NaNoWriMo 2023 Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver: The Conclusion

I would be remiss to exclude my feelings with this project, this year's NaNoWriMo, this Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver. The feelings, all of them, intense ones too, are all over the place. The truth is, I really don't know how I feel or where to begin.

I could begin in 1999, November. I wrote the original story then. I was living in Southeast Portland and working for the Cascade Pacific Council, Boy Scouts of America. I was 27. I was very unhappy, and for the life of me now, I have no idea why. I was unhappy with work. I thought I was a sellout. But being a sellout, as such, doesn't seem that bad of a thing to me now. I felt like a fraud working for the Boy Scouts too. I didn't like Southeast Portland. All I wanted to be was a writer, even if I didn't know what that meant.

NaNoWriMo 2023, part 3

I have so many feelings right now with my NaNoWriMo manuscript that I am really unable to order them. It's really the reworking of Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver that I'm overwhelmed with. I did not feel the way that I do now when I wrote the original story 24 years ago.

Twenty for years is such a long time.

I was thinking about things the other day when we went to the Veteran's Day Parade. I was thinking about it because so much of my current novel and all the novels that involve Sam Foley, the main character of Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver, has so much to do with being a veteran. Specifically, a veteran of war. I suppose all veterans deal with their part in the war in different ways. I say this, because there is nothing more unattractive to me than seeing old men wearing the uniform of their younger selves like they're trying to prove something. I mean, most of us were in the military for short amounts of time, 2 to 4 years mostly. Why try to relive that? It puts me off.

NaNoWriMo 2023, part 2

I have been to Vancouver, BC only twice. I was there in November of 1999, and that visit was only twenty-four hours. Admittedly, I did so much during that visit that it seemed like a much longer time. And, as the case was, I was alone during the road trip to and from, so I had ample time to think. Also, I faithfully wrote everything down upon my return to Portland.

The second time I went to Vancouver was a year later in November of 2000. That trip I was with my girlfriend at the time, and one of my best friends and the three of us visited another friend once we got there. The second trip to Vancouver, needless to say, was vastly different than the first. I found myself taking everyone around to various sites of my first visit, but I did not tell any of them why.

NaNoWriMo 2023 Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver

What more is there for me to say, I'm participating in NaNoWriMo again this November. It is the third NaNo event I've done this year, as I did Camp NaNoWriMo in both April and July. And like the former two, I'm doing a complete rewrite of an old novel.

This month, it's Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver. There are a few things worth nothing as I'm getting into this. First, I wrote the initial story in November of 1999. It was, in fact, a story about 24 hours I had in Vancouver. I had gone there for a quick get out of town, and since I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time, Vancouver, British Columbia was not so very far away. I wrote the original in a period of about 2 days. It wasn't much of a novel, properly speaking, being just over 17,000 words. It wasn't even much of a story. But I also wrote it 24 years ago, and things for me have changed a great deal.

Since I rewrote Exile in July, Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver is now the oldest manuscript I have. I think I always wanted to rework it, but I never knew how. I think in the past, I thought I would just have to go into it and work little bits out. But as I've been in the business of rewriting old work this year, I have found that it is a completely new thing. After all, The Cataract of last April retained only the setting of the original piece I wrote in 2001, and I didn't even read the 1993 Exile before I completely rewrote it.