NaNoWriMo

The Violinist

That’s right: I, like many others, am attempting NaNoWriMo 2010! For anyone who cares, and for myself, I’m going to update this page regularly to keep track of my burgeoning novel. That means a general plot outline, character lists, etc.

To discover more about my story, click to the right under “Pick a Category” and select “NaNoWriMo” –>

20-second summary: The story begins with the encounter between two men just after the siege of Budapest, when the communists took over Hungary in 1962. Andras, a fallen nobleman and violinist reduced to playing violin on the street, and Andrei, a russian soldier racked by guilt but lacking courage, meet once in the entire book. Imagine their meeting as a sort of short story, split into three, and placed in the beginning, middle, and end of the book. In between the parts of this scene, the main bulk of the book is each man’s story of how they got there, to the deserted, ruined street in Budapest. The thing is, their stories, while existing at different times (Andrei is young, Andras is old) and settings, are remarkably similar. What I’m going for here is to explore how war and other factors can make enemies out of people who would normally end up friends, or at least on neutral/good terms because of their commonalities. That sounded like some BS crap, but [I hope] my writing won’t be like that. But that sums up one of the main themes.

The warriors are portrayed as noble and just, but the 'heroes' of the Iliad become their own opposites.

I got the idea to do this story while reading The Iliad in class–the two main characters, Achilles and Hector, are really similar, but their societies tell them they must be enemies. Neither man wants to kill the other, but there’s a sort of unwarranted, almost made-up hatred that spurs on the aggression between the two. Also the idea of having a situation where no one is the hero occurred to me. In the Iliad, people say there are so many noble heroes, but really most of them are, by the end, completely animalistic, without values or any moral sense whatsoever. I think that when you switch off your moral compass-type-thingy, you forfeit the chance of becoming a hero[ine, as applicable].

So that’s my deal. I’m thinking I’m going to try and make a time line of the whole thing, because it kind of jumps around. A lot. Hoping this will work out 🙂

So I present to you: