I got frustrated and took a week off from The Quiet One to drop everything and write. Now, after 50 furious hours of typing, I have the 53,707 word first draft of a novel.
I feel like repeating that: 53,707 words. In a week.
The story is about friendship, family, film-making and cartoon squirrels. In true NaNoWriMo spirit, I made it up as I went along. Broadly speaking, it’s a merry silly love letter to cartoons wrapped around a story about a father and son reconciling and trying to make a heartwarming sit-com while everything around them either falls apart or is torn apart. Houses are flooded, fourth walls are shattered, egos are destroyed and rebuilt, and time and space themselves cease to have any meaning.
Also there’s a funny little porcupine named Patch. This is from the first draft:
“Hi guys!” Skipper said. He had knocked on the reattached door, but it had fallen off its hinges and squashed Patch. The rabbit happily skipped forward over the door, squashing Patch into the floorboards even more.
“What’s up, little hopper?” Arkie asked.
“Do we have any sugar? Mrs Beaver is all out and she wants to bake a cake for Mr Beaver’s birthday.”
Arkie smiled warmly. “Sure, we can spare some sugar.” He went to his pantry and pulled out a jar of nut sugar. “How much does she want?”
“She said to bring all the sugar I could get,” the rabbit beamed. “She wants to make it real sweet.”
Arkie nodded. He hefted the sugar jar. It was mostly full. “Well, OK, I suppose that’s alright. Tell her it’s on the house,” he said, giving the whole jar to the happy little rabbit.
“Thank you!” Skipper said cheerfully. “She’ll be ever so happy!” He skipped obliviously back over the front door, squashing Patch as he crawled out from under it, and disappeared merrily outside again.
Arkie frowned. “Patch, quit messin’ around and fix the damn door.”
Patch stood up and popped back into shape with the whole door attached stubbornly to his quills. He leapt backwards and shoved the door back into place in its frame, suspended in mid-air. He folded his arms and frowned grumpily. “Happy?” he asked.
“Ec-static,” Arkie replied unecstatically. “Now leave it alone.”
Patch’s bottom lip quivered. “I’m TRYING TO!” he suddenly cried, despondent tears suddenly pouring out of his face like a lawn sprinkler.
Freddie sighed and detatched the sad little porcupine from the door with a sharp yank, putting him up at the kitchen table and offering him a box of tissues.
“Thank you,” Patch said sadly, setting the box on his head like a fashionable hat. He pulled a tissue out of it and blew into it until it was dripping soggy, then looked at it. “What is this, anyway?” he said, appearing confused.
Freddie said. “A tissue.”
“Oh, bless you,” Patch replied. He post-tearfully pulled a fresh tissue out of his hat and offered it to Freddie. The squirrel politely refused.
I never went through a novelisation process with The Quiet One, which probably explains why I still don’t know the characters that well yet. I mean.. I’m head over heels for many of the characters in this novel. There’s a genuine affection there – we’ve been through a fun little story together as creator and creation. By comparison, I’ve been watching Ktish and company through a set of binoculars without feeling like I’ve ever really got up close. I haven’t taken a walk in their shoes yet like I did with these other characters this last week.
All in all, I’m not sure if this week was simply an immersion exercise in writing funny characters or if it’s actually going to go somewhere. We’ll see.
