Here comes the pain, baby. Here comes the pain.

Hello, November.

Here it is, people -- the true test of this blog. A chance to read a novel as it's written. And, if I'm still able to type, there's be a few extra commentaries along the way.

Case in point: a quick study of a central character to this novel, Awya Sabayon.

She's an artist, much like an "Awya" that my brother once knew in Melville. "Sabayon", on the other hand, came up in discussion at work today. It's a Linux distribution which, to my understanding, loads itself from a bootable CD completely into RAM.

In other words, she's a minimalist. She tends to throw away anything she doesn't need, and live light and free. However, whenever there's a change involved, she goes into packrat mode, and pulls together everything under the sun. You know... just in case. Then, once she settles down, the process begins all over again.

I don't know if this is a good idea, but I like to create a character through "noise cancellation". I give them an odd and outlandish trait, and then I think of a reason that it doesn't really show itself real life. In Awya's case, it's probably because she's always living slightly in the future, so she's always holding on to a bit more than she's comfortable with... even if it's the same amount most people would consider normal.

Back in the computer analogy, I suppose she'd be thrashing with her cacheing, but fortunately, humans have a more robust design.

All right. One main character down, four to go.

Too bad I had to start writing today.