Where the Darkness Ends

I hate when I wake up in the middle of the night with something bothering me.

Allow me to explain:

Last night my two thousand words and change I wrote for my NaNo Novel involved an attack by a supernatural creature.  The scene is still on-going, and I may, or may not, finish it today.  But I had a great set up:  a street section going dark, something that looks like a big cloud of badness, and one of my main characters getting knocked about.

Yep.  Just another exciting night in the city of Makassar.

The computer was acting up bad last night, and I finally shut down once I hit my goal of hitting thirty-five thousand words.  I was tired, so I figured I’d fall right asleep–which I did–and . . .

I can’t tell you what was really happening throughout most of the dream, but I know at the end, I was driving a van, someone else was with me.  We parked, and they got out.  And then . . .

The darkness closed in on me.

That’s just how it felt.  I was sitting there, I looked back, and everything turned black.  Not only that, but I felt something touch me, and remain in the room as I woke up.  With a huge pain in my left leg.

This isn’t the first time something like that has happened, but it freaked me out plenty.  Plus, the pain I had in my leg wasn’t doing a lot to help me get back to sleep right away.  I couldn’t find a position that was comfortable.  I tossed around for maybe thirty minutes before I dozed off again.

Only to wake up with this song going through my head.  Which was going through my head when I went to sleep.  Damn it all, why does this have to happen to me?  I just want a good night’s sleep, and pleasant dreams.  I don’t want demons of the darkness coming after me when I’m really hoping for is to have Christina Hendricks to show up and model lingerie.

It’s a tough world out there; show the creative types a little mercy.

That’s it, though:  creative types have this shit going through their heads all the time.  We go to sleep, and our dreams are usually full of insane things.  It has to do with how we keep ourselves occupied.  As Stephen King pointed out in his book, Danse Macabre, the kids that read books and comics grew up to be bright, intelligent, imaginative people, and the kids who didn’t grew up to be soulless, no talent hacks.

I saw a lot of this during the Go Go Reagan 80′s, where everyone who was hellbent on cashing out as a millionaire by thirty-five didn’t read anything as kids, much less science fiction and comics.  One guy I worked with in 1985 would have licked the ground upon which Donald Trump was going to walk, and actually refused to speak with me after I pointed out that Trump inherited a ton of money, which was one of the reasons he was able to succeed in business without really trying.  I wish I knew where he was today, because just imagine the fun I could have pointing out the insanity of his hero today . . .

You lay down with ghosts, you’re going to dream about them.  Can’t be helped.  It’s the way our minds work.  Even when we don’t want them to bring the horror, they’re going do it anyway.

I’m going to start writing about Christina.  I deserve a break tonight.

Hangin’ Out the Van at High Speed

Yesterday . . . what can I say?  Well, I could say it sucked, but that would be unfair.  The day didn’t suck, but I sure felt like I sucked.

It was a day of big-time headaches, and there were a few times when I was almost yelling due to the pain.  I mean, remember Tony Dogs gettin’ his head put in a vice in the movie Casino?  I felt a little like that, only my eye didn’t pop out of my head.

Brutal, I’ll tell you.

But, just like the time I was turned into a newt, I got better.  By night time I didn’t feel that bad.  If anything, by the time I went to bed, I felt like I was doing pretty well.  But during the day–no.  Not feeling good.

However . . . I kept writing.

I wasn’t blazing through the story as I have been.  In fact, it was a real struggle.  I think some of the headaches are coming from having to copy street names found in Makassar.  Here is my document notes for the chapter I finished last night:

From the square at Jalan Pasar Cidu and Jalan Tinumbu, down Jalan Lamuru to Jalan Mesjid Raya, to Jalan Jenderal Urip Sumoharjo, on to Jalan Perintis Kemerdekaan, to a road past Rumah Sakit Bersalin Daya Grasia Hospital.

Ya got that?  You spend part of the day typing “Sumoharjo”, and your head is gonna hurt, too.

It was an interesting chapter, though.  I had my main character chasing another van that was being driven by . . . no one.  Ooooooh, spooky.  Really, they not only chased it, but they managed to get next to it, and one of the characters decided she needed really good video of no one driving a van, so I had her hanging out of her window for about a half a kilometer.

I liked the scene.  I could see everything in my head, and the flowed nicely.  The chapter ended up running four thousand, three hundred fifty words, which was a good run, and my biggest chapter yet.  I know I’ll have a few more that will be this big, and a couple will even be larger.  When I run the numbers, Nate Silver Style, I find that the story is inching toward fifty-nine thousand words, which is the goal I’m aiming towards.

Thing are going according to plan–yessssss.

I’m actually a bit surprised that the story is going well.  There was some concern before NaNo that I wasn’t going to have enough of a story to fill out sixty thousand words.  But that doesn’t seem to be the case now.  I know where I have ahead of me, and when I look at the places where the novel is going to stretch out a bit, I see that sixty thousand isn’t going to be a problem.  I’m actually thinking that sixty-five thousand isn’t out of the possibility of reality, either.  But I’m not going to count my words before they are written.

Just let them come, one at a time, and the story will end when it’s time.

Ghost Whipping the Ride

Since this is the 5^th of November, there is only one thing to say:  ”The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.”  Or something like that.  Get the bonfires ready:  it’s time to celebrate those Catholic terrorists.

Speaking of ghosts . . .

Really, I said I was going to set a goal of two thousand words a day for NaNoWriMo.  I said, yeah, that’s all I gotta do, just two thousand a day, and I’ll have my goal by the end of the month.  Sure, no problem.  And I’ve been hitting that sucker.

And more.

Four days in, and I’m already close to fifteen thousand words.  I probably could have hit it last night, but that would have meant writing about five thousand words in a day, and who wants to be a show off?  Not this girl.  So I held up just short of that total, mostly because my mind was running out of steam, and I knew if I started writing the following scene in the chapter, I’d have cranked off another thousand words before bumping my head against the desk.

After putting my characters through a little mental hardship, I put them in a van so they could chase a ghost ride.  I mean that last:  at the moment, they’re zipping along the streets of Makassar following another van that is being driven by . . . no one.  Oooooh, spooky.  Then again, maybe Jamie and Adam are in Asia, and they’re trying out a new radio control unit on suckers.

I did have one of those moments when I realized I screwed up.  Yep, even with research, I find that I can, and do, make mistakes.  Anyway, I finished Chapter Six–which is also the end of Part One–with a taxi van coming at the main character, and doing a bootlegger turn in the middle of the road.  ’Cause, hey:  ghosts gotta get your attention, you know?

Problem was, in the next chapter I was writing about the main characters chasing said ghost van, and I noticed something:  the road they were on was a one-way street.  Which means, if my ghost van was coming at the character so it could pull a cool bootlegger, that means it was driving against traffic.  If you’re ever been on any main highway in a city in Asia, you’d know driving against traffic is pretty much an accident magnet–but then, what isn’t there?

Then again, I could always use the old fallback:  ”Sure, it’s a one-way street, but the van was only going one way!”  *chirp, chirp, chirp*  Damn, tough crowd.

So I need to fix this before I forget all about the goof.  Then, I’ll finish off Chapter Seven, and then . . . I should rest.  I should do something else.  Actually, I do have other things to do, but this writing thing has my attention.  Because, you know, this is what writers do, remember?  We write.

I had someone ask me the following yesterday:  ”What do you plan on getting out of this?”  This being NaNo.  I told them I’ll have a first draft that won’t be perfect, but it’ll be good, and then I edit it, and edit it, and edit it, so that a few months down the time line I’ll have a novel I can either submit or self-publish.  They were impressed, because I’ve known this person for about six years, and for about four of those years they saw how I tended to fall apart whenever anything bad happened, with “bad” being very much like the lyrics from Temporary Beauty:

The world is full of little people like you
They have to read a book to learn what to do
They hang around in second hand stores for clothes
And every kind of pressure steps on their toes

Now they’re happy that I’m doing something I love.  I’ve got my issues, and pressure still steps on my toes, but I deal with it better.  Much better.

At least I’m writing during NaNo.  Not to point fingers–because moi would never do that–but it seems like there’s more than a few people in the NaNo threads who are using November as an excuse to hang with people and call themselves “writers”, and this thing called “writing” is to be done in little chunks where you can shout “Go!”, then hang with your peeps twenty minutes later, talking about the four hundred words you just scribbled down, and hey!  We should do this again in four hours!  Yay!

Or they might do this:

Me?  I’m writing.

Though I might let you know when I’m going to take a nap . . .

Ghost of the Writing Past

Today has been one of those that work well with my adage that writing is work, and if you want to get things right, you gotta do your leg work.  Or, as Chuck Wendig says in his piece on NaNoWriMo, October should be named “National Story Planning Month.”  Sit down and begin getting your shit together about what you’re going to dump upon the page for all of November.

Assuming you want to do it right, that is.

My NaNo 2012 novel is a follow up to my story Kuntilanak.  As that was a horror story that took place in Indonesia–specifically, the island of Bali–my new novel is a horror story that also takes place in Indonesia, this time in the city of Makassar, on the island of Sulawesi.  I’m moving around the archipelago a bit, sampling the local flavor, and I’d decided a while back that if I was going to do another story with my Fearless Indonesian Ghost Hunters, I would stage it in an urban setting.

Fortunately for me, I have a few connections with people from Indonesia.  Which means, for about three hours today, I sat in a Panera’s and talked about the city of Makassar with someone from there.  Picked up some information on conditions, locals, greetings, names . . . and learn a few about ghosts and weapons.  Yeah, weapons: because sometimes you just gotta rip up something magical with something sharp.

The last couple of days have seen a lot of work on the next novel.  While thinking about ghosts, I’m feeling the ghost of something I had a year ago . . . something that feels like what I had going a year ago.  I’m excited; I’m pumped.  I’m ready to jump into this work, and maybe I’ll make Indonesian ghosts famous at last.

I finished the time line yesterday about 6 PM.  I looked at it for a while, and in looking at it, I came up with ideas about the story, and even managed to dream up a detail that comes up as a major point.  At the same time, I figured out the motivation behind what’s happening . . . yeah, I’m like that.  Get the basic idea, beat it for hours on end, and eventually, you work it out.  One way or another.

So, what has come along?  Well, for one, the timeline has turned into this:

Yes, that’s twenty-four chapters and a Coda.  When you add the prologue into the mix, I’m looking at a total of twenty-six chapters.  If I do two thousand words a chapter, that’s fifty-two thousand words.  I expect I’ll write more than two thousand a chapter:  in fact, I’ve already set the Project Total in Scrivener to sixty thousand words.

And since I’m starting to move everything on the above timeline to Scrivener, here’s what that looks like:

That’s Part One of my timeline set up on Scrivener chapter cards.  This is how I work; this is how I write.  It might seem like a lot of work, but for me, it makes me comfortable.  It gives me the direction I need so I can perform “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!”  Because with where I’m going with this story, if I simply jumped in and started slinging crap about the word processor, I’d end up with a manuscript that looks like hammered shit.

Not for this writer.

Anyway, that’s what I’m doing, and where I’m headed.  It feels like old times again.

It feels like writing.