Gunmetal Gray is the project that has captivated me for two years. I don’t remember how it started. I think it started from a dream of a soldier coming home to a family all ready distracted by pain and sorrow. I distinctly remember that the dream featured Gerard Butler.
It was a good dream.
From that dream, the idea of GG germinated in my head. My sophomore year in high school, I decided to take part in my first National Novel Writing Month. I didn’t have to decide what my NaNovel would be; I knew even before I signed up that I would write GG. I wrote 50,000 words of a terrible draft. I won NaNoWriMo, but I hated my story.
I abandoned GG in April and then again in the summer, because I couldn’t stand to think of how I had failed. The characters and setting weren’t right. Themes weren’t there. The wrong things were emphasized. I was ashamed of it.
Last August, I started to think of NaNo again. I told myself I didn’t know what I was going to write, but that was a lie: GG had no real competition. This time, when I wrote GG, I had a cast of new characters and a new setting. One of my favorite main characters showed up in the story on the first day of NaNo and refused to leave, and I love him for it.
Gunmetal Gray isn’t anywhere near done. It won’t be anywhere near done for at least another year. But right now, messy as my draft is, I love it more than I ever have — it’s right where it needs to be, and now that I’ve figured out what it isn’t, I know what it is.
