NaNo Day One

I’m off at a rapid pace, around 5000 or so words so far, and more to come tonight after I blog this. It’s always like that, though, since the start of a novel is something that has been kicking around in my head for a while (this one had a scene that I literally dreamed about 2 years ago involving zombies and a tornado…creepy), and I want to just blast it out of my brain as fast as possible.

The novel is so far focusing on the new “main character”, a mentally ill woman who has been “broken” by what has happened to her over the last few years. I started my writing thinking that she had a form of Borderline Personality, but as I write it, it a deeper form of trauma that (like most mental illness) doesn’t fit cleanly into a single term. Looking through her eyes is an amazing experience, and I hope other people get a strong reaction about her. I can’t say she’s going to be LIKEABLE, but she’s interesting and a great whole person. Helen is a character who means the world to me, and I have no idea where she will end up at the end of the book.

I have three other new characters who will be showing up in this sequel, and a lot of the characters from the first two novels will be falling away as the book (s?) and main characters begin a trek across the country to see what’s left. It’s a journey novel, but like all journeys, the destination isn’t what is important. That’s the theme I had in the last two novels, but this one will allow that to fade into the background.

Two of the new characters are set in my head. Will and Hope are a couple, and if the symbolism isn’t ham-fisted enough, Hope + Will = Love. They are in this novel for background, to react to the main characters and to give the reader the feeling that anyone can die at any time. I have their fears, their hopes, their backgrounds, their foibles and their failures, and if they don’t make it into this book…there’s always next time, right?

Nikki is still an enigma to me. She’s the last of the new characters, and all I know about her is that her husband was killed in the last book, so she is traveling with the rest to get away from where it happened. I’ll learn about her as I write.

This weekend will be harder writing, as I have to give all of the background from the first two novels, introduce all of the returning characters and make the reader care about them even if they haven’t read anything about them before. But, if I fail at that, I can fix it in January. November is all about the word count.

And one day in, I’m ahead.