NaNoWriMo

I'm writing this on my Droid since I already shut my computer down for the night and this is something I need to say.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. I've never done it before, but I've wanted to do it for years. I figure that, now that I'm done with school, I have enough time to really have a chance.

I've given much thought to what I wanted to write. It would need to be something that I can write a novella about, not just some random one-sentence idea. It would need to be something I could really care about, so I wouldn't get bored and drop it halfway through. It needed to be something good.

I'm going to rewrite Star's Light, a story I've been trying to write for about four and a half years, now. This is the story I, for lack of a better word, need to write. This is the Dark Tower to my Stephen King. If there's one thing I need to accomplish creatively in my life, it's to write this story. NaNoWriMo might give me the chance to finally finish it, at least the first story.

Star's Light began in freshman year of college. I was sitting on the Astro Lounge couch, surfing the internet, when I had one of those sought-after moments of epiphany. I imagined a man, some kind of space pilot, relaxing in the flight chair of his empty starship. And I felt consumed by a need to know this man: to know why his ship was empty, to know how he got it, to know why he even existed, somewhere out amongst the stars. Why his was a story worth telling. I began the first words of the story of Christopher Hayes and his female companion Anara Seline, almost immediately. That story has grown into a 63-page, single-spaced Word document that I've been writing and editing on-and-off for four and a half years.

Come November, I'm going to scrap that draft and start entirely anew.

There are a few reasons for this. As it is, the story is a bloated mess that combines a number of different writing styles, and would not look too good to the average reader. My writing style has gotten much, MUCH better up to now, and I think I can give the story the justice it deserves. I've also mulled over the setting quite a bit by now, as opposed to when I started writing, so hopefully the universe won't seem so haphazard and slapdash.

It also gives me a hell of a lot of incentive to write for NaNoWriMo, and I have a base to fall back on which should help me a bit in writing the new story. I don't think it's against the rules; I don't intend to follow the old story exactly. It'll be more of a guideline, more like a glorified outline.

The basic plot of Star's Light is that Christopher Hayes, wandering space thief, meets an attractive bartender, Anara Seline, after a successful job. As he heads back to his ship, the Star's Light, she runs into him as she's escaping from some angry, and armed, debt collectors. She's able to convince him to let her stay with him on his ship, and they quickly come to find out that they don't like each other very much. Hilarity and space thievery ensue.

It's basically a love letter to all the space sci-fi media that has captivated my imagination for literally my entire life. All that good shit from the late 80s to the early 00s, from Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop, to Andromeda and Firefly, to Star Wars and Star Trek; that kind of lighthearted, quirky feel, the kind that wasn't so obsessed with deconstruction and realism, before that became the mainstream. It's also my attempt to write an engaging, thoughtful relationship, not to mention a strong, believable female protagonist, things that I feel are handled too poorly on far too widely a scale.

Again, this is the one story I need to write. I won't ever be able to call myself a writer if I leave this unfinished any longer. NaNoWriMo might finally be the thing I need to get this done.

To whoever reads this (and I'll be posting this to Facebook to make sure people do read it), help me actually write this thing. Force me to finish it, in the middle of November when I hate myself and question why I'm even bothering. Remind me why this stupid little tale means so much to me.

I owe it to myself, after all the shit I've been through, to see Chris and Anara finally have a story. Even if it turns out to be shit. But I don't think it'll be too bad.

Not sure about the title, though.