Crossing That Finish Line
Remember that anthology story I said I was starting way back in this post? Yeah. After dealing with school work and a bit of beating my head into the wall, it’s done.
The only problem is I overshot my goal of 12k and ended up with close to 15k. Unless there’s three thousand words I can just dump, which hopefully there is, my chances of making the anthology have become slim to none. On the bright side, the potential for publication as a stand alone novella has increased exponentially.
The lovely little tale I call Pawn Takes Rook and stars a first person POV by a guy that’s had way too much caffeine and too little sleep. The prose kind of bounces all over the place like a kid without his Ritalin….
For fifteen thousand words. Also no chapter or section breaks because it reads like one long, long, long stream of consciousness rant only with an actual plot.
Overall, I’ve created characters I feel proud of. The protagonist and resident spaz-monkey is a young hipster fellow by the name of Hogarth Dawson. I chose the name as a reference to Burne Hogarth, the guy responsible for the Dynamic Figure Drawing books. And honestly, I can’t imagine Hogarth with any other name. It’s one of those things that just fits him. He’s very peppy, a bit nerdy, and for a technopath has no idea what Deloreans are but loves giant robots. He’s definitely more than meets the eye. Oh a pun~
His partner in crime is a near seven-foot tall, blond and brawny Viking by the name of Memphis Rook. When it comes to Rook, let it be known I never throw anything out. His first name was recycled from Memphis Archer, the self-esteem lacking protagonist in my failed culinary-student-in-love story Doughboy. Once again, it was just a name that clicked in and worked. In writing Rook, I realized I had tapped into the very first superhero I had ever created as a small child, D Westbaylen.
Westbaylen to this day is a username I practically use everywhere because the chances of it being used is absolutely zero. I’m even the variation Westiebee on Twitter. I haven’t written the character in nineteen years because I hated what he had become. He went from being a sarcastic and likeable badboy to being a completely deplorable anti-hero bordering on being a villain. Writing him in those days since I had changed him up never put me in a good place in my head and usually left me depressed for days.
Rook I realized is what Westie started out as. Sarcastic, likeable, and with just enough sexy badboy mojo. I was never at a loss for a zinger, or a one liner, or a pun when writing his dialogue. He never felt stiff. Like I was trying to create something that just wasn’t there. He flowed easily, and his motivations were always clear in my mind. His fondness for 80s trends and gadgets was a charming quirk that pretty much materialized out of thin air.
Whether Pawn Takes Rook makes the grade in the submission process or not, I’m going to make the vow not to beat myself up over it if it doesn’t. While the usual Five Guys Burger and Fries of Rejection is delicious, I need to find healthier avenues of dealing with my moping. Like going to the gym and turning the moping into positivity.
Still, hey, I wrote a friggin’ novella with an all new world, new style, and new characters… That’s nothing to sneeze at.
And now I will sip my Coffee of Victory. Cheers!
Mirrored from Nomad Chronicle.