Countdown to NaNoWriMo

Currently I live in the United States in Colorado which means US Mountain Time. It is almost 8 pm, which means that in four hours it is NaNoWriMo time!

Friends in Australia, Germany, and South Africa have already begun. In two more hours friends in Michigan will start their quest to write a novel.

Because of another friend and his brilliant suggestions I have a better sense of a plot and I get to write sex scenes! And duels! And ship voyages! And card games!

inkling of a plot

I have been researching Regency and Victorian Era courting etiquette and marriage. I have this idea for a plot that involves a society teetering between magic and technology and the balance of power is slipping away from the magic users because guns are being developed that are quicker to load, more accurate, and more reliable. Think of the brown bess that was the standard musket during the expansion of the British Empire. The wikipedia article for the brown bess is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Bess

I need to do some more brainstorming on all of this but I am thinking of a plot along the lines of a young woman with aristocratic blood and the ability to do magic is introduced into society at what is a dangerous point in time. Her father is of the merchant class and wealthy and his marriage to her mother elevated him socially to some degree and saved the mother's aristocratic family from the poor house. The merchant, his wife, and the daughter who is of age to be introduced into society return to the capital city of the mother's origin. But things are stirring in the city and unpredictable even for one blessed with the ability to see the future.

I need to brainstorm more, but this is kind of where I am heading.

No Idea of a Plot

Next Sunday is the start of NaNoWriMo and I have no idea of a plot for the 50,000 word endeavor that I will be beginning in less than a week. I have been reading and researching things about the Regency Era because I decided that this is a time in history that I find interesting and I would like to know more about the Regency Era. Also, I have been playing around with ideas in a larger fantasy world that is set somewhere between the Hanoverian and Regency Eras. I am a little fascinated by the rise of technology, the widespread proliferation of written information, and the invention of credit. There was a shift of mind set that these innovations are just a cross sample of. I have written a couple stories within the setting of this fantasy world that were just to get a feel for the world, but I want to delve into it further.

However, I don't think NaNoWriMo is the time. The ideas around the fantasy novel that I have are a wee bit too precious and I think that the fantasy novel that I have in mind would actually get in the way of completing the 50,000 words.

So I am in search of a plot. I have a file with about sixty various plot starts in it that I have written. I think I will probably begin reading through them and see what ideas I can generate.

"Under A Closed Sky" Hub Fiction's Hub Fiction Contest Winner

A friend of mine, Colum Paget, who has a great deal of talent has a story entitled "Under A Closed Sky" that won Hub Fiction's Hub Fiction contest. It is published in the 100th issue of Hub Fiction which can be found at www.hubfiction.com.

Congratulations to Colum on being the contest winner! Congratulations to Hub Fiction on the publication of its 100th issue!

Check it out!

Olympia by Manet

In 1865 at the Paris Salon a painting was first exhibited. Some such as Emil Zola declared it a masterpiece. Others thought it a vulgar, immoral abomination and there were repeated attempts to destroy the painting as it hung on display.

It was not such a remarkable painting. Certainly there is a long tradition of artists painting naked Venus lounging supine, eyes drooping with satiation.

But Olympia was different. Manet chose not to create a representation that idealized feminine sexuality. Rather he painted a woman revealed. The painting proclaims both the power and the brutality of her nakedness. It greatly offended many people in the time period, but moved art in a different direction. Manet has been quoted as saying that rather than correcting nature and idealizing women and the female form, why not paint the truth?

So, he took the symbols of the day and changed them. Rather than including the black dog that symbolizes fidelity in paintings, he included a black cat to symbolize prostitution. Olympia lies on an oriental shawl, she wears pearl earrings and an orchid in her hair, and a black maid brings in flowers from a man--flowers that Olympia does not bother to acknowledge. The image is of a woman who stares out from the canvass and she has power within her circumstance. She has wealth and sensuality and is not beholden unto a man. The style of the painting is such that Olympia is not bathed in the golden tones of lowlight but rather a harsher, more illuminating and direct light is inferred. This reinforces the message of the painting.

The painting echoes and reverberates with ambiguous meaning. Olympia is powerful. Powerful because of her naked sensuality. Powerful as a woman. But there is a brutality to her situation that is as mean as the direct gaze that emanates from her eyes. She stares potentially across the room at the face of a lover who has entered her chambers. She stares at her present but where is her future? The flowers that the maid holds will wither and die. Is Olympia's power only because of those who gaze upon her? Or settled behind her eyes that gaze out onto the world?

November is NaNoWriMo!

A friend of mine in Michigan has been a local coordinator for NanoWriMo in the Pontiac area in the past. I spoke with her last night over googletalk and she convinced me to sign up for NaNoWriMo this year.

I think more people should do this.

Here's the deal. You go to the NanoWriMo website found at: http://www.nanowrimo.org and sign up. And then on November 1, 2009 you begin writing a novel. You have "won" by completing the challenge and finishing at least a 50,000 word novel by the end of November.

Come on. What are you waiting for? You know you have a novel in you. Past NaNoWriMo novelists have been published also. People such as Sara Gruen who wrote Water For Elephants. There is a long list on the NaNoWriMo website.

I am going to work on pulling together some ideas and having fun with this. Stay tuned for art, writing, and more on NaNoWriMo throughout the month of November.

Paul Gauguin's The White Horse

I am having a week where I need to find those things that make me happy. The White Horse by Paul Gauguin has been my favorite painting for a very long time. I have done numerous color studies of this painting. The flow of the motion in the painting and the richness of it are expanded by the small dabs of intensely bright complimentary colors. The color palette is not typically Gauguin. I was told in high school that Gauguin was commissioned to paint this painting by an apothecary who then refused to pay for it because the horse is not actually white. The horse is green tones to simulate white within the painting.

Tomorrow I will write about Olympia by Edouard Manet. Another favorite.

New Fantasy Elements Challenge: What is taking over Detroit?

I recently wrote about the movie Wizards which is a movie that I very much like because it broke some of the stereotypes of fantasy and created new combinations. I have decided that I am tired to death of the old fantasy tropes. I am bored with reading about the faeries of European folklore transported into an urban environment virtually unchanged. Tolkienesque fantasy to me feels very outmoded.

Time magazine's latest issue is about the disaster that is Detroit. The unemployment rate as of August 2009 was over 30% and the population is dwindling. Or is it? What could be claiming Detroit? Gremlins were invented in the last century. They were not traditional folklore. What new spirits haunt Motown and shuffle to the old beats? What wheels are turning? Who is drinking the blood of the whitetail deer in the metroparks? How is the foliage overcoming half burnt out and deserted crack houses who creak under the burden of the Virginia Creeper? What hammer taps are heard and who is making them?

We are the dreamers of dream and the voices to bring forth the new from imagination. We can create anything.

What if there is a rust flake who pisses on parked cars and causes the undercarriage to rust?

What if the green goddesses' youngest children have been listening to the anger of the streets and are rising up with thorned arms and tendrilled fingers? Dancing to a more raucous beat than the quiet hush of meadow grasses.

What if every time you hear the sound of breaking glass another dozen shrieks are born that run off to incite violence to quench their blood lust?

What if the will-o-wisp has evolved into a screaming blue and red flashing symbiote that assists a nightcrawler who dons the uniform of a policeman and together they ride the night looking for isolated couples who they can prey upon?

Just some ideas. Up to the challenge to create more? Mine are just off the top of my head.