NaNoWriMo 2012: Itches

I’m starting to get itchy.

I’m sure you know the feeling – when you get that spectacular idea and you know exactly where it’s going to go in the story, but you aren’t there yet, so you feel bad writing it. Specifically with NaNoWriMo, it happens a lot right around now, in the week leading up to NaNo.

So, I’m on the bus this morning. Listening to my iPod and congratulating myself for actually getting a seat on a bus at quarter after eight. This is rare, on the route I come from, so it’s a special treat. It takes a few minutes to find the right song – most of what is on my iPod’s shuffle is alternative rock and other genres that don’t lend themselves especially well to the story that I’m planning on writing.

Ashley Simpson, skip. Rise Against, skip. Taylor Swift, skip. God, who organized this iPod? A schizophrenic? Soundtrack from Bastion (great video game – look it up!). Fits, but I’m not feeling it. Skip.

The Catalyst – Linkin Park.

Now, I’ll wholeheartedly agree that I generally find Linkin Park’s older stuff much more conductive to writing than their newer stuff, but I actually like this song a lot. I leave it on, close my eyes and think for a minute.

It didn’t take half that long.

Yesterday, I made the reluctant decision to include some of the other ancients in my story this month. I’m not sold on the idea at all, but it was worth exploring, and I felt like the story that I was telling wouldn’t be able to go the distance to full-length novel. It needed a little more beef. Luthene’s plot was shaping up nicely, but it could have used a little more heft to it. Sadrach’s backstory could have been a novel, but his present was surprisingly lackluster. Hell, I didn’t even know how he felt about being the direct cause of the end-of-the-world-as-he-knew-it. He needed work, and so characters he could relate to were added into the story.

Today, I figured out the first scene with another ancient, and man, I can’t wait to write it. I’m writing furiously – not the scene itself, but notes for the scene. It’s not going to happen for at least two or three weeks yet. It might not even fit into the first 50k words for this one, so I need to make an outline so that I don’t forget it.

I’m starting to get a better feel for this world, and how everything fits together in it. What I originally gathered as independent concepts – geists, demons, ancients – it’s seeming more and more that they’re central to the story in a very VERY connected way. It’s a hint of mystery in a story that I didn’t expect, and that makes me feel like the genre that I’m writing is a real thing. Last week at this point, I wasn’t sure which story I was going to be telling this month. Now, I can’t wait for it to be November already so that I can just WRITE already!