Peter Wooley’s Blog

Earlier this evening, I tweeted:

“At intermission of Oliver [the Play]! It kind of makes me want to try some acting again, or at least working in fiction.”

Following this, @kmcdade suggested I join NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month.  Considering it sounded like something I’d want to be a part of and it had a sign-up form, I went ahead and dove in. Little did I know, this is the real deal.  The idea is that you write a novel—a whole—novel in the month of November. It’s a brilliant idea. It’s a terrifying idea. As I dove deeper into the site, finding the Vancouver, WA region forums and reading all about it, I realized just how inadequate I would feel trying to do this. People have done this many years in a row, they already have their plots decided on and are attempting to figure out how to add more drama. Here I am, pushed to do a little writing because of an Oliver Twist performance and an itch I’ve never scratched.

I backed away from the forums, decided against joining the region group (then they’d know I was there, right?), and ran to the seclusion of my blog. If I did do it, without joining a group or comparing myself to other people, I wonder what I would write about? I use to have this recurring dream about the death of a man’s fiance and his dealing with her death. It ended with a rather epic scene on a hotel rooftop, in the rain, where the man discovers the guy that killed her. I used to think about a story that took place in near isolation. The protaganist walked around and dealt with keeping his surroundings healthy, while he thought back on how things were. I had fun trying to craft ways that for him to be isolated, the space station was the most fun. An abandoned town was terrifyingly nice, as well. I had a romance or two, this before I found romance myself. I tried fan fiction for Starcaft, Diablo, and Warcraft, but those never worked out.Oh yeah, I had written down the opening for a story several times! It starts with the narrator recalling. The scene opens up on a happy little suburb, with the yonger-self narrator watering the flowers outside of his house. Out of nowhere, he’s abducted by three men. I can still remember how it played out in my mind. The problem with that story is that it never had a plot, only an introduction. I do wonder what happened to that guy, though. Obviously, he’s alive. Maybe I will try this writing thing out.