500 Words a Day

10 December, 2007; 579 Words

The beginning of any project requires a setting and characters.  The setting I will deal with later; the characters, the most important part of any story, will begin to take form today. 

For anyone interested in replacing their bloated and painful word processors I humbly suggest an alternative I use extensively: Vim.  It doesn't look very good and right off the bat it rubs most people the very wrong way.  This isn't your normal 'Notepad', though.  For those interested in a real text editor there is nothing better than Vim, in my opinion.  I am pretty sure it can work in windows but I've never tried.  I am a Mac user.  Now back to where I left off.

Today I've decided that the main character of the story I have not written will be Sarah.  Yes, I know, it's the most common name in the United States.  I don't care.  I once loved a woman--and I still do, though it's pointless to dwell because I will more than likely never see her again--named Sarah.  I don't know what the copyright related problems associated with using the likeness of a real person are.  When I open a book and see that blurb about how none of the characters in the book are related to real people, I'm left wondering what would happen if they were.  Do they get royalties?  Regardless, I will probably incorporate some bits of her likeness, and the likenesses of others, in this steaming pile.

None of the events that take place will be related to anything that actually happened, though.  I'm fond of works that have a political undercurrent.  Hell, who am I kidding, I've read and enjoyed Ayn Rand.  Expect, if you follow what I write, a lot of political ranting, and in the event that there is not any ranting, expect many allusions to the current political climate.  I also enjoy books that are profound situationally, like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina or Bulgakov's Master and Margarita.  This leads me to the next conclusion that should be drawn regarding my writing from this point further: I love classic Russian Literature.  Expect dark subjects, ill-conceived street names, and oppressive governments.

On the uptake, I've also enjoyed Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams.  If I can, I'll use plenty of nonsense and dry humor.  And then there is my secret obsession with Clive Cussler.  Dirk Pitt is the only hero I can respectably count on to stay heterosexual.  I have read all of his books.  I realize that every plot is the same, but I can't tear myself from the James Bond-ish plot bad-ass-ness-ti-tude. Before you send me a comment telling me that Clive Cussler is queer, realize that the last person who told me that Roger Moore was gay received a very painful barrage of rocks.  Nowadays, I just don't want to know.

And what's left is distilled into one of the greatest original storywriters of the modern century, Stephen King.  I've also read just about everything he has written.  The Dark Tower series is bar-none badass deserving of the highest accolades, never to be turned into a movie or made for TV series.  I hope one day to be ten percent the storywriter he is.

Whatever I write will be influenced by the aforementioned and many others I've read and forgotten over the years.  Whoops, there's my limit...

I welcome you on my journey into madness, only to be doubled by NaNoWriMo in eleven very short months.