NaNoWriMo Begins

So, on day three, and I’m on track. Well, by my personal plans I’m way behind, but for the daily ‘write this many or you will fail’ tracker, I’m going strong.

Just a brief synopsis of my plot for now, and then I have 7,000 words to somehow pluck from my brain this afternoon!

It’s essentially the story of Cinderella, except told from the point of view of the Prince. He’s under a lot of pressure from his parents- the King and Queen- to marry a suitable girl, but he’s far too naive, and, just to add another twist, far too gay (yes, I am making this a novel with LGBT*QA characters, bite me) .  He sees this boy at a ball and instantly ‘falls in love’ (I don’t believe in love at first sight- attraction at first sight however is totally possible), but he leaves, and being Cinderella, drops his handkerchief with his initials sewn into it.  Prince Edward is heartbroken, however his sassy sister Elizabeth (named for the Bennett), and young Lady Anne, begin a quest to find the mysterious and very cute boy.  Edward’s parents persevere in getting him married off to Princess Katerina of Andalusia, and she isn’t too happy about her fiancee gallivanting  about Greenwich Palace.  Will young love triumph, or is Katerina going to ruin everything?

Also, it’s set around 1650-1680, so I’m channeling my inner Phillipa Gregory and trying to be historically accurate, but it’s difficult to write when your characters can’t even say ‘shut up’ to each other. Damnit why do I make everything twice as hard as it needs to be.

OK, so that’s what I’ll be tearing my hair out over for the next month, and I’ll keep the blog updated every 10,000 words or so! Wish me luck, and don’t be afraid to send me angry messages if I fall behind! Let the battle of literature v common sense commence.

Studio Ghibli Worship Plans

I have plans…

We need to have a day (maybe two) of straight Studio Ghibli movie watching. *whispers* probably online, because I have the movies somewhere in Hong Kong and I cannot be asked to get them, so my conscience is clean somewhat, and I also want to buy the original artwork DVDs from the Studio Ghibli store in the future, so, meh~

And then, after each film, we can rant as much as we like about them, or just cry. I’ll do both, probably.

When I (or would you like to tag along?) go to Japan, I’m going to visit the Studio Ghibli Museum. Which I think will become my home. Since I’ll never leave.

Game plan or what?

Not forgetting that that much fangirling will be done during and between movies. I’m thinking of making you (and anyone who wants to tag along) watch every one of my favourite SG films. Including ones I haven’t watched since childhood for fear of becoming a train wreak solved only by contact with Totoro. Be warned.

~ Persephone

I have many passions in life

Ok, so obviously I want to be a writer, and that’s not going to change, I’ve always loved reading, I think it’s an incredibly personal experience that no other media can even begin to rival, it can make you feel so intense – next to real life, in my opinion, and it’s the best form of life experience. We all know that going through things makes us who we are, especially hard things.

Reading has saved my life on many an occasion, I owe my life to people who are alive, making stupid vlogs, and to people who died many hundreds of years ago. Hell, I owe my life to people who don’t even speak the same language as me.  I’m going to dedicate my life to making sure that reading what I’ve written saves people, even if it’s just one person, one solitary person reads my book and thinks ‘you know what, I think I’ll wait around a little bit longer’.  I don’t care if a million people pick up my book and say ‘well this is a bit shit’, because like I said, I just want one person to read my words and stick around for the end of their story.

Let me get back to the original point of this post, which is that, as much as I love reading and I love writing, I also love film.  I’ve made, and been involved in making, several short films about various things over my short life, and the idea of capturing an emotion and literally showing it to other people has always seemed like another level of magic to me.

To conclude, I am going to spend the next few weeks, maybe months, we’ll see how it goes, filming the vast majority of my life, and trying to make some kind of sense of it.  If I get anything decent, I’d love for you to do the soundtrack (Sephy, that’s you), I’ll even sing for it, with my horribly untrained and low voice, but I reckon’ I sound alright, I’ve got a lot of enthusiasm anyway, and that’s what counts.  Anyway, I’ll keep you updated on my project, and we’ll see if it ever gets good enough to go up on our blog! (Edit by Sephy: I’m not really composing material, but for you, I’d try *whispers* we may need a Mac though – and a keyboard.)

I guess I’m just trying to figure out what I want to do, because, as my Mum said the other day, ‘You’re not the kind of person to sit back and let things happen, and there aren’t many people like you, you’re going to do great things’.