Ocean in the Woods - Update #2
So, if you missed the first update or want a quick refresher (because it’s been over 3 months... wow), here’s the first update, which has a link to the WIP intro if you want to check that out.
Progress has been very slow, but hopefully now that I’m not in such a rut with a million things to do, it’ll move a little bit faster (no promises, though).
So basically, chapters 2, 3, and 4 are complete and I’ve worked my way up to 10k. It’s a little disappointing considering my original goal was 20k by the end of June and we’re already a few days into July and I only got halfway there, but I already knew that goal wasn’t realistic.
Chapter 2 is called Side Affects of Burnout and is sort of a bonding chapter between Arthur and his younger brother, Aiden. I like this chapter well enough, but I think I put this too early in the story and didn’t do enough to drive home the fact that Aiden and Arthur have a strained relationship before having them bond. However, I’m not all that worried about fixing that because no one is ever going to read this book. I was considering putting it on Wattpad in the beginning, but I’m actually perfectly content with, uh, not doing that.
With that said, here are some fun little excerpts from Side Affects of Burnout, featuring Lance’s intro to the plot (not very many of the excerpts are well-written, I kind of gave up on editing as I went a couple weeks ago and have some passes to do before I keep going):
I had Lance in my first period, and I knew he wouldn’t notice that something was off with me. Usually, he was pretty oblivious to the rest of the world (in a very well-intentioned way) unless someone told him something was going on. He was the odd one out in our group of friends: the only one who checked the typical boxes. Cis, straight, and white. The rest of us were oddballs in school, but Lance was the oddball in our hearts.
He was folding paper airplanes out of post-it notes when I walked into the classroom. His hair was sandy blonde, uncombed, and he was wearing cargo shorts with a Darth Vader t-shirt. I was almost positive he had seen a maximum of two Star Wars movies.
“Hey,” he said, “what’s up?”
“The usual,” I said. “Sky. Clouds. Trees.” I sat in my chair next to him. Mr. Nelson didn’t assign seats, but everyone always sat in the same place. We were drawn to routine.
“That’s good,” he said, nodding, “if the sky is still up, then the world’s doing alright.”
I started out the story with Lance being somewhat of a comic relief, but I think I’m already beginning to feel some tension building up in regards to everyone labeling him as oblivious and stupid. He’s really sweet and I think he notices a lot, but just doesn’t say much about it. Here’s another section where everyone quips at Lance for being a himbo:
“Afternoon, lady and gent,” he said, sitting across from Maya and nodding at each of us respectively.
“It’s actually 11:30am,” Maya said, stealing another fry from my plate. “Labels and time in general are useless if you refuse to use them correctly.”
“Smartass,” Lance said through a bite of his sandwich. “I was just trying to be nice.”
“And I was just trying to spare you the humiliation of realizing you were wrong on your own,” she said. She started bouncing her leg after she was done stealing my fries, not knowing how to do nothing.
“He wouldn’t’ve realized on his own, Maya,” Ollie said, setting their tray down across the table from mine. “He doesn’t wear a watch or check the time.”
Vanessa, as usual, wasn’t far behind. “Lance, can you even read the time?” She was joking, of course. We always joked with Lance that way.
“Of course I can,” he said, sitting up straighter, “I just choose not to.”
And now, some of the Big Sad with Aiden and Arthur:
But the silence wasn’t horrible. I didn’t ask him to give back the water bottle I’d handed him, and I didn’t ask him why he’d been crying, and I didn’t ask him how he was tired enough to fall asleep sitting up (I also didn’t ask him to move when his head ended up on my shoulder). I wanted to be a good brother. I didn’t always need to know the details.
I love them so much and I’m kind of desperate to explore their relationship more, but so far all this book is teaching me is that I do not know how to manage all these subplots alongside the major plot of killing a monster. I’m pretty sure this’ll be the last fantasy book I ever write. Here’s a snippet of a one-sided conversation while the boys are waiting for water to boil so they can make mac n cheese.
“Hey, you can talk to me,” I said, trying to be gentle and quiet without letting my voice get pitchy. He didn’t look up, but he nodded again, his face lost in his sweater sleeves.
It was different, seeing him like this. I was so used to the Aiden that was always either smiling or sarcastic. I probably hadn’t seen him sad since he was a little kid, scraping his knees on the driveway and losing the watch he got for Christmas. He would breathe fast and panicky back then, when something went wrong. Now his breathing was slow and controlled, albeit shaky.
So yeah. At the end of this chapter, Aiden sees a girl out the window (who is Ocean, but he doesn’t know it yet) and he goes to talk to her and bring her water, and we move on to Chapter 3: River Runner. In which Ocean basically guilt trips Arthur into helping her fight the monster she brought there.
“I wasn’t mad about you not understanding my problems,” she said, standing up to follow me. I ignored her and kept walking. “I was mad at you for just sitting there and not knowing what to do besides ask stupid questions. I’m mad because you know there’s something wrong and you don’t care.”
“Why should I care?” I asked, walking faster. She would follow me all the way back to my house if she wanted to. “I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t know you and I don’t care, so handle this on your own.”
“I don’t know how to do it on my own!” she shouted, cutting around a tree and walking beside me. “I don’t exactly dedicate my life to putting myself in danger and fighting evil creatures and saving the world.”
“So why do you expect me to do it at a ten minute’s notice?”
“You’re impossible.”
“All of this,” I said between my teeth, stopping in my tracks and closing my eyes, “is impossible. You—I was never supposed to meet you. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me.”
“Well it did. And there’s no taking it back now,” she said, stepping toward me. I opened my eyes, then. She was right about my height, maybe a little bit taller than me. “There is no supposed to. There’s only did and didn’t, do and don’t. And you have to decide which one you’re going with, because there is a right answer. And if you choose the wrong one, I’ll find someone else. You’ll be the boy who did nothing.”
I didn’t like how she could twist words and use them to make me do things. I didn’t want to help, but I didn’t want to do nothing.
“Fine, then.”
Pretty much all of River Runner is these two idiots yelling at each other, minus the part where Ocean is trying to open a portal. I won’t be putting an excerpt of that because it’s still extremely messy and that scene needs to be rewritten.
I only just started Chapter 5: Her and the Sun, but I’m liking it so far. There’s a lot of Maya in this chapter, including another mini description of her. Maya might be my favorite character in the book, honestly. I’ll leave it to Arthur to explain why.
She was crazy in the best way a person can be, I think. Where my mom would call me a little over the place, Maya would be in a thousand places at once. She was everything and everywhere and she could be everyone, too, if she could be.
For almost as long as I could remember, Maya and I were partners in crime. She led us into dozens of disasters and got us out of each one, too. Like when she helped me shave my head after I told her I was trans (but before I told anyone else) and told my parents there was a huge wad of gum in my hair.
“Trust me,” she told my dad, fourteen with huge eyes and hair that could compete in size with anyone else’s in the neighborhood, “my sister tried to fix it and this is a huge improvement.”
Maya’s sister is a hairdresser, at the time, but she had no idea what we were up to. Maya was just so convincing that no one bothered to check in with anyone else.
So, that’s pretty much it. Not my greatest writing, but at this point any words are good words, you know?
Click here to buy cool stuff my friend and I designed, where 100% of the profits go to the Black Lives Matter organization!
Click here to read my most recent poem
Taglist (send an ask/message if you’d like to be added): @brooklyn-etc @coffeeandcalligraphy @my-lifes-one-big-critical-fail @kozyisa-tries-to-write