of mac and cheese. Together, they fight crime!" Or something, you know, less nonsensical. He's an FBI agent, she's a forensic anthropologist. A cop and a novelist. An Ontarian and a Quebecois. You get the idea.

I was also thinking about space cops, but I don't know if I know enough about law enforcement and, you know, space, to pull it off. The initial idea I had for my "space story" was that the main character joined what I called "The Corps." I don't know what that is. I never figured that out. Maybe they're space cops. I don't really know what they would be policing, on a lonely ship, wandering through space all alone. I mean, I guess they could keep the citizenry in line. I don't know. I have no idea what I'm doing, as usual.

Choices, Choices

I haven't gone through all my stories yet, but so far it looks like I haven't killed that many people. Or maybe I'm just growing numb to all the murder. By my estimation, there were 13 deaths in The Long Road's 25,000 or so words. And a lot of that was just one guy. And yeah, that's a lot, but most of the others are one, maybe two deaths. A lot have none at all!

I'll get back to you when I actually find the time to reread all the stories and get a final body count.

In the meantime, I'm probably trying not to kill anyone. I'm still not sure what my next project is, if I'm trying to go all literary and get locally published, or what.

By the Numbers

I read an article once. This article. They were comparing things like exclamation points, first sentence length, and cliché usage between various authors.

So I decided to track some things in my own works. I tried for things that could be easily found with a simple Ctrl+F, for the sake of sanity. Things like clichés would require me to either search for every known cliché in each file, or actually read the whole damn thing and try to catch them. Too much effort on my part.

I took every NaNoWriMo novel, any Camp NaNos that reached some form of completion, and some short stories from the past few years. I'm not sure what I'm trying to prove with any of this, or if there's any useful information to be learned here, but damn it, I do love charts.

What Now?

As I said before, I do intend to revise/fix/rewrite The Long Road, this year's NaNo novel. Just… not right now. I think we need some time apart. It's not you, it's definitely me. I'm the one without a proper plot.

So we're going to put that on the back burner for the time being. Let it stew a little. Marinate, even. We want it to be tender when we tear it apart. So then the question becomes: what are we doing now?

Well, usually around this time of year, I remember that one of my almae matres puts out a literary publication every year, and the deadline is the end of January. And then I'll hammer out a short story in a week or two and submit it. If you haven't been around since the beginning of the blog, that's what initially started the whole thing. I had just made my first submission. It didn't get published, but it was a step in the right direction. I was making the effort.

Past Romance

As I mentioned last time, once I started getting desperate for those sweet NaNoWriMo words, I started rewriting a part I had written earlier. In addition to upping the creep factor, I also delved into a piece of romantic backstory that had only been vaguely referenced before.

There's something notable about this. And yeah, it's the fact that I had a romantic backstory at all. I actually wrote out and explained how these character were connected, and how they had, um, connected. If I actually try to rewrite the whole story, it probably won't be dropped in there so abruptly, but I think it might actually have a place in the grand scheme of things.

To summarize it, Andrea and Jesse had dated for a few months, a couple of years prior to the events of the story. It didn't work out, but ended amicably. Yes, that can happen. Then at some point after that, her and Tony nearly hooked up after a night of drinking, but didn't go through with it. It was never spoken of again. But I found that after actually finally writing that down, there was a bit of certain… tension between the two of them. Which I'm kind of digging. It adds an interesting new dynamic.

Characters and Creepiness

NaNoWriMo 2017 is over. I did not reach 50,000 words. There's a first time for everything.

But along the way, I did have some fun, and I learned some things. We have a lot to go over today, which should be a nice change from my recent rushed posts that trended a little on the short side.

First off, I never did quite pin down Andrea's personality. I went on a whole quest to find her a soundtrack, or at least a theme song. I couldn't find anything. And the music is important because it's how I get into a character's head. It's something they can relate to, and I can understand, so I know how they feel about things. Why don't I just imagine how they feel and cut out the musical middleman? Sorry, I don't work that way.