Alpha Heroes - Pictoral Inspiration, Part 1

When I think "alpha hero," about fifty percent of the time, I think of this guy:






Oh, to have myself thrown over those strong, Viking shoulders....



All right, I'm a simple creature. My weakness is Swedish metal guitarists. Or any nationality of heavy metal musicians, really.

Not that I'd run off with one. I just like to look.

I blame it on being brought up listening to Slayer.

Holidays, shmolidays Part I

I wrote a long post about how I don't celebrate most mainstream American and religious holidays. I don't even celebrate my birthday. The conclusion of the post was that I personally find Thanksgiving a holiday of hypocritical origins, bombarded from infancy with the false image of pilgrims and Indians coming together in harmony (that same Native American tribe was displaced by the English settlers not 20 years after "thanksgiving," then warred with them thirty years after that--turns out the Wampanoag potentially feasted with the English in the first place to ally with them in war against a rival tribe).

As I get older, though, I have learned to appreciate the last Thursday in November as a celebration of family, friends and harvest. Though I don't eat meat, and am a firm believer in ahimsa, I'm on board with the idea of family gathering in revelry.

And really, any holiday where pumpkin pie plays a leading role is just fine by me.

NaNoWriMo: The Wall

Only at 2500 words and it's already November 7. And I have no idea what I'm doing with my story.

But hey, first love scene down! I needed to get some words in today, so I decided to write something interesting -- at the end of this scene, the heroine learns that the "hero" knows more than he's letting on.

Not much of an update, but I'm not feeling this "write as much as you can" thing I'm making myself do.

NaNoWriMo: Day One-ish

Well, technically Day 2, since today is November 2.

Have you ever studied so hard for a test that by the morning of the exam, you know the content inside-out. You know it so well that you could practically teach the curriculum to your peers, write a textbook about it, and for sure, pass the test.

Until of course, you sit down at your desk, with the exam in front of you, and you go completely blank. The problems look familiar, but you have no idea where to start. No point of reference, so you panic, and...

Well, eventually it comes back to you. Hopefully before the class period is over.

I spent the week leading up to November plotting.*

*Renee's Plotting: Thinking about the story a lot, researching random but potentially relevant things on Wikipedia mostly, taking few, if any notes. Most importantly, listening to music to set the mood, then getting distracted by one particular album and listening to the whole thing through without giving any thought to why she was listening to it in the first place. Then finally opening up a Word document and scribbling down a few random thoughts about her characters and what she wants to do to them.

Right, so I spent that week doing what I call plotting and other people might call not doing anything at all. But honestly, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to write come November 1. I had (in my head) most of what I wanted to happen planned.

Then on November 1, I looked back over my "notes." I listened to the songs I had queued up. And I felt... nothing. So I played the music louder, which did nothing but anger my partner who doesn't care for my music too much.

I decided that damn it, I was going to write something even if it didn't lead to anything. And I did. And it sucked, but whatever. Five hundred words on a page, and I was done for the evening.

Thankfully, I got back into a groove today with my original plot idea when I made one major change that I'm really nervous about. I changed the perspective of the story from the intended third-person to first-person. This cuts out oh... two other perspectives, for sure, but once I had started writing using the word "I," the words literally fell onto the pages. Well, appeared on the screen, since the screen is upright and things cannot fall horizontally.

So I guess to keep myself accountable (that's what this whole blogging thing is about, isn't it?), I'm going to post my daily word count, total word count, and favorite lines from what I've done so far. I'm going to start from today though, since yesterday's literary vomit is going to sit and simmer until I find something better to do with it. And it also helps me with the awkward conclusions to blog posts, if you hadn't noticed... closing isn't one of my strong points.

November 2
Daily WC: 1,523
Total WC: 1,523
Favorite line: "...if she hadn’t been crying, some might have considered her pretty. She was crying because when I lifted my hand to touch my face, my cheeks, my lips and chin, she did the same."