Entry tags:
monday.
I'm not dead, there's just been a lot. I'm not gonna get into it. Important point: I'm not dead. Let's have a fresh start instead.
Because November is approaching, just two(-ish) more days to go and there'll be kick-off writing parties both at my local library and online in the evening. I've been through a lot of ideas and ended up discarding them all, having now landed on a (surprise) original idea - as in, not fanfiction, all ideas are, of course, original to some extend - for the first time in a couple of years.
New default icon thanks to that.
I've RP'ed a lot of French characters in my time, both canon and my own creations and this is not because I'm either a Francophone (I'm not, I took two years of basic French in gymnasium and was never particularly good at it, but some of it has stuck and I can still read some French, spoken is worse, haha) or a particularly dedicated Francophile (love some of the music, like Pomme forever, love some of the classic literature, The Lady of the Camellias, looking at you, love the French style of ballet, I think French cinema and Danish cinema is not too dissimilar except in scale, supposedly, French is bigger, bigger is often but not always better) but ever since I visited France as a little kid with my parents and later, Paris, as a teenager for our gymnasium study trip, I've had this -- I guess, vision of what France is and what I imagine France is, I like a lot. Let's put it that way.
So, in various contexts, I've played out stories that took place in France and involved French characters, and one of my oldies but goldies is Claude (
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sociopolitically) who, in his current incarnation, is a politician and the story I'm writing for NaNoWriMo, we follow him on his way to become a deputy in the National Assembly. His journey to that seat is one of the subplots in the story which, at the moment, looks to be a romance between him and the other main character/narrator (yes, I'm trying a dual perspective this time around, oh my fucking god, send help), Anatole, who's the child of a Senegalese single mother from whom he was removed at age 10 and who has since disappeared mysteriously and the mystery of where Anatole's mother has gone is the other subplot of the story and will propel these two young men into each other's orbits.The main plot is, since it's a romance (I had a really interesting talk with my English major friend yesterday who loves romances, a genre I never read, and her explanation of its very firm structure really spoke to me, so I had her send notes my way and now, apparently, I might be writing a romance, what the hell), naturally, how I manage to get these two men to fall in love and have a happy ending.
I'm not sure about the happy ending yet which is apparently a dealbreaker for the genre, so maybe I'm only halfway writing a romance. Under any circumstances, I'm tired of queer tragedies and I'm definitely not gonna write that, but neither am I very good at clear-cut happy endings with weddings and shit. It's just not my style. But I am hoping I'll be able to write something at least melancholy-hopeful? Let's put our expectations in that basket first, before we aim too high with engagements and what do I know...
As prep for writing this story, I've been reading "As We Exist - a Postcolonial Autobiography" by Kaoutar Harchi which is, by the way, an amazing book, so poetically and tenderly written, very intimate and honest, while also exceptionally sharp in its points. It gave me a feeling that the way Denmark and France have tried to include immigrants might be quite similar, seeing them more as a "problem to be solved" (Harchi's words) than as people to be embraced. It has really opened my eyes to some hierarchies that I myself have just come to accept as "the way of the world", when it doesn't have to be. When that can be changed, like all hierarchies can. My warmest recommendations to anyone feeling like reading about this experience.
I have also bought the Danish translation of Thomas Piketty's series of essays from Le Monde, 2016-2020, and will be reading them little by little throughout November, once I'm completely done with Harchi's book. I love his green, privilege-conscious, feminist and anti-racist approach to renewing socialism and will definitely be taking some of his ideas for Claude, because those would totally be his views, too.
Anyway, that is my plan for November. I am going to "pants" this novel into fruition, which means I'll write the start I have in mind, not worry too much about planning the rest and just write stuff as it occurs to me. It'll probably be messy and unstructured and the first draft is no doubt going to be chaos, but that is a learning experience, too, and it's not like I'm going to show this story to anyone except my girlfriend anyway, haha. She is forgiving of my messes and I can afford not to be too perfectionistic or pedantic with her. She can take it.
The question is, can I?
I've picked this icon by
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bemybrokenheart for this post, because I hope the Arc de Triomphe will spiral me to NaNo victory and triumph with this story. If not, well, it's a very pretty icon.That's it, people. This is me, being back. Hope you missed the endless rants about writing and story-developing and character gushing. If not, I don't know how to help you.
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I totally prefer those endings as well which is why it's what I end up writing most of the time, with some rare exceptions.
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