Nano writing and bits
Here are two vignettes related to this year's Nanonovel. One describes a show done by a character named Sasha who is a performance artist. Note that the name is Sasha like the Russian nickname - the name is meant so that it doesn't give the character's gender away. The other segment is a bit of setting description. If you think you know what the Mad City might be based on, comment!
Sasha’s show
There was never any simple way to describe Sasha’s shows. Comedy? Performance art? There were elements of improvisation, but also a surprising amount of planning and attention to detail. Staging was simple. A backdrop, this time painted to match the season, an outdoor rainy scene in autumn. The bench was a physical prop on stage, but could easily have been found out among those trees. Other props were minimal. A bowler hat. Three apples. A feather boa. A walking cane. And of course Sasha’s long, lean body was as much a prop as anything on stage. This scene appeared to involve three characters from three vastly different settings, each caught out in the rain and meeting under the shelter of the trees. Sasha portrayed all three characters - one elderly man, stooped and apparently frail, using the bowler hat and cane. One young and carefree, juggling the apples, and a troubled lady of the evening, who constantly fiddled with her feather boa. By the end of the evening, the young juggler and the prostitute had decided to elope, the feather boa had been abandoned on the bench, and one of the apples had been sliced clean through by the sword that had emerged from the cane when the elderly gentleman had proven to be not quite so frail after all. And the audience had sides aching from laughter. After bowing to applause, Sasha topped off the show by using the sword part of the sword cane to quickly, gracefully and dramatically slice the apples into wedges, ending by tossing the apple wedges out to the audience.
The Mad City
It is not what it once was, though it never was so grand as other cities. Yet perhaps it is more itself now than it was in the past. It is still a gathering place for artists and musicians and visionaries and dreamers. It still hosts markets for the farmers surrounding the Mad City to bring in their goods to sell. It is wilder now, and some buildings have fallen to ruin while others have risen, in strikingly different styles. Parts of the city that were drab have become bright, when hastily and poorly built structures have vanished and been replaced by open spaces. But parts of the city have become darker, too, particularly in places once given over to the business of governing something vast and difficult to control. There are those, they say, who go to explore these places, and never return. But still, much about the Mad City is bright. There are the lakes, after all, the Men and the Mon, that serve the city in a wide range of ways. Set where it is, the Mad City is never likely to be in need of water. After all, if one ranges far enough from the Mad City, there is the greater lake to the east, and to the west the long River of Esses. And if one does not feel comfortable in this half wild city, one need only travel to the south and east, to come to the vast City of Winds.
Poll Nano Questions