James Funfer

NaNoWriMo wasn’t quite the same for me this year as it has been in previous years. Back when Vicious Writers was around, I was writing to compete. Competition can be a great motivating factor, and it certainly was for me. I produced my first novel out of it, and a great science fiction novella last year (needs work, but I loved writing it, sleep deprivation and all). This year, however, I didn’t even set myself on the official NaNoWriMo website. I was writing for myself, using the 50,000 words a month goal to get a jump-start on my sequel.

Although I only produced about half of the words that I was hoping for, November was a busy month in many other ways, so I don’t feel that the time was wasted at all. I have a prologue and three chapters for the sequel to Hearts, plus a framework full of ideas that I fell in love with. As soon as I started writing it, all of the POV characters were whispering in my ear, clamouring to tell their stories.

Now that it’s December, I can turn my attention back to Hearts. The edits are technically, mostly finished. I’m giving the manuscript one last read-through over the next couple of days and then it goes back to Genie and Jim. From there…publication will follow! I’ll be sharing details here as they develop.

I did a bit of non-novel writing during November, and a good deal of planning. More prologues for my ‘Unfinished’ story will be coming up, as well as a new cross-genre idea that I’ve been tossing around.

I’ve also been messing around with poetry. Now I’ve never considered myself to be particularly good at poetry, and I usually don’t like expressing myself with structured rhyme schemes, so most of what I wrote came out very free-form, and most of it is not for this blog. However, my friend Matt is putting together a music portfolio and asked me for some spoken word that he could use for a song, so I came up with this:

Vista

Daybreak rises behind me

Sky dappled in cherry and persimmon

Over my forest in spring

I, vagabond, view the valley

Through a verdant vista

The path I follow widens

Reaches a crux

Avenues beckon like open doors

As I survey the lanes

I hear a distant rhythm calling

Calling

Calling to me

And I know that I have already chosen

Budding young leaves

Like hands draw me onward as the beat grows stronger

A rhythm I know like the beating of my own heart

The path ends in a lake

The source

And even on the shore I am awash in sound

I sit amongst the pebbles and listen

But it is not long before I want to swim

Naked and free, I plunge into the depths of the source

The lake

The music

With the sun at its zenith I crawl onto the shore

Like some proto-amphibian

Taking its first breath as something new

Something undiscovered

The path is calling

And though my source is here

I must continue

I slake my thirst before I go

And the music continues to pulse

Inside of me

Ahead the sun is setting

Sky dappled in fire and crimson

Over a hot summer night

The moon rises like a cold eye

Leaves clutch and grab

Shadows dance and whisper, obscuring the path

I, vagabond, vie vehemence

Fear is only a vista

And I have brought my own light

My music

My source

…feel free to tear my poetry apart. I like to. Well, happy December, everyone! You’ll hear from me when I’m done re-reading Hearts…or maybe once I decide on a title.