The year is starting off with a whimper.
I did some random planning early on,
then in October I got down to it and
started worrying about the elements of the story. My goal this year is
to write a story about a guy (Sid) who's content with his life. That
doesn't last when he meets a girl (Dina) who's in town with a
travelling carnival. She encourages him to change and maybe he will.There was an unhealthy peppering of debris along the side of the road, and there was also Sid.And thus, it begins. |
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| Well, early this morning I started. The
first lesson was that it's been too long since I last composed fiction. Oh my. I'm rusty.
I'd forgotten how many different ways there are to say the same thing.
But, after meeting Sid on the side of the road with a flat tire I got
through his finding the case that will start his journey. |
| Chapter 1 is completed. I ended up going
into way more detail than I wanted about the workings in Sid's trophy
shop. Since I've never worked in or even visited one I had to make
everything up. This, of course, does little to give any knowledgeable
reader a sense of realism. I should check on the names for trophy parts. But, we got to meet Sid and Owen. Not much detail about either one, far less than about how to glue two pieces of Lucite together, but Sid let know Owen about the case he found. Owen wonders if it's full of money and after a couple tries the chapter ends with Sid reaching Dina on the phone. Chapter 2 introduces Dina, who's excited to be talking to 'Blimp Sid' and she asks him to call her later about the case. Sid gets his tire fixed and Owen tries to open the case in his absence. |
| Chapter 2 is now done. As expected I
dumped tons of exposition in it, things that later on I will try to show instead. Sid takes Owen home
(he lives just a few doors down) and they exchange meaningless chatter
on the drive. When he gets home things liven up as Sid feeds his cat
and himself. He calls Dina who demands he come right over with the case
and arranges to meet him on a nearby intersection. |
| Sid, against his plans, leaves his house
and meets up with Dina at a nearby intersection. |
| Sid tries to give Dina the case and go
back home, but she gets in the car and asks him to take her out to a
coffee shop to get a bite to eat. They get there and she orders the
first patty melt of her life. |
| Sid finds out that Dina works for a
carnival that's in town for the week. When she's done telling him a few
things, she insists that he tell her about the blimp ride, the one that
made him famous. |
| Sid starts telling Dina about the ride.
He'd won a ride to an unknown location through some drawing his wife
had entered. He was taking a little tour of Los Angeles when, as he
learned later, the pilot died and he was helpless inside the tiny
blimp. He was bouncing off buildings in downtown LA, but didn't know if
that was unusual. He was moving with the wind, slowly moving along the
mountains until he reached the Ontario Airport and started noticing
police and news helicopters outside. |
| Sid finishes telling Dina all about the
blimp ride. Chapter four is in the books. |
| Things have been happening, tho not
exclusively with the novel. After taking Dina out for a bite to eat,
Sid takes her home to discover she works for a traveling carnival and
is staying with the other carnies in a small train on a siding. She
forgets her case in his car and when he goes to return it I had a
moment. On his way back to giving the case to Dina Sid stops and asks some guys hanging around outside if they know where Dina lives. Instead of telling him, which is what I'd planned, it occurs to me this guy should say "I'll give it to her." Of course, he doesn't and Dina calls the next day asking about her case. Sid tells her what happened, and after work he returns to the train and meets Dina's boyfriend, Luther. He also gets roped into taking Dina and another carny, Nola, out to see the Hollywood Sign, a hot spot for the visiting carnies. More importantly, perhaps, at work Sid gets a proposal to create some trophies for the Big Train Show. It's about time those words in that order made it into the text! |
| Sid takes Dina and another carney out to
visit the World Famous Hollywood Sign. |
| Sid meets with the woman from the Big
Train Show. He doesn't have any trophies in stock that feature trains,
but they decide he can purchase some model trains and use those to make
some custom trophies.
Sid takes the rest of the day off, goes out and buys the ones he needs,
and heads to the carnival to visit Dina and Nola. He meets Nola, working as Madame Zolari, and Gordon, one of the men who promised to deliver the case to Dina. Nola takes a break, changes into street clothes, and she and Sid go visit Dina at the Twirly Whirl. Dina leaves Sid no chance to refuse to retrieve her missing case, and she points out Stretch as one of the group of three men he left it with. Stretch is the engineer on a small railroad ride that circles the carnival, and the third man is Pedro, who Sid passed by at the entrance to the ride area. Sid talks with Pedro, who's reluctant to help until he learns Sid is one of his childhood heroes because of the blimp incident. He won't tell Sid where the case is hidden, but he will tell Alissa, another girl who works at the carnival. Alissa can tell Sid where the case is, but only after he takes her, too, to see the Hollywood sign. |
| While waiting for Alissa, Gordon talks to
Sid and by the time Alissa arrives, Gordon's talked Sid into taking him
to a hardware store. Nola joins the group, and Sid will be taking both
girls to see the Hollywood sign, his second trip there in as many days.
Gordon wants to come along, too, but Sid takes just the girls after
dropping Gordon off. Sid's been told that the case isn't at the sign, but has his doubts when Alissa begins digging under the fence. Before much damage is done, Sid and the girls are arrested and Sid goes to jail. He's dropped in a holding tank and calls Dina to get him out, but she's deaf to his pleas. In the middle of the night he's released, and walks into the waiting room to see Alissa and Nola. |
| Much has happened. They went back to the sign and reclaimed Sid's car, then he took eveyone back to the train the carnies live in. There he learned the case was hidden in the carnival and, after breaking into that, Dina got it back. Sid began making the trophies for the Big Train Show and was invited to Dina and Luther's room. They teased him and arranged a test of his natural ability to learn how to fly blimps and things without training and had him run the small train that takes people around the carnival. After completing that, they all go for a ride on the Twirly Whirl and while Sid's getting off Dina starts it back up and he's run over by the revolving cars, breaking his arm. Luther sets it in a homemade cast. |
| It would seem I'll finish. The link to the fancy NaNo-Meter wont' let me in, so I'll try to update the graphic later. Sid went to the doctor and had the cast removed. His arm wasn't broken, so he went back to work and Dina and Luther came by for a visit. They talked Owen into borrowing his dad's mini van so they could all go to the Big Train Show, and Sid visited with Dina and heard her explanation of how her case was on the side of the freeway. On Sunday, Sid took the completed trophies to the Big Train Show and met the carnies in the parking lot. |
| Well, I did it. I finished. After meeting in the parking lot, Sid learns Owen is quitting his job in Sid's trophy shop to join the carnival. Everyone goes into the Big Train Show,they split up into two groups, and Sid buys some gifts. Luther's group has discovered they can bet on the winning entries, and Owen has given them "inside" info from the engraving order. The info is wrong, is for samples only, and they lose all their money. Sid's life is empty without Dina and the carneys, and he decides to go off himself and follow up on something Dina wanted to do: search for the source of the LA River. |
(The whole sorry mess)