NaNoWriMo 2020 Blog Series!

Hey everyone. I know it’s been a couple weeks since I’ve posted and that’s because I didn’t have the draft of my Lord of the Rings fanfiction and was too lazy to start the new draft…

Sinks low into chair

But anyway, here’s my announcement and blog post! In case anyone here doesn’t know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writer’s Month and for the last two years I’ve been trying to finish it. This year I have a really good idea and want to go through with it. So we’ll be interrupting our regular schedule for this month and I’ll be doing a bunch of writing posts! I do have a proposed schedule:

November 2 (this week): Discussion of my novel idea

November 9: LotR fanfic update…

November 16: Updates and excerpts

November 23: NaNoWriMo special edition of A Writerly Chat

November 30: Final update and goals for finished (or possibly unfinished) project

I’m going to try to write my short stories in advance so I’m not scrambling on some Monday when I have about five billion words left for my daily word count ;P

For now I’m going to lay out my story! My premise is a Rapunzel and Peter Pan fairytale retelling mashup. After reading an annotated version of the Rapunzel story on Sur la Lune, I was inspired to write a Rapunzel retelling because I feel I don’t read enough of them. But I had very few ideas, so I was thinking how I might change it. I was thinking of other fairy tales I might incorporate and came up with the idea of Peter Pan!

(Side note: Watch the 2003 movie, directed by P.J. Hogan! It’s really phenomenal, much better than the Disney version, and is more faithful to J.M. Barrie’s original story. There’s more I could say, so I’ll just have to do a review later.)

Once I had these two ideas, it was extremely easy to come up with my somewhat-tagline of ‘Peter Pan flies into Rapunzel’s tower and whisks her away.’ Working with that, I had to delve into my theme. I wanted a Christian look at the effects of premarital sex, something I’ve never considered writing about before. However, I feel it’s an important issue and fits the story well.

Once I’d taken on those important issues, I wanted to figure out what to do with Rapunzel’s mother. I wanted to keep the original story’s interpretation of her as an evil character, but I wanted to walk a fine line between Disney’s traditional evil witch and a too-sentimental villain. The solution was very surprising–poetry.

Edgar Allan Poe is one of my favorite poets, and I was doing some research on his poem ‘The Raven.’ The way in which the narrator is filled with grief for his lost love Lenore (ooh, alliteration) and descends into madness always inspired me and I decided to apply it to my character. Rapunzel’s mother, named Calliope, turned into a fae woman who lost her daughter at a young age and, after catching a young man stealing greens from her garden for his pregnant wife, follows him to his house and becomes a nurse for his wife. His wife is very young and doesn’t want a baby, so when she gives birth Calliope adopts the baby and raises her as her own, hiding her from the world. She is often gone on long missions for the Fae Court, so when she comes back and finds her daughter missing (ooh, what?) she starts slowly descending into madness. To complicate matters she believes she’s visited by her dead daughter in the form of a sparrow (is she?).

Then we have Sage. She’s our Rapunzel character. She loves Calliope and believes she is her true mother. She lived in Calliope’s bewitched house until she was twelve, when Calliope moved her to an old fae tower in some ruins. Since her mother is often gone and Sage has no way to escape, she becomes melancholy and suffers from depression.

Then we have Tarik, our love interest. He is our Peter Pan-ish figure. He’s a banished prince–his kingdom was taken over and he fled with a few of his friends into hiding. He’s not broody (totally) or angsty (ok, maybe a little. Just picture a much less horrid, annoying, EVIL version of Zuko from Avatar and that’s kind of him [DISCLAIMER: I am currently in the process of watching Avatar: The Last Airbender for the first time and just finished the first season. I am currently hating on Zuko–don’t hurt me PLEASE])

I have so much stuff I have to do in November, especially writing-wise, but I’m confident that even if I don’t finish, I can get a lot done with NaNo this year. As a finishing treat, I’ll give you the opening page of my novel and at the end, we can compare.

Calliope padded up the softly creaking stairs, into her library. Shutting the door, she locked it and looked down at what she held; a doll with a stained face and well-loved dress. She sank into a padded chair, laying the doll on her lap.

Calliope used to come up to her library with Lenore, and they’d read books of old fairy tales together. This very doll–Lenore had named her Nula–had rested on the stacks of books, her painted smile content as she’d guarded mother and daughter.

Swallowing a sob, Calliope reached over to a propped-open book of fae poetry and moved the doll onto the table, resting the book on her lap instead. Thinking about Lenore wouldn’t bring her back, and she had things to do.

The book wasn’t dull, but Calliope couldn’t focus. She shut it, marking the page with her thumb, and looked over at the small shrine tucked into a corner of the library. Two framed photos, one of Lenore and one of Calliope’s husband, rested on a scattering of rose petals, glowing like an aurora from their enchantments.

Memories seemed to radiate from the shrine. Calliope had lost her husband, Linden, just before she’d found out she was pregnant with Lenore, only a short seven months. He’d been playful and sweet, with a thoughtful, almost scholarly side that could astonish one if they weren’t used to him. 

Lenore had been born in Calliope’s grief, a well-needed balm in Gilead. She’d been a beautiful baby, with downy red hair and eyes akin to a winter morning. As she’d grown, she’d manifested Linden’s sweetness and reflectiveness, but with a heaping of spunk. She’d always loved dolls and pink, but loved climbing trees and going on horse rides with her mother just as much. As she grew from baby to toddler to adolescent, Calliope loved exposing her daughter to new things; once, when Lenore was three, she’d gone on her first boat ride and on her sixth birthday, they’d hiked a local mountain for the famed ‘winter waterfall.’

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