NaNoWriMo: Day 1

Today has been slow on the writing front. Namely, we're about 1,700 words after the first spurt of writing. There's still some more to get done today (namely, my goal is to get to the point where our hero and his trusty companion make it to the giants' lair, so probably another thousand words or so.) One thing I've found is that I actually like this story. I've decided that instead of giants and regular sized people, the story is going to be about mice and human scientists. I'm going to avoid spoilers, but I also like the ending. The mystical artifacts are actually things that have gone missing from the laboratory that the scientist wants back, which he enters into a pact with the mouse: If the mouse finds his missing items and returns them, the scientist will agree to stop his testing on animals and free the ones he has in captivity.

Now, since simply writing such a cheesy story (see what I did there?) was going to be too easy, I've added a layer of challenge. That is this: Since the main of the story is told from the point of view of the mice, who live in a small community in the sewers of any city, U.S.A., with everything above ground simply being The Sky (sort of like Fraggles and Outer Space, I realized after writing these first few pages), they should never call themselves mice. They also really shouldn't take much special notice of their mousey features. Having a tail or whiskers is normal to them. Like I explained to someone, we wouldn't have people say: "My brother, the human, said," so the mice are just mice. They'll not refer to rats as rats; their rather large, wild predators that hunt in packs through the sewers. Birds and stray cats on the surface are sky creatures; people are giants.

I don't know why the mice all have Biblical names (including minor ones), but I do like it. I also like that I've decided our hero mouse is not the most competent of the scouts; the story begins with him being caught trying to sneak out after curfew and being chewed out for his incompetent nightly excursions that have cost the community two of their other scouts. There are some obvious influences that you can see right away on the story (see the reference to Fraggle Rock above), but I also see obvious Red Wall type allusions. Probably Mouse Guard too, if I had read more than the Free Comic Book Day Mouse Guard story. Even though I haven't received my copy of Mice and Mystics, that's probably nestled somewhere in my subconscious and driving the plot and characterization. So, despite initially not being too in love with this topic, I am actually falling in love with the story potential and the characters.

National Novel Writing Month Tip 01: Write. No matter how bad or clunky the words feel: Write. You cannot edit an empty page. I think I should make that a quote for the blog and on my Facebook page, since it is probably the cornerstone of my developing writing philosophy.

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P.S.,

Do you want updates of the Mouse Story as I write it? Contact me, and if there's enough interest, I'll transfer the file to Google docs and post updates with my NaNoWriMo blog updates.