So I’m writing a book. I began the dry run of my October novel yesterday and eked out an 1,800-word chapter. This, if you’ll recall, is the book about “terror” or at least that was the initial germ that started the idea for this thing back about a year or two ago.
It’s hard to say what this book is really about or where, exactly its going. The idea for the book was initially spawned, as are about half the ideas I come up with, by background noise going on around me - namely the war on terror and the war in Iraq generally; but more specifically sporadic news stories based Guantanomo Bay and Abhu Garib (sp?).
Here, American soldiers had once again found themselves on trial (My Lai incident anybody) for torturing prisoners of war (although not prisoners of war in the standard sense of the word - I believe the word the mainstream media used were either “persons of interest” or “detainees”
The whole thing got me thinking, namely wrestling with the questions of legality and morality of torture and/or humiliation of our enemies. I still haven’t arrived at an answer or strong leaning one way or another. There is a rational and moral part of me that says “no, no one should ever be tortured.”
Yet there is another part of me, the uglier, animal side of man, I imagine, that thinks, “Well true, but the families and friends of the people who died in the 911 attacks didn’t need to be attacked in this way either, full retribution ahead for any and all of the fuckers even resembling Al Queda or Taliban. Make them all pay and make them all pay dearly. Take’em into a back room and don’t leave bruises.”
But that is only one germ that started the original idea for this book. Somewhere around the time I began to imagine this book, I’d also recently read two of my all-time favorite books, Lord of the Flies by William Golding and John Dollar by Marianne Wiggins. This infused the theme of children and survival into my idea.
At this point, all I can do is see where these take me.
On the practical side, writing of the first chapter came fairly easily. I began with the description of Piedmont academy, just because (depending on where the story goes) the academy could almost be a character in and of itself. I had fun screwing around with some historical facts, imagining that a school of this sort would have to be steeped in history.
And lastly I threw in the bit about Eunice “Goody” Cole because her legend, or at least the theme of persecution, specifically false persecution, will probably end up being a main and resounding theme of this novel.
At least that’s my intent. That’s all I have for today.
Total word count - Ch 1- 1,895
Total word count - Ch 2- 344
