NaNoWriMo: Day 01

So...it's National Novel Writing Month, and I decided to join in on the fun. In addition to my love for movies, I also write on the side. Mostly science fiction, sometimes a dabble into fantasy. Thing is, I can write short stories with relative ease, but similar to most human beings on the planet, when it comes to writing a full-fledged novel, I just procrastination like hell and never get to it. "I'll write it one day," is the common phrase in my mind. Well, NaNoWriMo is just the kick in the arse to get myself in gear.

Now, the goal is for writers to meet a 50,000 word minimum by 30 November. The word count is there to give writers something to aspire to, something to 'achieve', and gives us a push of enthusiasm and energy and the right drive to finish it. As for me, I just wanna get one of my many stories out of my head and on a damn piece of paper. It's not the story I'm most enthused about right now, but I am writing the one that's the easiest dialogue-wise but yet giving me the most difficulty insofar as to the narrative structure.

My story is about three teenagers who come across a time machine, and to have some escape from their insignificant lives, they travel through time and space and have some fun. Yes, there's a bit of a DOCTOR WHO influence, especially in the mechanics of time traveling 'rules', but overall, I just want to have some fun with it. The problem is I don't seem to have a point. As in, I don't have something that drives the story from beginning to end; it's literally just these three teens having a blast, and by the ending, something happens to propel their maturity, and by extension, and the story forward. I've been asking for some advice from my peers with not much success, so I'm thinking about consulting the forums.

Speaking of which, when I was surfing through the forums, I found some information that was highly interesting to me. I've always been fascinated with Lucifer as a character, never mind the debate of whether it is real or not, and there were multiple threads started by folks who were going to use this entity as a major character in their story. Thus, they asked about reasons why Lucifer 'fell from grace'. Most of the answers I was familiar with, but there was one that left me absolutely floored, and it is as follows:

"In the Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice paints a more sympathetic picture of Lucifer. In her story, God did not distinguish primative humans from animals. When little proto-souls began to appear in them, Lucifer saw the good in them and believed they should be admitted into heaven. But God still saw them as animals and would not allow them into heaven. This difference of opinion eventually erupted into an open arguement between Lucifer and God. God threw Lucifer out of heaven and down to Earth in human form. Lucifer lived among humans, getting to know them and feeling a kinship with them because, like them, he didn't know if he would ever enter heaven. After a while, God regretted his fight with Lucifer and decided to come see the humans from his point of view. So God came down to Earth in human form, calling himself Jesus. He saw both the good and the bad in humans and at the end of it, he still believed that humans didn't deserve heaven. But Lucifer invalidated the whole excercize, saying that God had been cheating because he knew the whole time that he'd be returning to heaven. So he hadn't bothered to connect properly with the humans. God became a little miffed at this and finally made a deal with Lucifer. If Lucifer could teach 1000 human souls to be pure and worthy of heaven, God would open the gates for them all. God gave Lucifer hell as a kind of school where he could work to purify the human souls. Ever since then, Lucifer has been working dilligently to purify human souls so they can earn entrance into heaven."

Now, it may just be me, but is that not one of the most original, most fascinating interpretations of Lucifer you have ever read? I was absolutely riveted reading that, and I am absolutely jealous I didn't think of that first. It's brilliant! Even with my overdose on vampires right now, I feel mighty inclined to breeze through the VAMPIRE CHRONICLES to see how Lucifer fits into the overall mythology. Fascinating, utterly fascinating.

Anyway, to circle back to the topic, NaNoWriMo starts today, and anyone who has ever fantasized about writing a novel, or at least are curious about stretching their writing abilities, I implore you to at least give this a shot. Forget about the 50,000 word count thing - unless you need some sort of destination to strive to - and just write a story from start to finish. I'm excited and a little freaked out: will I finish it? will it be any good? how do I fix this, this, and this? etc. But I am determined to write this baby and have it done by 30 November, print it off on the school computers, look at the finished [well, very, very, very, very rough draft finished] product, and have a wide smile on my face.

I'll keep you folks appraised on my NaNo developments. As of right now, I'm sitting at 4,200 words, which isn't bad, but also isn't great. But I gots me a feelin I can chum out a good portion by the end of tonight after a school screening of INCEPTION. Wish me luck, folks!