Allow me to introduce you to my guilt complex...

[evilhippo]

So, tonight I found $10 on the sidewalk. I slowed, I stopped, I looked around and there was no one nearby for me to give it back to. I suffered a rather long moment of indecision before picking it up. And then I looked around for the mailbox in front of the building I found it by, so I could leave it there. There wasn't one. I was very close to sticking it in the fence when my mom called and yelled at/teased me for not just picking it up and leaving with it like someone normal would. But my idea is that, as much as I enjoy believing in fate and karma and the like, someone else lost that $10 and they'd probably like it back. In the end, she convinced me that I'd never be able to find the exact person who'd lost it, and so... now I have $10 I didn't have before. It'll probably go towards food or my credit card payment...

But! In rather excellent news I think I know what I'm doing with my NaNo now. There's a part of me that's so happy it wants to dance. I knew it was in there somewhere. (It turns out the trick wasn't to write until the character I've been pestering for years was entirely mine, but to think about it until he was entirely mine. And now he is, and it makes me happy. I knew he was in there somewhere. A bit more of me is in him than usual, and loathe as I am to admit that, I think it just happens anyway when you write, and I should learn to deal with it. Just like I should learn to stop feeling unoriginal for using settings that I'm familiar with. I can't reinvent the wheel every time I write. Though I'd like to. Also, I'm starting to think that Al Capone was a conspiracy in my universe, and that thought is making my inevitable Steampunk Al Capone a much more tolerable and less cracked-out possibility. Now... I just need to write far enough to get to that point.) Unfortunately, bringing everything into line with these revelations involves trashing probably half of what I've written... Forunately/Unfortunately half of what I've written is only a bit over 1,000 words.

P.S. Is it bad that I want to go picket with the Writer's Guild? Because I kind of do. I think it'd be fun... That's weird, right?

Comments

[lisiche.livejournal.com]

At least yours hasn't morphed into some kind of unholy Beauty and the Beast/Sleeping Beauty thing with a alien goat-lion thing and a comatose skin-and-bones cyborg in his very own glass 'coffin'. Freaking hell, thank god my MC is staying normal. Even if he occasionally acts too much like a woman. (I'm placing the blame for that on his overwhelmingly female environment.) It gives me something to anchor on to.

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

Actually that sounds like fun. I kind of have a feeling, now that my MC has asserted himself as... well, himself, I'm going to quickly end up with him taking over and doing things I hadn't planned for and for all I know I won't even end up with the same universe I set out to write.

[lisiche.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. XD He sounds like he'll be quite the demanding MC.

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

Mostly I think I just have no control over my characters. ^_^

[flutingfrenzy.livejournal.com]

That story about the money is so cute. ♥ (I'd totally feel the same way. I'm all about the golden rule and I know I'd want a lost $10 bill back, but I understand that lost cash is pretty much gone forever. And I'm sure I'd feel much better knowing that the person who ended up with it really wanted to return it.)