Thirty-Three Point Three Three Three Three Three

One-third of the way in and I’m a few days ahead of schedule. I plan on being 20k by the end of the night tonight, which will put me at a solid 40% completion. Not too shabby.

The story is starting to change a bit. What started out as a violent tale of supernatural sexuality and horror with one main character, one love interest and one villain has become a mishmash of sex, horror, urban decay, romance, and western and eastern mythos. Oh, with a setting reminiscent of cyberpunk, but with less gadgetry, and the cast has expanded somewhat.

I like it.

I’ll come out and admit it right here months before anyone unfamiliar with my hobbies gets to read even the first chapter of this story. I like Asian movies. I like horror movies. Hell, despite some very jarring differences in culture I like Asia in general. I can overlook at lot of the general “What the FUCK, Japan” weirdness so that I can enjoy the tales of vengeful ghosts and animal trickery and mythical figures that populate Japanese folklore. The food and entertainment are pretty badass as well, as long as it doesn’t involve drawings of underage girls getting violated by comic book characters or foreign objects.

It seems there’s a lot of the latter kind of stuff floating around the Internet, and I just want to get something out of the way ahead of time to clear up any confusion. I put a couple Japanese characters in the novel, based off old folklore monsters, because they truly scare the shit out of me. It has little to do with them being Japanese, and nothing to do with putting Japanese characters in solely for their nationality or for some sort of anime reference.

All right, moving on. I’m trying to keep this update short as I have about 2500 word words to go today to meet my personal goal. I still haven’t bought those Forbidden Game books because I keep falling short. I’m planning on getting some writing done this afternoon as well and then setting up camp downstairs like I did the night of the NaNo kickoff. An iPod, my laptop, a bowl of stale movie popcorn and a dog by my side seems to do a world of good for my word count.

Speaking of the dog, I should probably take a moment to thank all the individuals who are making this way less of a labor of love and more of a seat-of-the-pants speed run of epic proportions.

First of all, Ranger is the coolest dog I think I could ever have. I’m going to miss him when I move in a few months. He’s been really great, sharing his couch with me, snacking with me and playing ball in the driveway with me when I need to divert my attention elsewhere for a while. He could come back when I tell him to get in the house instead of ignoring me and wandering around but other than that I just love him to death.

Eric I’ve already mentioned before, but there’s never a shortage of reasons to thank him, NaNo project or not. He’s way more patient than I think I could ever be. Case in point, tonight I was a massive asshole driving around Pittsburgh trying to find the restaurant we were meeting our friend Brian at. We got there late, ate, went shopping for a while and came home. While he and Brian played 360 I laid down for a nap. That was around 10 or so. I woke up at 4. Unless he tried to wake me up and I cussed him out he’s more than likely going to be completely cool with it, even though I’m not. I really don’t like my topsy-turvy sleep schedule, but he tolerates it. This is just one of the hundreds of small but very significant reasons I love him as much as I do. He’s a great help with story ideas and editing, as well. He helps with my fiction, I help with his papers. We make a pretty badass team.

I also need to thank my writing partner, or writing rival, Huitz. He goes by TristanPEJ on the NaNo boards and he’s been comparing word counts with me pretty much daily. Because we write at opposite times of the day it’s been neck and neck within a thousand words or so the whole time, with the one in second place catching up while the other sleeps. I’m about to blow past him, actually. I wonder which one of us will meet 20k first.

I just wrote seven hundred and forty-five words I could have applied to Chapter Five. This post is done.

Let's Pretend They're Not Really Killing Themselves

I find myself becoming more and more attracted to the idea of suicide as a plot device. Two weeks ago I turned a writing exercise into a short piece on suicide jumpers, and today I’m outlining a longer story based off the Japanese phenomenon of suicide websites.

There’s something inherently creepy the taking of one’s own life, and it’s perfect to throw a bunch of “what if” questions at. What if these people weren’t actually doing it to themselves? What if it was something on the website? What if it was a ghost? Is it possible to influence people to commit suicide by manipulating their emotions? Actually, now that I think about it, both the short story/audio book and the film 1408 did it rather well. So yes, if a room can force people to terminate themselves with no lengthy back-story, so can a website. Now, to keep it from being hokey, that’s going to be the hard part.

Suspicions Confirmed on Suicide Site's Involvement in Group Deaths

I found this story while perusing the Mainichi Shimbun’s new website. It’s a dual-language Japanese newspaper that tends to translate more sensationalist news items. It’s stuffed to the gills with potential story ideas, and I often print small stacks of articles to take home and browse. They’ve recently split from MSN, so their archives from previous years aren’t available at the moment. I’ve been reading the site off and on for several years, and between the news and Japanese novels and film I’ve noticed a trend going on. People in Japan kill themselves openly a lot more often than we do here, and it’s being done more and more in groups. With a large portion of them, even if the final act is done in private, a lot of the planning stage is done online with a group of like-minded people. I’ve read a number of articles where people who don’t even know each other meet in person and then go off to die together. It’s quite an unnerving idea for me.

So here’s the big “Let’s Pretend” for today. Let’s pretend this isn’t suicide. Let’s pretend something is making this happen. What is it? A monster, a ghost, a psychic? Do we even need to know, specifically, what it is? For now, at least as I outline this story, I’m content with a rather ambiguous antagonist. I want this to have a very personal, frightening feel. I want to have convincing, three-dimensional people falling into this bizarre online “trap.”

I’m finding it hard to be content with myself anymore unless I’m busy. If I’m not writing, I’m reading fiction manuals. If I’m not reading fiction manuals, I’m out walking, and if I’m not out walking I’m doing laundry or cleaning the fish tanks or trying to read fiction for pleasure. This busy feeling is an odd thing, considering how long I spent wasting time indiscriminately. Being busy feels kind of nice. It makes me appreciate the time I do get to spend doing the little things that make me happy.

Apparently writing about suicides makes me happy. I’m not sure what that says about me.