Carrie's Nano Board <3

[Kathleen]

Sept 28, 2008 21:39:18 GMT -5 Avery said:

I needta think of my title. So I can put it in my Nano site profile. >>

'Cept I can't think of one. xD; *ANGST*

I have..

The exact same problem! =D

I mean, good luck thinking one up. xD

[Avery]

I'm afraid that I'm getting bored with my plot, since I've had it for a while already (normally get my plot in mid-October, at the earliest). Still nearly a month till Nano... part of me is feeling "bleh" and wants to ditch the idea... but at the same time... D:

T_T

[Avery]

Sept 29, 2008 0:23:37 GMT -5 Stal said:

Thought: instead of having that guy be the one stuck at age 18, perhaps Sunday could be the exception? Since she was the last one born, perhaps she'd be allowed to age and live a sort of half-life?

Orrrrr that 18 is the cut off age. Once you hit 18, you stop aging in the afterlife?

Stal you are a jeen-yus. I can't believe it took me over two weeks to find see this post. XD I think I'm going to use one of your ideas, not sure which one... but one of them. Because I started thinking more in depth about the punishment idea and it just didn't work.

But your ideas... they work. Thinking about it, the latter one is probably going to be the winner.

*grovels* <3 If only I had discovered your post two weeks ago. XD

[Avery]

So now I have a new idea and I dunno which plot to use for Nano. XD

Actually, new idea isn't exactly accurate. It's an idea I had last year but didn't use. And now it's nagging at me again, rather loudly.

Lesigh...

[Avery]

I have 800 words of one idea, 100 of another, and I hate both of them.

This is gonna be a fun Nano.

[Avery]

Got a new plot idea. 1405 words in. Hopefully it goes okay.

[Avery]

I'm ending day one at 3050 words. I had 3880 sometime earlier in the day, but then I decided to change gears, deleted 2.5k, and went back up from there. My problem right now is figuring out the actual plot. I have a premise set up, many ways it can go, but at the moment... well... all I have is 3k words of rambling introspect, wobbly background, and not much else.

Hopefully some grand idea will come to me in the night. xD

[Avery]

I'm kinda worried that my story is going nowhere. I mean, it has no direction. At all.

@___@

[Avery]

I finally got my plot. It just dawned upon me.

<3 Yay.

[Avery]

It's really late now, and I should be sleeping, but I got a spurt of inspiration at around midnight and went into a writing tear, and I just finished now. x3 I have 7535 words at the moment, and since I finally have the semblance of a plot, I might as well summarize what I have so far/the gist of it

SPOILER: Click to show

Working Title: Somewhere Called Home

The main character is a sixteen-year-old girl called Jessica Keegan, who lives in 2008. The daughter of divorced parents, she lives in with her mother in New Jersey and rarely sees her father, who lives out in Los Angeles. But then one day, her mother is killed in a car crash, and full custody of Jessica is granted to her mostly absent father, who she dislikes immensely. On the plane ride over from New Jersey, Jessica takes some sleeping pills and quickly zonks out; when she wakes up several hours later, there's a weird woman who hadn't been there before sitting next to her, but she thinks nothing of it. But then when the plane lands and she gets off, stuff starts to get really strange. For one thing, there's people waiting at the gate (non-passengers), which isn't allowed. Then, she realizes her cell phone and mp3 player are gone, and that people are dressed oddly, and that the whole airport is just off in general. Freaking out, she finds a pay phone and calls her dad's cell phone-- but she gets an automated answer saying that the number she's dialed isn't valid. Panicked, she goes to the baggage claim area (where they've planned to meet)... and he isn't there. Cue more panicking. Eventually, a concerned woman helps her to a bench, and Jessica glances down at a newspaper beside her. A newspaper that says it's 1988.

Jessica passes out, and when she wakes up, there's a crowd over her and cop kneeling at her side. He asks her the typical 'black out' questions (ie: where are you, what's your name, etc.), and although she's disoriented, she manages to answer them. Then he asks her what year it is. Thinking of all the weird things, and the newspaper date, she struggles for a while before saying 1988. And after she speaks, the cop smiles down and her and says: "Good."

Well, some paramedics soon arrive and take her to the hospital. She's feeling sick and isn't very responsive in general, but once she reaches the ER and they put her on an IV and pump her full of pain killers, she starts feeling a bit better...

... until a nurse comes and says to her that they've phoned her dad, and he's coming in soon. It turns out that she'd had a piece of paper with her 2008 dad's address on it tucked into her wallet (placed there in case of an emergency), and when she hadn't been forthcoming with the medics, they'd used it to find the person living at that address. When the hospital called and gave the guy who answered Jessica's name, he'd said it was his daughter.

Well soon this guy (Robert) arrives, and Jessica is floored as she realizes how similar they look. He's also kind of the opposite of her father-- nice, funny, caring. Too tired and outright confused to question anything, she goes with him to his house (which is the house her father lives in twenty years later, yay linkage). She soon finds out that in this 'lifetime', or whatever, she'd also been at the airport returning from the funeral of her mother. Except unlike in 2008, the mother wasn't her primary guardian-- she lives with Robert-- and she wasn't on a flight from New Jersey, but from Detroit.

That's where I am right now, and although this post is rambly and jumpy (um, it being 2am is my excuse), I think it's shaping up pretty nicely, and it's a lot deeper than this post can give it credit for. XD I think it's mainly going to be about Jessica coping with this random backward time jump, and acclimating to this life as a different girl. And trying to unravel the mystery of how she got there, and possibly going after her parents (who lived in Los Angeles in 1988 as a newlywed couple) Hopefully it should be fun. <3

*goes to sleep*

[Avery]

Well, it's closing in on the fourth day now, so I figured I'd post an excerpt. x3 It's my first chapter, basically. Whoo! Hopefully it's not too horrible. XD

SPOILER: Click to show

The day after her mother’s funeral, Jessica Keegan boarded a plane to Los Angeles and vowed to herself to never look back. As she shuffled down the narrow aisle, the teenager stared down at the ruddy carpeting below and began to count each spill and stain upon it; with each step she took and dark glob she found, the sinking feeling in her stomach grew stronger and stronger. This was real and really happening. Despite what she’d been desperately hoping for days now-- that this was all just a horrible dream, a nighttime plunge into her subconscious-- it was real. Her mother was dead and buried, the victim of a driver high on meth, and Jessica was off to California to live with a father she had never really known. No matter what she wanted to believe, wanted to cling to, the girl could not change the facts, and she could not change the past. Never look back, Jessie, she said to herself with a resigned sigh as she reached her crooked seat and slumped down into it.

Glancing out the window, Jessica’s heart suddenly twinged as she saw light snowflakes drifting from the sky. It was early December, and winter had finally shown its face. Another few weeks and the whole city would be blanketed in muddy snow, the air soggy and cold just in time for Christmas. This had always been her favorite time of the year, rushed and sour but somehow still enjoyable, and her stomach churned with the realization that in just six hours from now, she might never experience this kind of day again. No, in Los Angeles it would be sunny and warm, the temperature stagnant and so-called beautiful-- a world apart from her former life in Woodbridge, New Jersey.

“Hello, this your pilot speaking.” The tinny announcement snapped Jessica out of her thoughts. “This is flight 19 to Los Angeles, and I’m happy to say we’re expecting a fairly smooth ride this morning, with a flying time of about six hours and twenty minutes. Your flight crew today consists of--”

Jessica closed her eyes and leaned back, nervously fingering the lightly padded armrest that separated her from a rotund middle-aged man in the window seat. She’d taken a few over-the-counter sleeping pills while waiting in the terminal, and as the pilot continued to drone over the loudspeaker, she was hit with a sudden wave of grogginess. The sixteen-year-old was pretty sure that the weak-grade drugs wouldn’t knock her out for the entire six and a half hours, but at least she would be able to get some rest before landing in Los Angeles.

“We’ll be in the air shortly,” the pilot drawled, and with that the plane began to inch away from the terminal.

Jessica was asleep before it reached the sky.

*

When she awoke several hours later needing to use the bathroom, Jessica was thoroughly confused to find a gum-smacking woman with perfectly coiffed hair in the aisle seat beside her. The space had been empty when she’d fallen asleep; while her memory had been fleeting and blurry ever since the accident, Jessica was one-hundred percent sure of this fact. Whoever this woman was, she hadn’t been there before take-off, and while the teenager knew there was a probably a reasonable explanation for it-- maybe the woman been stuck in a middle seat and had leached onto the end one the first chance she got-- her sudden appearance still set loose butterflies in Jessica’s stomach.

Unclasping her seat belt and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, Jessica said to the woman, “Um, excuse me.”

Without a word, her mystery seatmate stood and stepped out into the aisle. Jessica’s heart was thudding in her ears as she slipped by the woman, and her stomach was still doing back-flips when she stepped into the empty restroom and locked the vinyl door behind her.

“Get a grip, Jessie,” she said out loud; her voice came out raspy and weak.

Glancing down at her watch, the girl was almost disheartened to learn that there were still more than two hours left in the flight, and as she sat down on the narrow toilet, Jessica was struggling not to cry. She had never genuinely disliked flying, but all of a sudden she hated it. Her white-blonde hair cased in sweat, she took a deep breath and shut her eyes, wishing for time to leap forward. Why did her father have to live all the way in Los Angeles? And why did she have to acclimate to his life? He could have come to New Jersey, sacrificed his glitzy job and carefree lifestyle for her. Woodbridge wasn’t far from New York City, and Jessica was sure that he could have found some new career there, started fresh. He could have done something selfless for once, but instead he’d chosen to have Jessica come to Los Angeles, broken and alone, without enough consideration to even come and accompany her on the flight over. He’d simply called the day after the car crash saying he’d booked her a plane ticket and that he would see her soon. No condolences, no grief, no flicker of sadness or solitude. Jessica knew that the divorce fourteen years ago had left her father bitter, but the least he could do was show some kind of compassion. If not for his daughter, then for the mother who had raised her. It didn’t matter if they’d parted on a distinctly sour note. The present could not be erased by history; whether he liked it or not, Grace Keegan was the first love of his life. She was the mother of his only child. She deserved better.

As the plane suddenly began to rock, Jessica snapped her eyes open and scrambled off the toilet. She shut the lid and pressed down on the flusher, then leaned over the sink and slapped soap into her hands. As she turned on the cold water, she caught a glimpse of herself in the smudged mirror. Her bone-straight hair was flat and limp, and her cheeks were pale and hollow. Even her clothes seemed strangely lifeless, the pink of her t-shirt faded and her blue jeans turned a shade of acid grey.

“Dad’s gonna love me,” Jessica muttered, rubbing her hands dry on the worn cotton of her shirt.

And as the words hung in the air, she suddenly realized something: she didn’t want the flight to land, because once it did, she would be forced to face her father. The butterflies promptly burst back into her stomach, and with a heavy feeling in her heart, Jessica swallowed the frog in her throat and started back to her seat.

[Avery]

Way uninspired today. Haven't written since last night and dunno when I'll write again.

WC: 10,410

[Avery]

I have 18,600 words right now, and hopefully I'll get above 20k today. Last year at this point I was almost at 30k. It kind of wounds my confidence. XD

[Avery]

I'm feeling really uninspired right now. ;_; I haven't written today and I'm not sure I'll feel like writing tomorrow. :/ I'm really beginning to doubt/hate my story. I should have done a plot with more action...

[Avery]

I had a huge burst of inspiration after midnight, and now I'm up to 25,000 words on the dot. ^_^ My plot is beginning to get back on track, too. =D

Here's a small excerpt. It's really a mess stylistically (writing at 2am does that to you!) but I still kind of like it. x3 Basically, my MC (read my synopsis up the page if you're confused) is in 2008 at the moment and has decided to look up info online about what became of her 1988 persona. And... she does not like what she finds. BTW, Katharine is her best friend, and Matt is Katharine's younger brother.

SPOILER: Click to show

Feeling markedly discouraged, Jessica tried yet another combination of words... and this time, she hit the jackpot. The only problem? It was a horrible, unlucky jackpot.

It was a news article, old and rambly, buried deep in the archives of an online chronicle. The date-stamp in the right hand corner was almost ten years old, and the headline was blearily tragic: Decade Later, Still No Clues in New Years Slayings. At first when she clicked onto the piece, Jessica thought there had to be a mistake, some innocuous explanation for her keywords turning up the page. But then she began to read, and quickly, her entire body grew numb and ice-cold, and as she read, the girl was struggling not to vomit all over the laptop and desk.

Because it wasn’t a mistake; she’d gone searching for 1988 Jessica’s fate and had come up with a solid answer. A horrible answer, but an answer nonetheless.

Hardly able to breathe, Jessica scrolled down the page and tried to make sense of the words, but she could only manage to comprehend the first few lines. Everything beyond that was gibberish, alien. Wholly unbelievable and yet so frighteningly plausible. Her throat raw and tears stinging at the back of her eyes, Jessica tried to look away from the screen but was unable to do so; the few lines that she could read played repeatedly in her mind:

Still no clues or solid leads have been unearthed in the now decade-old murders of three Los Angeles children in the early hours of January 1, 1989... the bodies were discovered by the mother of two of the victims in the family’s ransacked house... the killings appeared to have taken place during a botched home burglary... Katharine Thompson, 17; Jessica Keegan, 16; and Matthew Thompson, 7, were found bludgeoned to death on the kitchen floor of the Thompson house... several items were found missing from the home... while numerous persons of interest were questioned following the slayings, the Los Angeles Police Department was never able to make an arrest...

No. No. This couldn’t be right. She couldn’t be... Katharine couldn’t be-- the little boy, Matt, couldn’t be... they weren’t murdered! Deaths happened, but murder... people you loved and cared about weren’t murdered. You couldn’t be murdered. Murder was something reserved for the evening news, faraway people in distant places.

Dizzy and nauseas, Jessica didn’t even realize that she’d passed out until she woke up on the floor.

Yeah. x3

*kinda feels like no one even reads this thread* Ohwell...