I went to the park again today, this time with a pizza and my laptop, with the intention of a) writing and b) finishing reading my friend's screenplay. And, I guess I accomplished those two things--big deal, right?--but at one point, I opened the pizza box . . . and it was infested with ants. You always hear about ants ruining a picnic, but I'd never seen it happen before. I mean, they were inside the pizza box, not to mention crawling atop the pizza. It made me sad.
Guess I'm an easy mark.
Sit-ups Today: 130
Sit-ups In June: 3200
So, as far as writing goes today, I had an idea for the story I came up with about two years ago, of a girl that moves into a town where Halloween is not celebrated, and decorations are against the law. It's similar to a story I wrote a decade or so back (still one of my favorites) about a small town where everybody believes in some kind of local boogeyman, and was possibly inspired by one of the HALLOWEEN sequels that established that the holiday is no longer observed in Haddonfield, Illinois because of the Michael Myers murders.
I'm trying to remember which writer it was that said it, but there's an idea Big Anklevich agrees with that says that story ideas come and go, they pop into your head all the time, and if you forget them, then they probably weren't very good ones . . . but if they stick in your head, keep coming up again and again, then those are the good ones you should pursue. And this story, which I believe I was going to call "Undecorated" when I first came up with it, has never really left my imagination.
So that's what I sat in the ninety-three degree weather and wrote on while the ants were making their way into my lunch box. I like the idea that the main character, a teen girl, doesn't even care about Halloween all that much, but when she's told she can't celebrate it, and the neighbors actually come over and physically TAKE DOWN the decorations she put up . . . well, she decides Halloween is the hill she's going to die on. I like this character, which I haven't named yet, but I saw a business card in my drawer today (actually Friday) for an artist that had an interesting name, like Katianna or something, and I figured I'd use that. This story will be unique in that it's the first one I'm writing in 2020 not inspired by the Mid-Life Crisis Girl.* Don't worry, I'm still naming the town after her.
When I went for my nightly run, I tried to come up with a good ending for this story--because you absolutely know the girl is going to put up Halloween decorations anyway, right?--and the one I came up with is somewhat close to what it needs to be. It just needs some slight massaging. Don't we all?
Anyway, I liked the idea that the whole town is complicit in this no-Halloween thing, but they are forbidden to explain it to outsiders, but a boy at Katianna(?)'s school decides to warn her anyway. I guess maybe my muse inspired this character after all, because she immediately thinks this boy is trying to "get with her," and when he explains that he's got a girlfriend, she doesn't believe him. It's actually a pretty amusing scene, and I would love it if I finished the story and put it out there. It would win no awards, but it would still make me proud.
Words Today: 1019
Words In June: 25,608
*Oh, there was the Lara and the Witch sequel I started writing (and abandoned), but since that's part of a series, I'm not sure if it counts.
No comments:
Post a Comment