NaNo Day 9: You Never Expect Your Story to Break Your Heart

November 9th, 2015

Two minutes left till midnight… and I can’t write anymore tonight. I went into tonight’s session feeling optimistic: I rewarded myself with a movie after work for hitting my word goal yesterday, and I felt renewed and ready to hit the book!

I didn’t expect it to hit back tonight.

I wrote 544 words. And at the end, I was left on the verge of tears, as a side character I wasn’t expecting to give much importance to opened up to Nicholai. I learned what it was like to be Braum in his childhood when he first moved to Solara. I learned that he lived in fear of prejudice because Solarans believed the people of the Northern Continent were barbarians. He told me, us, what it was like to come home and find his animals slaughtered, and to live in fear that their vegetable garden had been poisoned.

Just over five hundred words and I had to stop. I didn’t have any words. There was nothing I could say, nothing Nicholai could say. The world is one I created, and I knew it was a cruel world, but my heart still aches for Braum. His story today felt like he’d reached out from the pages of the book and slapped me across the face. As if to say “Fuck you. You’re the god in all of this. Why’d you have to let it happen?”

For those of you who aren’t writers, allow me to give you insight into what it’s like (Or at least what it’s like for me) :

I am a god. I create entire worlds all for the sake of telling you about the lives of a handful of people. But every person that inhabits the world I created- all the nameless faces and single line speakers- every single person still has a story. Because I created them and now they are alive. They are alive inside my head and inside the head of every reader who envisions a character of their own inside my world. All of them exist, even if you don’t know about them.

As a god, I can pick and choose who I want to be important. I can pick and chose whose prayers I answer. I can choose who lives and dies.

But even in my own world, where the readers may see me as omnipotent and omnipresent, there are still those who surprise me. There are still those people in my little world who do not let my will be their fate. They do not let me control them. Braum’s story today reminded me that I may hold the reigns of the story, and I may dictate where it goes, but he doesn’t have to be happy about it. He can still fight tooth and nail to defy me, even if it winds up being futile in the end.

Braum won tonight. A character of my own creation bested me.

So tonight, I will give him his victory. Tonight we both shall rest.

Total Word Count: 16,270

Next Word Goal: 25,000

Happy writing, fellow gods.

~Abby Rose~