April 13 - Over 9,000, characters, and plotless psychology.

So far, I am at over 9,000 words as far as the progress of The Week of Dreams goes. (And yes, I deliberately phrased that to reference the "over 9,000" meme.) Everyone I know is impressed. Actually, I'm impressed, too. I don't think I've ever made progress like this before. Hooray for progress.


I may have only gotten this far because I've been sick this whole week. I've stayed home from school every day this week (except on Wednesday). That gave me the time to write. (It also gave me the time to goof off on the internet, watch Doctor Who, make scarves, go to the doctor, excessively text message my friends, and buy They Might Be Giants and Legendary Pink Dots albums, but I obviously refused to let that stuff interfere with my writing.) I could say of this story that it was "conceived in health, born in sickness". Though that's a bit too flowery, even for me.


I'm so far at a point where all the major characters have been introduced - Chris (everyman narrator who hides his fantasies from everyone else), Keith (mentally ill painter who wants to explain everything), Tackett (cheerful and eccentric but also serious keeper of Chris's dreams), Frell (joking, regretful keeper of Keith's dreams), and Avalon (Chris's dead ex-girlfriend, reincarnated in his dreams, loving and sad). Actually, these would seem to be the only characters in the story. So yes. The main ones are the only ones. Except for Chris's mother. She shows up at the beginning and a few times towards the middle, and at the end, but there's really not many scenes with her. She just...exists.


My main concern with this story is whether or not it's going to have much of a plot. The trouble is, I'm calling it a "psychological fantasy" right now, and "psychological" things tend to be low on plot because they're too busy being "psychological". This is one of the reasons I got into fantasy - so I could actually learn how to construct a plot. It seems to be turning counterproductive on me. However, I will construct some kind of plot (for example, one of Chris's innerworlds suffers from an invasion of moths - inspired by my bedroom's current infestation of moths and my general dislike/fear of those insects - and they must find the source, which also has a real-life source manifesting itself as a metaphor). And furthermore, Chris will have real-life concerns that he must decide to choose over his fantasies.


I really am excited about writing this, though. I really am. And after finishing this blog post, I'm going to go to my moth-infested room and keep writing.