NaNo Results 2020: Moebius

In November of 2020, I began my fifth NaNoWriMo book, then called MoebiusWar. The goal, as usual, was to write 50,000 words in a month. I wrote 34,000, several thousand of which were cut. It was the first NaNoWriMo where I failed the goal I set myself.

Now, two months later, it stands a finished novella at 37,000 words. Better late than never, huh?

You can read the final product, Moebius, here on WritersCafe.

Moebius is the story my friends and I built while we were teenagers. We were obsessed with it. We filled notebooks with characters and locations and storylines. We even made action figures for the characters out of colored pipe cleaners. The universe of Moebius occupied our minds day in and day out. It was our fantasy world, our creation.

Over the years, that world faded away, and other concerns and story ideas occupied my mind. But in the summer of 2018, I got nostalgic for the old days of carefree adventure, and that November, I wrote MoebiusQuest, a return to the first book I ever tried to write back in the day. My goal was not to produce a masterpiece, but to reclaim the teenage enthusiasm that kept me daydreaming in this world. I filled the story with nonsense, with jokes and cringeworthy prose, just like I used to do as a teenager. It was junk food, something to enjoy and then toss in the trunk.

In the summer of 2020, I once again felt nostalgic for the world of Moebius, so I decided to write the sequel, which my friends and I had actually spent more time on than the first book. I looked back at our old notes, picked a bunch of characters, constructed a timeline, and then when November began, I went at it.

In the beginning, I thought it was going to be nothing more than another MoebiusQuest, so I picked an equally cheesy title, MoebiusWar. As I wrote, I found myself surprised at how the characters and the world were coming to life. And when I was done, I realized this was not merely a sequel to MoebiusQuest; this had become the best story I have written yet. The jokes and cringe were gone, replaced by serious emotional themes. The whimsy felt like a part of the world rather than an author’s indulgence.

This isn’t another piece of self-indulgent junk food. This is everything my teenage self dreamed Moebius would be, and more. This isn’t MoebiusWar, the sequel to MoebiusQuest. This is Moebius.

It is not lost on me that this series will never be published. My dream is to share my stories and ideas with an audience, and maybe even make a living off of it. So I am making the decision right now to say goodbye to the world of Moebius. It has given me hope, inspiration, escape, and nostalgia. Now it is time to take what I have learned, the skills I have practiced and discovered, and channel them toward real books. I have a far-future speculative sci-fi in the works, and I’ve been getting ideas for a dark fantasy I might start putting more attention into. The time is coming when I will have something to submit to publishers. Someday soon, it will happen.

If you would like to read Moebius without having to push yourself through MoebiusQuest, I have included a 1-page review of the plot and characters after the prologue of Moebius to catch you up to speed. Happy reading!

Mockery: A Fine Line Between Healing and Abuse

Happy Holidays, and welcome to 2021, the Year of Healing (fingers crossed). In the spirit of that optimism, we are going to talk today about an essential ingredient of healing that I have been avoiding like the 2020 Plague: mockery.

For many years, I have believed that mockery of any kind is abusive, and any positive effects it might have can be achieved by actions of a more nurturing type. But this changed last month, after I was mocked by one of my friends. They did not intend it as mockery, and they were not aiming at me, but that was the way the cookie crumbled.

I’d had the mother of all existential crises brewing inside me for years, and that incident, combined with a cascade of others, forced me to face my inner Cthulhu. And in that confrontation, one of the things I have come to realize is that sometimes what feels like harm can actually be a blessing in disguise.

Some people mock because they want to hurt others. Some, because they feel insecure inside and want to feel momentarily superior (like me). Some mock because they want attention. Entertainment companies mock bluntly and offensively so that the shock keeps the dopamine dollars coming. But sometimes, on a precious occasion, you find someone who mocks out of love.

Mockery is like a hammer. Anyone can swing it around and break things, but it takes someone with skill and care to strike the nail. Mock someone in the wrong way, and they could end up in a worse place than they began, their fears and torment reinforced. But with just the right amount of delicate pushing, mockery can push someone over the hill of discomfort and into a place of healing.

If we can face a little bit of mockery, we will become more resilient to the bad kinds of mockery and more accepting of the good kind. When a bit of our silliness or cruelty is pointed out, if we are able to chuckle at it, it becomes smaller and easier to overcome. It does not have to be an act of self-hatred, as I have so long felt it to be, but can, in the right circumstances, be an act of self-love.

I want to become a person who can use mockery to learn and grow, and I think the best way to start is to practice on myself. After all, if I can avoid shattering the world’s most fragile snowflake, that’s a sure sign I’ll be good with anyone.