NANUQ – Week One – Day Two

I am very excited about writing this story. I gone through the notes and chapters I wrote previously and there lots of great stuff there. My biggest change right now is to change the narrative from first person to third. After rereading the first chapter, the first person voice does not sound right to me. The biggest challenge was writing from the perspective of an eight or nine year old boy, and I don’t think I did a good job of that in 1st person.

By the by, I went back to Churchill in November of last year with my wife, my father and his wife. I hadn’t been there in many years, so was very nostalgic to go back see what had changed and what had remained the same. We also saw polar bears. Nine of them over two days. The best was the first pair: two males mock fighting/playing. They had a great time and we caught it all on video. Great times.

Here are some links about Churchill, Manitoba in case anyone is interested:

http://www.churchill.ca/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_manitoba

http://www.tundrabuggy.com/

Here are some of the thoughts I had four years ago when I first tackled this story:

My biggest concern is can I pull this off? Do I have enough talent, ability, and insight into the human condition to make this story ring true? How long will it take? How long—word count—will this story end up being? Will anyone think it compelling enough to read even if I do a good job? Is this story even worth attempting? Is the payoff—the climax of the story—reward enough for reading the beginning? How many themes can I actually work on in one story? Is examining the relationship of a boy and his father without the father present workable? Will having the boy discuss his father with Nanuq make good reading? How much is too much? Or conversely how much do I need to add to make it right? Is my chapter structure of six days good enough? How many flashbacks can I put in and where do I put them? How do I avoid making my characters seem like clichés or one dimensional, cardboard cutouts? Will this story appeal to the agents, the publishers, the readers? I think I can pull it off, but I could be very wrong. How much dramatic license can I take with this story? How much can I fictionalize to make the town, people, events, weather, environment, etc. in order to make the flow of my story work?

Deep stuff, eh?

Continuing on my write of passage,
James Baron