Playlists, plague and racism

Well, I had to take a day off to see bonfires and then another to keep pace with the day job deluge of drudgery and devilment.  With sickness in the house and multiple vomitings upon my person by other people I was slowly losing the belief that I could carry on.

And tonight has been rather difficult.  There was a long section that relied almost entirely on third person summary, which is not a good way to advance plot, I was so much more into the whole vignette idea to show time passing and also to impart relevant information without 'telling' - one of my worst habits back when I used to write more.

Having an autistic main character has, however, worked wonders.  Now my soulless and technical style is for a reason and helps to characterise William as he slowly develops into the person he becomes by the end of the novel.  This is, unfortunately, going to mean some conversations like the one I wrote this evening - hugely racist with the characters having the discussion not even having the awareness to register the horrors which they bandy about.  Partly I'm glad, the Dandies are supposed to be dangerous and, well, just a little bit seedy but mostly I'm appalled that I could even write it.

William Caston, you are not a terribly nice person you know!

He knows, he's fine with it, being nice is a sign of weakness if it is not used for personal gain.  Everyone is doing it, apparently.

Well, quite.  Thank you William.  And now shut up, the adults are talking.  Oh, I'm back in the swing, but much reduced on daily wordcount: 15,696.

Disappointing

So, here I am four days in and I'm at 13k words, give or take.  I've stolen from a published novel, trope only, but still.  Now my main character, William, is sulking about the scene where I stole the trope because it is stealing and stealing is wrong.

Despite my best efforts, it looks like there will be a war after all.  Which is a shame, I was hoping to establish certain societal systems and William's outlook without having to resort to that.  But if the dictators of Aixlene's Republic want to be stupid and let a revolution happen then I suppose I can't be blamed for that.

Is it wrong I know the national anthem?

And I'm stalling.  I was hoping for a lovely 15k, but I'm stymied.

Here's the scene in question.

       “Oh, little Willy, just a moment, I hear your sister crying,” with some regret Matilda picked herself up from the floor by William’s side and moved to the small crib near the window.  Picking up the bundle she held the child close to her and began rocking gently, shushing and singing beneath her breath with eyes that were firmly fixed on the face of the small baby.

       William, the painting laid forlornly at his feet, watched with a small frown on his serious face.  Father would be home soon and then the whole thing would start again.  His chance to paint had been lost and now the attention would be firmly on the baby.  Father loved the baby more than life itself and he and mother always looked so happy and smiling when they sat together with her.  Perhaps it was because she was a baby or because she was a she, whatever the reason; she made his parents happier than they were with him.

       Pointing back at the paints William grunted to get his mother’s attention.

       “Oh, not now, little Willy, I’m trying to calm your sister.  Can’t you find something to do on your own?”  Eyes only for the baby.

       Another grunt, repeated, and louder with more insistence in the syllable was made, accompanied by a stamp to emphasise the entreaty and the urgency of it.

       This time no response, but Matilda did turn slightly away from him.

       From nowhere he felt the tears come and let them loose, letting out a long undulating wail that changed pitch but remained annoyingly high.  As soon as the first tear had reached his chin, eyes clouded with them and mouth wide open, drool running from the side of his mouth, he flew at his mother with his little fists flailing; a ball of anger and frustration.  It was as if she was purposely misunderstanding him, all he wanted to do was paint and the small baby could be left on her own to cry, he’d heard his father say the same of him.

       “Willy, I ca-  Ow!  William!  No!”  Using her arms ineffectually to try to ward off the blows of her son, Matilda backed away, holding her child closer and protectively.  “Will- Ow!  Stop hitting me!  No!  Stop- Ow!”  Without conscious thought one of her arms snaked out and her hand grabbed the arm of her son tightly, so her fingers turned white.  The other arm went on hitting her, joined now by feet stabbing out, and still the wail continued and the tears fell.  In her arms, the baby was stirring again, having been soothed to sleep by the singing a moment ago.  “William!”  In her own anger she kicked out, once, and instantly regretted her decision.

       The foot caught him squarely in the stomach, winded him, and then the force of it sent him across the room and off his feet.  But his arm was still held fast by Matilda and so as his body moved away the arm was pulled closer.  There was a sickening popping noise and then the grip was lost, the forearm hung limply for a moment and then the boy was slumping down near one of the walls in silence.  Tears still ran down his cheeks, the mouth was still open but the anger had been replaced by shock, betrayal and the eyes were filled with fear.  There was no blood.  His right forearm hung unnaturally at his side as the boy stood and looked at his mother.

       For her part, Matilda simply held a hand to her mouth in shock, her own eyes wide and uncomprehending.  She had kicked her son.  The words were repeating over and over in her head, taking on a mocking and accusatory tone: you kicked your son; you kicked your son; you kicked your son.

       There was no time for anything else as William simply fled from the room and thundered up the stairs, slamming the door to the small room at the end of the hallway with finality.  Matilda tried to listen but could hear nothing, and her baby was awake and making sucking motions, this would soon escalate to crying and she knew that Walter was due home very soon.  Reverting to simple learned response and unable to think straight she sat down and began feeding her child.  She was an awful mother, she knew, and she was going to be punished for this, she just knew it, not even Jesus and all his angels would be able to forgive her the sin she had committed.

       In his room, William was still unable to make a noise.  Making a noise would reveal his location and doing that would open him up to danger.  Mother had kicked him.  There was no telling what she might do to him now, there was nothing that could be done to protect himself as the door locked from the outside and so he would be unable to bar her entry should she choose to make it.  The arm she had pulled hurt, so he looked at it and worked out that the bones of the forearm were not linking to the elbow like they should have done.  He pushed it back and nothing happened but a lot of pain and shooting stars in his vision, so he pushed it harder and felt something giving or clicking.  At any rate there was a lot of stabbing pain, but his arm was working properly again.  It was better to be fully ready for whatever happened next.  His mother provided food and warmth and shelter and comfort and all he wanted to do was paint but she had deliberately caused him pain and suffering: he had seen it in her face and the frown.  Nowhere was safe.

       Looking out of the small window he watched the sky bruise like his stomach and arm, he had stripped off his clothes to look and sat naked, then slowly go dark as the stars came out.  Below he heard father and mother talking in low tones for quite some time, some noises from the baby, then laughter and the smell of cooking.  Laughter.  They would be coming for him.  He pulled his legs up to his chest, ignoring the pain from his arm and stomach, shivered in the cold of the evening and waited.

       So it was that at some time after midnight he was still awake, the trails of tears salty and dry on his cheeks, when the screaming started and did not stop.  At first he was too afraid to move, his mother may hurt him again, but the screaming continued and he heard his father bashing and crashing around downstairs.  The telephone was off the hook and there was a conversation, the screaming continued.  There was the smell of cold and of desperation, and the screaming continued.  His mother was screaming.  William got up from the corner and padded softly to the door, no one had been up to lock it this time and so it was still open, listening.  The screaming continued.  Opening the door, he peered down the hallway to where mother and father slept with the new baby.  The lights were lit here, oil flame guttering as the wick took hold and the smell of burning onions faint on the dusty air, and the screaming continued.  Without really knowing how he got there, William found himself in the room with his mother again and she was holding the baby and screaming.

       “Mama?”  William had learned that she responded more positively to ‘mama’ than ‘muvvah’, as close as he could enunciate ‘mother’, and something in him told him that something needed to be done.  “Mama?”

       The screaming stopped.  “Willy.  Dear little Willy.  She’s dead.  She’s dead.”  The sobbing that followed was quieter, but more wretched than the screaming.  His mother was upset.  His mother was punished.

       William stood quietly for a moment, eyes wide, and then blinked.  Very deliberately he fixed his mother in his gaze and frowned that intense frown.  “Good.”  Justice had been served.  With that, William walked calmly from the room and returned to the corner.

       It was two days before a relative brought food and another day before he was dressed and taken downstairs.  He was only four, they said, he didn’t understand.  But they were wrong.  His mother had threatened him and had meant to take his life – before she did, her baby was taken from her.  She hurt him, she ignored him, she attacked him and she had been punished because that was wrong.  He understood perfectly.

The Love Interest

Third day blues, alas, have hit.  It's taken me two hours to bash out a couple of thousand words, which was a blow as yesterday I was hitting over 4k by the end of a couple of hours.  I've also had to ditch about 840 words in total over the course of three days.  Of course they're still counted and at the end of the novel in very small type so that I don't have to read them.

My favourite ditched line, NSFW due to language, appears after the line-break:

Setting: a resolution

So, after sleeping on it, I think I now have the problem of setting solved.  Once I'd done that, my main character gave me his name.  Turns out he'd been rather petulant about it because I should have known that the story would not be set in Central Europe at all.

I think it best if I explain it roughly how he explained it to me.  It couldn't be a novel set in Europe, historical or otherwise, because I was essentially writing about the rise of a dictator.  If I wrote about one rising now then the novel would swiftly become out of date and hackneyed; if I wrote in the past I would automatically be creating an alternative history with all of the attendant problems that this would create and potential glaring inaccuracies.  If I set it in the future I would run the similar risk of becoming dated by messing up predictions.  It had, therefore, to be set in an analogous setting, like Europe but not Europe.  Attendant to that I had to avoid Germanifying the whole setting - if I created a Germany and a dictator in it then I would be reinforcing everything that I do not believe about the rise of the NSDAP being peculiarly German.

As it is a mainly character-driven piece I could not really make it too moral a tale either - there would have to be an acceptance that some of what my main character was doing not only made sense but may actually be good ideas, and I can't tell the audience which are good ideas and which are downright evil - that means not focussing on the Jews, you see, and that would require an analogous Europe to play properly.

So, there you go.

His name is William.  He lives in Merkavia.  It turns out the analogous setting was one that I have been inadvertantly creating for some years and didn't notice was a full-blown and working place!

I should also point out that I have been messing with technology level.  We have steam trains and stevedores and top-hatted industrialists but also motor cars, telephones and tannoy.  By the end of the story we'll be dealing with computers, internet, mobile phones and social mobility.  It's all a bit mixed up.  No velcro though because of no rocketry to the moon, which means no ICBMs, but we'll have jets.  Yeah, I know, anaologous settings: the lazy way to plot novels!

Now, on to tonight's writing!

Cities, ethnicities and names

So, despite hitting a pretty respectable 8,149 words I still don't have my MC's name, which makes naming other thing svery difficult.  I mean, what if he's German or Greek or Irish?  Can't have an Irish person going to Munchen nor a Greek man attending a hospital in Dublin.

In the meantime I fleshed out my MC's life, and it is a horrible thing in general, poor dear.  Still, being autistic and a future evil dictator I suppose he deserves it on some level, for the evil, not the autism.  I'd post some of it, but now I must retire to see to the Boy, who is a little unsettled of late, bless him.

First paragraph...

Well, having pushed out 3,504 words so far I thought I would post my first scene as it stands.  I have no names though, no names, and only codes to go with.  FF = Father Figure; MC = Main Character; MF = Mother Figure.  My main character refuses point blank to give me his name and so I have no clue what nationality to make the other names.  Bit worried about what this says about me as a person, this scene, but it's NaNo, so I guess that sort of happens.

Scene 1

It was unnatural, the silence that followed the screaming of seconds before, and FF was certain that it was not a good sign.  Pacing, such a good idea before, now seemed out of place and over anxious, like he was trespassing in his own domain.  His hands clasped behind his back strained for some other action, which is why he kept them clamped there with a tremendous force of will.  Unusually he could feel his moustache tickling his top lip and his nostrils.  He wanted to sneeze.  He wanted it all to be over.

       The balding man before him coughed again, slightly and with some tremor. “We… ah…”

       Snapping his eyes to meet those of the small man, FF frowned.  “Yes?”

       “A decision, sir, we need a decision.”

       The silence lingered.  It wasn’t natural.  It wasn’t right.  “A decision.”

       “Well, more- that is- we need your decision.”

       “Quite right,” FF puffed his chest out to emphasise his point, “Quite right.  Very well.  Yes.”

       “Sir?”

       “I consent.  Pull the bastard out.”

       “Yes sir.”  The little balding man scurried away, almost ratlike FF reflected, and then closed the door.  There was a little commotion from beyond that door, sounds like people talking quietly.  A groan escaped FF’s wife.

       When the screaming resumed it was loud, lusty and long.  But, reflected FF, at least it was right.  Pacing resumed for a short while, and then his hands stopped straining, the screaming continued as he turned on his heel, took a seat and pulled out his hip flask.  A swift slug of whiskey warmed his insides, the fire of Dutch courage as his father would have said, God rest his soul, and FF felt more like himself.  He inspected the artwork on the walls, some of it the traditional style and some of it the more modern stuff coming out of Spain and Italy.  He didn’t really know what to make of it all – lines and splotches and colours intermingling.  All a lot of rot, of course, the true masters of the art were all gone now.  No one seemed to have time to study the classics properly and no one seemed to have learned anything from the history books.  He harrumphed and sat back more heavily in the chair to wait.

       Presently the screaming stopped.  FF stood, dusted himself down from any dirt, imaginary or otherwise, and walked briskly to the door.  There was a new sound, mewling and pathetic, and that announced the entry into the world of the little bastard who must now meet his father.  He hoped that everyone would be decent.  Door thrust open with a little more force than was strictly necessary, FF entered the room.  Ignoring the woman on the bed whom fate had made his wife, her legs strapped down to the iron frame to allow better access and covered with the aftermath of delivery by forceps, and nodding to the surgeon with his paper mask FF turned to face the two nurses hastily wrapping the mewling bundle.

       “Is that it?”

       One of the nurses made to curtsey, but stopped when she realised no one else was doing so.  Out in the provinces old habits died hard and FF felt a flash of recognition at the gesture.  The old ways were dying out.  “Yes, sir, it’s a boy.”

       “Hmm.”  It came out as an admonishment.  “I know.  Is it healthy?”

       “Yes, sir.”

       “Good.”  Squinting he could almost see a face in amongst the bundle and blood.  “Shouldn’t it be louder than that?”  He waved irritably at the first nurse to open her mouth.  “Never mind, the bastard will do, I suppose.”  As if noticing the woman on the bed for the first time he started a little.  “Clean her up and get her decent, she’ll be home by the evening,” then to the woman herself, “I think we’ll have steak tonight.  I shall be back in the evening.”  His hands went back to their old position above his rear.  “Doctor, thank you, it must have been a difficult one.  I hope the bastard didn’t give you too much trouble, sir.”

       “No more than one would expect,” the Doctor answered with a tired smile.

       FF clapped him on the shoulder, once, then walked to the door.  “I think this calls for a little celebration.”  And then he was gone.

       “Can- Can I hold him?” whimpered the woman on the bed, her legs were still immobile, her face still drawn from the pain and a sheen of sweat still glistened from the travails.  “I want- I want to hold him.”

       “No, dearie, you just rest yourself,” replied a nurse in a businesslike fashion, “Doctor here’s got to stitch up that nasty tear before you’ll be up to moving much.  We’ll see the boy is well looked after, don’t you worry yourself.  Get you home and rested in no time.”  She fluffed a pillow and thrust it under the woman’s head brusquely, but not unkindly.  “Steak’ll help you feel right soon enough.”  A thin smile of comfort.

 

            “His name…” gasped the woman, almost sleeping from the strain now, “His name is MC.”

Nano is go!

And we're off as of the end of this post.  My challenge is to hit 2k words this evening.  I'm not entirely certain that will be achieved.  So many of you lovelies are already on higher totals than that.

Well, you give me something to live up to.  Onward and upward!