October 22, 2009
October Plan Revision
I’ve decided that it’s a bit of a ridiculous idea to write more that 50K for October in preparation for November. I’ve decided to bump back my second, non GothNo, novel to November proper, discounting the ~6.6K words that I had already written for it. It’ll help for when I need to write, but I can’t think of what to write about; it’s already mostly planned out, and even has a title: An Unaccustomed Wine.
Just in case anyone’s interested, here are a couple excerpts from my GothNo, which is called Gothic Trance at the moment (it’s not a very good name, admittedly…):
September 1st.
I wake up on the cold dirty ground, and I am sore everywhere. I have never slept like that before, and I don’t want to sleep like that again. I’m hungry.
The apple is still there. I almost think that it is a better idea to eat pages from this notebook than it is to eat the apple or the remains of the sandwich.
I start walking. I don’t know where. I might even be heading back towards Cale, and the drug, and all those sculptures. I don’t know.
I come out into a backyard. It takes me a moment to recognize it, but it is the backyard of a house. There is a fence outside it, and a dog playing in the back, chasing butterflies. I walk up to the fence and reach my fingers through. He abandons his butterfly chance and licks my fingers. I’m so hungry, I would even eat butterflies, if I could catch them.
September 2nd.
I’ve never cooked anything before. Cale mostly did most of the cooking for me, and he is pretty good at it. I don’t have to worry about whether it is overcooked or undercooked. He puts all the spices on it, and picks out the perfect wine, usually red, and the perfect silverware, and the perfect utensils, and the perfect sides. Cooking is something that he is really good at doing.
I am not good at cooking. I cook it far too done, and it tastes like charcoal.
September 3rd.
I’m hungry again, and I don’t know where to get any food. I’m wondering about the town, and there are people everywhere. Some of them look at me, and I don’t know if I want them to. My dress is torn, and I look homeless, or as if I was a prostitute. There have been several men that have looked at me with an odd expression. I got away from those men as fast as I could. I can guess what they were thinking about.
No one recognizes me. It’s an odd experience, since most of the people that I have met before have known who I am. But, I’ve met those people at my showings, so of course they know who I am, and know what I do. Here, I am anonymous. It’s an odd feeling. I don’t know if I like it or not.
I have stolen several times, for food. There is a store that had fruit near the entrance. I put several apples into my bag and left the store. Later on, when I looked at the apples, they looked too much like the drugged apple that I took from Cale, so I didn’t eat them. I’m still hungry now.
I am still shaking, and I can’t stop it. Everything seems to be getting worse and worse. My vision isn’t as good. There’s nothing to stave off the symptoms. Once I passed out in the forest from lack of food and lack of water. I got up several hours later even more tired than before. I don’t know what I should be doing.
That’s from the first part, in Poppy’s POV (which is in diary format, as well as present tense, which doesn’t make much sense, but hey); the next is from Aster’s:
Cale sometimes eats. I eat when I’m able to, and there is always food. I wonder if it is delivered, because there’s no possible way for these two people to raise crops on their land, especially in the dead of winter. Neither of them ever leaves this building. The food arriving is a miracle, marvelous and delicious, and deadly, all at the same time. I eat as much as I can at once, since I don’t know when I will be stuck in my room, physically incapable of moving.
Cale eats apples and lettuce. That is all I ever see him eat. No condiments, nothing else. He leans over the sink, in the only human action I ever see him do, and slowly peel the apple with a small knife. His elbows and shoulders shake from all the drugs that he has ingested, but his hands are startlingly calm and fluid, his eyes focused as he slowly carves the peel away in one long strip, and cuts slices off the apple. Small circles. Almost all the apples are perfect spheres, another oddity. His slices are almost perfect circles.
He cuts up the heads of lettuce the same way, in circles, eats the disks. Once time I saw him eat an entire plant in one sitting, leaning over the sink, staring out the window, slices of lettuce in his mouth.
And it’s about Cale, the last main character (who might or might not have a POV section; he’s sort of the Mr. Rochester of the story, and it’d be weird to have him have his own POV.
And, now, a little bit from An Unaccustomed Wine:
Max sat down on the couch, after Geoff directed him to shove all the books off of it. “So, why am I in your room?”
“I…” Geoff stumbled off, and flushed.
“What?”
“I’m sorry, I overreacted.” He turned towards his computer and logged on.
“What do you mean?”
When Geoff didn’t answer, Max grabbed a shoe and lobbed it at the back of his chair. Geoff jumped, and glanced over his shoulder.
“Yes, I’m… jealous,” Geoff muttered.
“Really?”
“Yeah, and, well… I’m gay, too, but that has nothing to do with it. It’s just… I hate it when I hear about people getting together, when I’ve never been with anybody.” He started playing with a pen, twirling it around his fingers.
“That’s petty.”
“No, it’s… maybe.” Geoff hugged his knees. “I don’t know if you know what it’s like to not have anyone.”
“Well, I’m not one to be single all the time, if that’s what you mean.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like. It’s like there’s a division between you and the rest of the world. There’s something that everyone else has that you don’t, some… deficiency that you’re only barely aware of.”
“What about your friends? Don’t they count for anything?”
Geoff gave Max a blank look.
“You don’t… Oh, Christ…” Max groaned and covered his face with his hands. “Getting a gi-boyfriend isn’t going to solve that, you know.” He sighed. Geoff looked back at his computer. “For fuck’s sake, are you serious?”
“Fairly.”
“How in the world can you survive without friends?”
“I told you, you wouldn’t understand what it’s like. It’s not something you can understand.”
“So, you’ve never had any friends?”
“No.”
“What… what do you do with yourself?”
Geoff raised a brow.
“I didn’t–” Max groaned.
“Guess how I got so good at drawing. Friends weren’t—and aren’t—important to me. What is important to me is being able to draw all of this, and support myself off of it. That’s all I want to do: draw. Nothing ever comes close.”
I love the dynamic between these two characters. They’re so fun.
