And so ends November 2010

I got my 50,000 words of new novel done this year, making this my seventh successful nano. This was the year of slow and steady, where I needed the weekends to make up for the lack of time during the week days. I'm fairly pleased with how the month's writing went. I skipped over a few scenes in the beginning, but overall, everything is usable, and I did not go off on any strange tangents. I got hit with lots of surprises, mostly in the character area. I should be used to this by now, but my two intended bad guys failed the evil test and have become good and semi-good guys. One of my good guys becomes a bad guy, but I knew that before I wrote one word of story, so that did not surprise me. There was also an even bigger bad guy behind the not-bad-any-longer bad guys who revealed himself. That was a delicious revelation, because it made everything else I was doing make sense. Mwah-hah-hah.

I never did make it to the big awesome scene I had in my mind. That's still down the line a bit. I will be continuing on the novel in the next few months to completion, though not quite at the same pace.


To celebrate, I watched The Seventh Dawn (1964), with William Holden, Capucine, and Tetsuru Tanba on Netflix instant viewing. I'd never seen this one before, and I really liked it because it had multiple triangles going on -- romantic and ideological, and I am very partial to triangles in fiction. This movie takes place entirely in Malaysia and was filmed on location. It opens in Malaysia at the end of WWII, with the Japanese surrender. Our three main characters have been together awhile and have an easy camaraderie, and complete loyalty and trust and love in each other. After the war, though, Ng (Tetsuru Tanba -- who I know best as Tanaka from You Only Live Twice), heads off to Moscow to study communism. Ferris (William Holden) and Dhana (Capucine) stay behind in Malaysia, where Ferris becomes a very successful landholder and businessman. Ng returns as Malaysia is trying to gain its independence and things turn nasty as his new communist ideals put him on the other side of the line from his former companions. This sets up a nice hotbed for all sorts of my favorite things: betrayal, acting/dying for your beliefs, loyalty, the bonds of friendship, love, rebellion, racing the clock.

What I liked best about this movie was the quite complex relationships of the characters. Ferris and Ng both love Dhana, but Dhana loves Ferris and so stays with him. But he won't marry her, and just keeps her as his mistress, until he realizes too late what he took for granted. A young Susannah York also stars in the film, as Candace, who also falls in love with Ferris, but to my great delight, he actually doesn't fall for her in return. Quite surprising, and very refreshing. The only big flaw is that Ng is not given the same depth of character as the others, and I really wish they'd given him more. It was needed to balance out the sides and show where he's coming from.

Other things I liked:

• this is not a happy movie, and that lack of rosiness really works here.
• William Holden in a sword fight! Okay, it was a machete fight, but that's pretty darn close.
• the on location scenery and real jungle
• leeches!
• William Holden (that almost goes without saying, but I really liked his character in this film)
  

16,000 words and growing

National Novel Writing Month proceeds. Nano has gotten very interesting for me. They don't really talk about how nano changes for a writer each year they participate. The pep talks, etc. all still mostly speak to beginners, or first time nano'ers. They don't talk about how easy nano gets after you have a few under your belt. Or maybe it doesn't for other people? Maybe it's just as hard for them on their tenth as it was on their first?

Not for me. Maybe because I came to Nano originally as a more experienced writer, but once I learned that writing 1,666 words a day can not only be done, but done pretty easily, that particular challenge was gone. I've successfully completed six nano's before this. Achieving word count is not really an issue. The last couple times, and this year in particular, I've become pretty lackadaisical about nano. I don't stress and stay up until eleven or twelve at night just because I need another few hundred words that day. I don't get that thrill or that excitement or that anxiety anymore, not about the month itself. About the story I'm writing, yeah, but that's a different thing entirely.

Nowadays, nano is about maintaining discipline. More than that, it's about understanding story and storytelling. About what makes a good story, what each scene needs to do in the small individual picture and in the big picture. I am not fond of writing crap. I don't have time in my life to spend November writing crap that I'll have to spend the next year re-writing into something decent. That's just a load of road apples. If I'm not writing usable material right here, right now during nano, that is on track for my goals for my novel, then there's no point in participating at all.

And so I throw out a lot of words during nano, and I tend to write pretty sparse when I write this fast anyway. I delete extra adjectives and phrases I know I won't keep in a later draft as I go. I had a scene started the other night that I was ready to end, when I realized nothing had changed in the scene. It was informational only, and the character was in the same spot at the end as at the beginning. So I deleted about four hundred words, re-thought it to make it an actual functioning scene, and re-wrote.

And that's how this writer's seventh nano session goes. It's no longer about the word count, it's about getting the story as close to right the first time through. That's the challenge now, of staying on track while moving at the speed Nano requires. And all that Nano talk about just keep writing, allow yourself the freedom to suck... that is dead-on right to encourage and create successful first time nano'ers, but it could not be more irrelevant or annoying when you're down the line. I keep waiting for the "So, you've done this before, eh? Well, now, let me tell you what your next nano challenge is going to be and how to beat it." But no one writes those pep talks.

Maybe I should.

Interesting.

Of novels and movies and opera, oh my

Work on my new novel, "The Traitor," had stalled out a few weeks back, mostly because I couldn't hear the voice of one of my lead character. I realized why yesterday. He's a she. I had the wrong gender. Now, she's not only talking to me, but large chunks of the novel rotated and fell in place. They had worked fine before, but they work better now, with the whole change in dynamics that the gender change brings. Now, I can't wait to get back to it.

My movie watching has slowed lately. Must be the back-to-school season. There seems to be a hundred things to do every day right now. But I did watch another couple of Tyrone Power films I hadn't seen before. The Black Rose and Prince of Foxes.

I've always liked Tyrone Power, though I don't have a crush on him, nor is he one of my favorite actors. But I have a great abiding affection for him. As I've been watching these films lately, I realized part of why that is.

He belongs in opera.

Seriously. Tyrone Power is everything I look for in an opera tenor, he simply lacks the singing voice. He's certainly got the dark handsome looks of an Italian tenor, particularly in some of the period films I'm watching, but more importantly, he's got the personality to play all my favorite opera tenor roles. And that's a hard one to explain in words -- spirit, a certain joy in life edged with darkness but not cynicism, bravado in the face of death and pain and despair -- but Tyrone has the necessary operatic ingredients in spades, where my favorite actors do not. Sometimes, my family has fun casting our favorite operas with movie stars from certain eras, or genres, or even from specific movies. I don't think we've actually done Golden Age stars, but if we did, I'd pick Tyrone Power for the lead in most of my favorite Puccini and Verdi operas. There wouldn't even be any contest. Tosca, Butterfly, Turandot, Girl of the Golden West, Rigoletto, Masked Ball, Traviata... he'd be absolutely perfect in a movie version of any one of them.

Tyrone Power in Prince of Foxes... could easily be the Duke of Mantua about to start singing La donna è mobile in that outfit

As to the two films I watched, both were entertaining, but I much preferred Prince of Foxes. The Black Rose had some good parts, but was brought down by the female lead, who is supposed to be the Black Rose, but looked about 12-years-old. She was very innocent and earnest and sort of cute in a daughterly way, but really. As a love interest? As the titular Black Rose??? Weird casting decision. However, Jack Hawkins played Tyrone's best friend, and he's much fun.

And then there's also Orson Welles. He got all the best dialogue, and he really makes up for the lameness of the rest of the movie. (Tyrone plays a Saxon, pissed at the Normans, who gets in trouble at home and splits with a caravan of goodies bound for the Far East. Ends up fighting for Orson Welle's charasmatic, but bloodthirsty Mongol warlord as one of his captains, gets imprisoned in China, then ultimately returns to England with gunpowder and other technological info... which he gives to the Normans.) Welles is also in Prince of Foxes (part of why I chose these two films), and has quite a bit of the best dialogue there too. Orson Welles is a compelling actor to watch at any time, but he makes these very intelligent, but decadent and conscienceless characters, quite fascinating. What better actor to pick to play Cesare Borgia in Prince of Foxes?

"I was thinking." - Don Estaban
"Good. Practice makes perfect." - Cesare Borgia (Welles)

Orson Welles and his calculating stare

Prince of Foxes was the far better film. It was better written, better acted, better scenery, better action, and I really enjoyed it. (Tyrone plays Andrea Orsini, working with the infamous Borgias at conquering Italy until he falls in love and has a change of heart and decides to lead a revolt against the Borgias, which doesn't exactly go so swimmingly.) Man, Tyrone Power sure gets himself in trouble in his films, doesn't he? I'm starting to think there isn't a period film he was in where he doesn't get either seriously wounded or tortured. The actress in Prince of Foxes (Wanda Hendrix) was like some blonde Gene Tierney knockoff. Wide set eyes, prominent cheekbones, big lips and overbite. Not perhaps so much in a still shot, but in action, when she talked, all I could think of was Gene Tierney.

That wishy-washy feeling

So, started a new novel, currently titled The Traitor, a couple weeks ago. I was getting fair daily word counts in before vacation, and now need to get back in the groove and start making some steady progress.

Problem is, I've still got this Latin-flavored mood running rampant through my head right now (thanks to Gilbert Roland) and that doesn't jive with the original concept of the novel. Doesn't help either that I keep listening to scores like Horner's The Mask of Zorro, which is perpetuating Old California motifs and not letting me get into the right headspace.

And the bigger problem is that I have this incredible urge to write Cisco Kid fanfic right now. I can't help it! I've finished watching Vol. 2 of the Gilbert Roland Cisco Kid movies (reviews of those later), and I just adore him in this role. His Cisco is cocky and irreverant, and he handles everything that comes his way with easy self-confidence and my writerly brain just screams out to write him a story where that gets taken away. Where his happy little world of tequila and women and saving the day from unworthy villains crashes down around his shoulders. Because I desperately need him in a meatier story, where the villains aren't so eye-rollingly stupid and his sidekick isn't strictly comic relief.

Which, considering my novel starts with my hero's happy little world crashing down around his shoulders (well, duh!), these feelings should be satisfied by working on the new novel.

If I could get back working on it.

And that means getting my brain straightened out. I need to stop sitting at the piano and composing Spanish-flavored melodies. I need to return the Cisco Kid dvd to Netflix and stop watching Gilbert Roland movies and his really fun guest star appearances on Zorro on youtube. And I desperately need to stop hearing my hero's dialog in Gilbert Roland's accent. Or I need to embrace it and start hearing everyone else's lines that way too, LOL! -- there is that option, I guess. Hm.

And I find this current dilemma extremely vexing because it's so unsual for me. The voice of my hero is one of the first things I hear, it's one of the things that drives the creation of a book... and in this novel, despite the planning, despite the solid images in my head -- I can't hear him clearly. And it's driving me crazy. So, I'll just keep writing, cuz I know where the plot's going, and wait for him to find his own voice.

"Hey, little one, stop fighting it, eh?
I'd make a great hero in your novel."