a new novella

After Sarah left following breakfast this morning (eggs and toast, though I had oatmeal), I fixed coffee and sat down at my laptop and began writing. I finished a short story, and then I decided to expand that short story into a 150-page novella, and I hammered out eighteen pages. It is called "A Dream For Us", and it is the story of a boy and his struggles through the nightmarish wasteland and corpse-laden trenches of love, and it becomes a sort of nihilistic and hopeless manifesto before being totally blown apart in a way the protagonist does not expect. In the writing of this story, I am drawing from experiences in my own life (past, present, and perhaps future) and applying them to a fictional character. In most stories of this type that I have read, the protagonist is "Good" whereas the antagonist(s) are "Evil." This stark contrast between the antagonist and protagonist is ridiculous, because even the best men have their darkest secrets. The protagonist in this story is both noble and corrupt and both pitied and despised. It's somewhat similar to my last novel, where the protagonist is initially portrayed as this noble, wonderful man, but as the story progresses, you come to find that he's actually a selfish bastard--and yet you still cheer for him and hope for him and sympathize with him. It's quite fun to write. It's the nature of humanity, though; my characters are not cardboard cut-outs but rather are filled with all sorts of goodness and wickedness mottled together in a paradoxical balance; and in this way it is a reflection of the true nature of man.