Nanoday #14 (part one) — notes for the novel I’m writing “Heart of Clouds”

Okay so, it occurs to me that the way we grew up as teens in the 70’s was very different than today.  For one thing, people had less electronic stuff to distract them.  People really did a lot of things by hand and so that pep talk from Lynda Barry really resonated with me.  Kids surfed and rode skateboards and there were these things called video arcades?  Inside there there were pinball machines and a game called pac man — actually maybe pac man was the first of the emoticons?  Hmmmmm…..

So, I have to go backwards in my own life and try and remember what it was like to be a girl like Teenie Alexander.  Devlin Underwood is a cross between about three boys I knew and in those days we were very free!  Kids rode bikes around and basically just had TV and radio?

So, in this novel I’m putting things that kids could do — that are like things we did?  Things to increase the powers of imagination.  Hopefully it can be an interactive book that way?

Like, one thing this book teaches is how to leave a note, and how to write in a journal by hand? So, maybe it can inspire Junior Lynda Barry’s?  To keep a hand written journal.  It also makes reference to the Romantic poets and love in general –across a several generation spectrum.  The character of old Mr. Honeygarten explains his first love Claire to Teenie — just as she and the boy Devlin are getting a crush on each other…!

I like that I did that — as backstory.  So it occurs to me that kids today will “enter” the world of this book as if it is another planet — only, it isn’t.  The world that I want to create for them in fiction was an actual, lived world.  If that makes sense.

So, anyway, looking into C. S. Lewis — he wrote Narnia as an adult?  And it is fun in a way to go back and try an remember what a first crush was like.  I’m thinking of the TV we watched too — back then.  There were strong tales of human interaction in the Hallmark movies and the Disney movies of the time.  Less animation and more character driven?  Anyway, keeping notes.  ps:  Twitter is fab if you use those hashtags to do searches.  Amazing — I didn’t realize how many great things you could find.  Okay warm up over.  I need to go back and pick up where I left off.

xxoo!

back later!

 

 

 

the magic sentence that contained the 25,000 word!

“There are others.”

the 25,000 word was “others.”

very happy with this last bit — unedited, but good enough for now — it’s from the chapter called “the language of the heart.”  Tut the ancient turtle in Devlin’s dream had known all his life that one day he would meet a boy who knew the language of the air.

here is an excerpt:

“It will be a very dark time, Tut,” he’d said somberly.
“You will be the last of our kind, and the last guardian of the hidden lauguage in the grotto.”
“Our language is the language of the sea, my Tut.”
Tut had sat on the top of a giant clamshell on the bottom of the sea while his grandfather had been telling him these things.  He had no idea how important his life was going to be at that time, because he was just a child.
All of his life he’d swum the seas with a squadron, and he was friends with everyone in the ocean.  Many times over the course of his life he’d stopped to learn a little bit from everyone and everything in the sea.
He even knew some of the other languages that the things in the sea spoke.  He knew the language of the coral, and the language of the shining fishes who flashed by, and he knew the language of
the Orcas and the Blue whales, and even the tiniest little crabs.
It was said of Tut that he was the wisest turtle in the sea, by almost
all who knew him.  And he was very much loved by all who knew him, too.  This is why everyone in the ocean had decided that he should wear the crown bestowed upon the king of the sea.
“Your job one day, my Tut, will be to meet a boy who can speak the language of the air.  And he will be meeting a girl who can speak the language of the heart and the language of the animals.”
“It will be a time, my Tut, when the world will be in grave danger because the sea has been poisoned by things that the humans have thrown into her.  “And, it shall be your task my Tut, to show that to this boy.”
“It shall be on the darkest day for the world, that you, my Tut, will speak to the boy named Devlin in his dreams.”
“You must promise me that you shall never forget, little Tut.”
“I won’t grandfather,” Tut had promised.

back later!

going to check out Fwis and the Nano Artisans over in the forums for a bit — I love the whole creative aspect of NaNoWriMo

after this comes nanoedmo and then nanosriptmo hahahahahahaa! it’s the best place in all the world!

xxoo!