So, that happy-fuzzy post-date glow died today. After like, three weeks, which was a lot longer than I expected it to last. I haven't been a solid happy for that long in . . . a long time.
The HFPDG lasted quite well, actually. It lasted through a bus accident that killed a band teacher at school; not somebody I knew personally, but I have a lot of friends in band, so it did make me sad to think of them. (Incidentally, the bus accident was the same night as the date. I found out the next morning.) It lasted through the first pomegranate of the season, now happily digesting in my stomach. (I pretty much live for pomegranate season. There's nothing like the smell of a pomegranate right after you first cut the top off and the juice oozes from a popped aril onto the cutting board.) It lasted through term finals, barely.
In fact, its death is my own fault. NaNoWriMo—National Novel-Writing Month for you newbies—is almost upon us! Objective: write 50,000 words in a month, equating 1667 2/3 words a day or 8 1/3 pages with 1-inch margins, 10-pt. Courier New double-spaced.
Naturally this is something I simply MUST do. So I started brainstorming characters and plot options earlier this week (Monday, to be precise) and decided on my character from the first role-play I participated in. That meant, however, that the whole motley crew from RPv1.0 gets dragged along for the ride. Most of them I can deal with—a former-captain/current-runner-of-the-galaxy with emotional issues, a thief as her egocentric-yet-not-self-confident lover, an apathetic mechanical wench/cyborg genius, and a family-oriented older brother with a death wish. They're all fun and games.
Then I started thinking about our antagonist, Kain. Kain is charismatic, manipulative, imposing, cunning—all the good things a bad guy is supposed to be. John, his creator, portrayed him so brilliantly, so perfectly, that Kain was impossible to hate in that twisted way we reserve for the evil forces with the best intentions at heart.
How could I match that? How can I use Kain in my story while still keeping him Kain? He seems so out of my league, beyond my abilities, that there's no way on Earth I can do him justice. I don't think I have it in me to accomplish such a perfect villain, to give him that same level of fear-striking coolness, that pure evil that John gave him.
After that first moment, of doubt, everything else I had planned kind of crashed down around my ears. I can't do this. I can't take the creations of others and use them for my own purposes. I can't control this plot—it's too complicated, too delicate, too hard, too threadbare, too long, too too. Who am I to think that I can do all this, create this world and put these people through hell? Who am I to play God to these people?
Well, I'm me. And I'm going to do this. The villain may suck, but this is a first draft. Nobody has to see it. I can print it out, mash it up, and make new paper out of it. I could eat it. I could line the litter box with it. This is my story. I'm telling it, come hell or high water.
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