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I'll definitely finish NaNoWriMo this year. 800 words to go, and the novel may be at a good stopping point. The antagonist is on Mars and will die there, as he takes the lander back to the command ship in orbit. The MC is about to re-start training for the next Mars crew, where he'll have to compete with a crop of younger and better educated recruits. And he is comforting the heroine, who has just learned she is infected with HIV and has a son with cerebral palsey. There's more to this story, but I don't think I'll be able to wait until NaNo 2010 to write that story.

A moment for a very beautiful sequence of photos from Hubble. These cosmic perspectives are what keep me writing science fiction. Daily life may be mired in crud, but the view of another star, galaxy or universe puts it all in its proper place.

I'm not posting new NaNoWriMo chapters till the end of the week. Incoherence is striking earlier than usual, which I guess is what happens when the Internal Editor is scared away. Still writing, though work-related stuff and writing for that has had to take priority the past few days. The previous entry, although from a different time period from my novel, provided the background for a new character, so there's much to mine in that direction.

This little fiction is about the years before the Cultural Revolution. I need to research more, but maybe this could be a slice of life moment of writers trying to come up with a fictionalized slice of life.

( For the Revolution )

I just didn't have any ideas coming into NaNoWriMo this year. Well, I went back over my Musemuggers stories and picked out a few that I could expand upon, particularly the Vietnamese Wizard story. I thought I could do a fictionalized memoir based on events in my travels and in Laos during the month.

So yesterday, I went to the fifth year birthday party for the son of a friend. Their house is small (according to the Lao proverb - "Small house, Big heart") with my friend's family (her and her husband and two kids) living in one bedroom and her mother with some of the older grandchildren in another room, and one of her brothers and his family in another bedroom, so probably 12 people in this tiny house. The front room was maybe 15 feet long and 10 feet wide and was just filled with their families and children. I told my friend, there weren't enough children in the room and it took her a moment to realize that it was a joke. She had been cooking all day and trying to run after the children. "I think I'm a little tired of children," she admitted.

In the middle of all the action, one pregnant woman and her son entered the room. The son must have been about four and he clung to his mother. He looked very sad and only brightened a bit when his mother gave him some balloons. One of the older boys teased him and he banged the balloons on the boy's head which got everyone laughing, including our friend. In the corner, three older girls were gossiping and I started watching one of them, who seemed kind. Well, we've got a ready made love triangle now. And combined with another Musemuggers story nugget, I think I've got a plot.

We'll see how the month plays out. So far, so good. I was telling myself that I do have to exercise at least five miles of walking/ day which is pretty easy and beautiful in Xieng Khouang. Today, I've been particularly inspired so I've been pretty much writing since the morning. I missed the first hour of NaNo here as after I returned from the birthday party, I just crashed.

Here are a couple of my images from the party:


Our hero, Daeng, whose real name is Thoummy Vongprasert. He is very attached to his mother and has trouble being separated from her for even short periods of time when he is young. This makes her irritated and she pushes him away, which makes him even more insecure. Then one day, he suffers the ultimate rejection from her...



Our heroine, Boua, is on the left. Her full name is Bouavan Silamphanh. She is two years, and two grades older, than Daeng and becomes his protector in school. In spite of resistance from her family, she does well in school and receives a scholarship to study.



And our antagonist, Vongsamay Vilaysouk. He's a goof-off and as he grows up, he becomes a bully by accident as some of his pranks go wrong. His father is the village chief and many of his relatives are well-off business people and government officials.

1. Science fiction story, set in near future, when Earth has exhausted its resources to send rockets into space. All of a sudden, people have to adjust that there is no way out via the stars. The secret is kept to prevent riots and despair. Real bummer of a story.

2. Expatriate who has lived in Asia for twenty years, returns to the US to find that she's absolutely culture-shocked and although she plans to return 'home' as soon as possible, her trip is delayed when she is diagnosed with a fatal disease.

3. A continuation of the story 'The Violin' about a concert violinist who gets stranded in a distant city on Pluto when her own dome is blown up by a group wanting independence for miners. She is not only cut off from her life in music, she also can not get off the planet to join the Earth Symphony orchestra.

4. 'Anger' - story about a Vietnamese sorcerer who can not control her powers because of her anger. She returns to her home village in time to be on the road for "Tet 1968"

5. An alien is living on Earth with parents who have been programmed to believe that she is theirs. Her key to communication with her home work is a plastic baby doll - but it has lost its AI and they are both in peril.

6. A family on another planet adopts two Earth children. This planet had defeated Earth in a war, leaving many orphans, most of whom live on the street. The family considers the adoptions to be one way of seeking redemption for their planet's agression and providing opportunities for these young children who would have no hope for the future otherwise. However, the children's own trauma stories and needs lead to conflicts with their adoptive parents as they search for their families and their own identities in the rubble.

Well, it's starting to be the fun time of the year. Well, NaNo-writing wise. Thinking of all sorts of delicious plot ideas during Oct. Which one to choose? Of course, by the end of the first week, I'm grasping at straws and ended up not finishing last year.

My challenges this year - a home office visit during the last half of the month and a delegation visiting our project the first part of the month. How come they have to descend on us during November? Shouldn't they be at home, working on their own NaNo-projects?

The plum trees are starting to blossom. A few flowers are out in this picture on 28 December. I'll keep taking pictures over the next few days as the buds open.

I kinda crumped this year. I've always been exciting about NaNoWriMo, both with the actual writing as well as the forums. But this year was just too frustrating - a lot of stuff at work, too much stress which destroyed my imagination. I finally decided I had to let it go, the writing that is.

I think all of the above will be under control in 2009. The work situation will be changing and I hope I can carve out more time for myself.

Right now, the training activity we're doing now is under control and there's a patch of sunlight in the back yard that I'd like to sit in for a bit.

What I saw this morning



Inspiring.

Last year's NaNo was a total blur. I had a lot of work, traveling from South to North. I had a lot of opportunities to scope out the location of my novel - but it was quite a blur. The aliens landed in northern section of my country, along the route of Route 7, near Salaphoukhoun. My protagonist went to visit her family, but also to try to find her friend who had disappeared. She was afraid that her friend had followed her husband, who had a minor wife, and was going to do something dreadful. The husband appeared, a changed man but he had not seen Bao. Suddenly, Laura learns that many people who had been troublemakers and not very nice people had suddenly changed and they were good people now.

So she sets out to XK with a doctor who's organizing immunizations. Their truck breaks down, and they have to spend time with the villagers, in the damp haze, beyond which, something is lurking.

At that point, people started walking back and forth aimlessly. The aliens never quite appeared, or people thought they were ghosts. Then they disappeared and the fog went away. There's only the burnt grass, pulverized rocks, and some strange artifacts left behind. When they go through the material, they realize that the aliens had left their garbage. "There's only one thing we can do now," Laura said. "We have to figure out how to follow them."

Well, that won't be the plot for this year's book.

I'm thinking of a story that occurred about five years ago. A man was out hunting and discovered a cave with many Buddha images. I'm moving the story to a neighboring country, where the images were hidden in 1970 so the KR could not find them. The protagonist is not a good or a bad man, but at the time of the story, in the late 90's, he is struggling with his past while trying to make a living. Hmm. This could be interesting.

Going for a walk, to contemplate what I'm going to do.

Well, it's after midnight here, and I've started and am now 535 words into a story that I have not planned out at all. It's kinda a combination of the various ideas that I've been thinking about. In five words it's about:

Aliens invade poor developing country.

By that, I mean all kinds of aliens. Right now I have Laura (who's Lao) and Bao (who's Hmong) staggering up to Bao's house in Fresno, California. The door is open a crack. What happens next?

Yawn, I think about it tomorrow.

The storm clouds are forming for the change of seasons here in Lao PDR. At the same time, thunderclouds are forming in my brain, igniting plot bunnies with strange energy to jump around, recombine and generate new story ideas.

It's just a few days before NaNo and I have no idea what I'm going to write.

Sound familiar? I just hope the plot bunnies don't eat me out of house and home and that they don't scare the cats too much.

Strange but true - I finished my NaNoNovel, Rate of Exchange. Some sections, especially towards the beginning, weren't so bad. But since I had many non-writing days in the middle of the month, I had to scramble by writing 5000 words/ day for the past seven days. Worked out all right though - finally word count was 50,007 words. I still have to unscrambled parts of the last five chapters before I dare to post them here - drek is one thing, but there is a limit to what one can put up on El Jay.

Next week is the monthyly BIW, or Book in a Week challenge so I signed up for my usual 100 pages. There are some sections of ROE that I could really get into, expanding on the cultural issues on Sovan (my planet of choice for the book), and more about the political situation, relationship between Anicca and Bounthavy and more about the student leaders.

The subplot that I liked the best concerned one student who felt extreme guilty after his friend was beaten to death so volunteers to do an unspecified assignment in the mines. He learns a lot more than he bargained for. I'm going to have to do a little research on deep mining before I rewrite that section.

This is where I'm writing from, Salavan Lao PDR. The house is off the main road, next to the ancient airport where planes no longer land. Thought I'd post a picture so this blog is not all words.

I couldn't keep my eyes open till midnight here, so I woke up at 5 and started.  The first chapter turned out being difficult to get started but its there.  Just writing helped me to figure out what happens next, and I got a few themes out - the relationship between the sisters, the political conflict is hinted at, the scaring of the planet from the mining exploitation, the sense of some problem by the scene taking place in a hospital.  Anyway, it's written and flocked - and very rough.  I'll have to look at it later today.  In the meantime, I'm going for a run by the river.

I'm trying to decide if I can stay up until midnight. It's not like there's tension building in the crowd as waves of anticipation overtake the hordes. There are just my cats, milling around and the usual neighbors playing the continous game of Petanque. The most exciting thing that has happened since I got home tonight was that my landlady's grandson just backed up into the metal gate at the head of the driveway, knocking it off its tracks. I can't quite figure how to weave that into my NaNo story.

Or maybe it will show up about halfway, just when I'm getting really desperate.

In the meantime, I figured out how to use Google docs to post directly to this El Jay. That's a geeky kinda thing to do, but last year I did a lot of typing directly into this journal. Google docs does have a better word processor. Just don't say anything political, or make sure it's in code. Good thing we're not in China.

Enough of this blather. Back to character development.

What's that?

I've updated my info on the NaNo board and have said "Hi" in a few of the forums.  Laurie, in "Mad Challenge" has been posting some warm-up drills.  November is on the way.

I actually have an idea this year.  Recently, I read the obituary of the woman who had been convicted of being "Tokyo Rose", spent a few years in prison before being released without a comment and finally pardoned by Gerald Ford.  Iva Toguri D'Aquino had gotten dragged into this position when she had returned to Japan to take care of her aunt and could not return to the US (she was an American citizen) after the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor.  Because she knew English, she found work in a news agency - originally doing research but then recruited as one of the many women known as Tokyo Rose, although she used the  name Orphan Ann.  She married another expatriate Japanese (hence the Portugese name).  At the end of the war, correspondents had been fascinated with her and she apparently bragged that she was Tokyo Rose  probably to try to make money.  Instead she was arrested and returned to the US, tried and convicted of treason.  When she was released six years later, her husband had disappeared and she was constantly under threat of deportation.

Insteresting story.  A second story is that of Aung Sang Suu Kyi, who also had returned to her home, Burma, to take care of her mother and had gotten swept up in the pro-Democracy struggle.  She went on to lead an opposition party which won the elections in 1988 but was not allowed to take power.  The Junta which had ruled the country since the late 40's, declared martial law, arrested the leaders and placed Aung Sang Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the last 18 years.  They have offered to let her leave but she has refused, knowing that they would never let her return.  During her time in exile in her own country, she has been a beacon of hope in the region.

The idea for my story - two sisters return to the home planet of Savanh to take care of their aging mother as she prepares to terminate.  While they are there, they renew old friendships.  The older sister, Anicca, is a university professor and meets with her former colleagues and students; the younger sister, Sarita, tries to set up several businesses which all fail.  There is a coup and both sisters are trapped on their homeworld, which becomes suddenly alien to them.

So, like last year, I'll post my chapters, on friends lock, as I write them.  Anyone wants to be added, just leave a comment on this post.