nano ramblings ....

For the past 2-3 years I've plotted out a novel in September and never wrote it since some Other Idea hits me days before nano and I go nuts on that instead. And then get some other idea, and when the dust clears I have 2 nanowrimo novels done. Sometimes more. None of which are the novel I plotted out in September. Such is my brain. This year I am hoping to cheat that by building up the series of stories called, with a dire lack of creativity, magician series. I know a novel can be told in the world: I've had a rough, rough outline of one in my head for a couple of months now and a couple of pages jotted out for the start of the story.

(Jay didn't exist when I wrote those pages, mind. Hell, he still has yet to show up on this blog. Soon :))

I know the setting can support a novel easily, the trick is going to be keeping the tone OF the stories and having it not get into too many shades of purple prose. And of avoiding my default 'voice' for a story, which will be the real trick. Charlie does come closest to it out of all the characters, so there is that. And the magician DOES have a name, which will probably come up in the story. The tangible benefits to doing a novel are that the neglected families of both Charlie and the magician can show up (and should). I have a scene with the magician and his sister in a notebook somewhere I have yet to use that really needs to show up.

One of the central tenants of the series is that magicians are uncommon; a key point of it is in showing why, though mostly in implicit rather than explicit ways. Much as how magic in it is about small things. Secrets, hidden desires, and the damages we do to ourselves and others. It's about the ripples we put into the world, and also the ones we pull back into ourselves. It's about magic as a poetical construct: it operates according to need and is driven by desire. And about the ways in which we channel and constrain desire.

Exactly how the novel works in those regards will depend on how I tell the story. The stories thus far have been almost entirely told in present tense. Which is fine for ~3 pages of prose but I am not sure if the entire novel will contain that, or even all be from a singular POV. So time to rummage about inside my head and see what I can pull out .....