The Butterfly Defect

711 words qualifies this for flash fiction. I wrote this by hand last Friday while sitting in a waiting area for an appointment.

As I closed the door, the bag of trash tangled itself between my legs such that when I turned to walk down the steps from the stoop to the street, I tripped, falling forward towards the stairs, the bag flailing chaotically around me. A small tear formed in the bag as it was jerked violently skyward, which served to launch several small objects in a graceful arc over me, some of them falling harmlessly around and some hurrying to meet me on the sidewalk below.

I momentarily recovered from hurtling towards the concrete, regaining control of my limbs when my foot planted itself firmly on the hard marble ball I was discarding – a gag gift I received during last week’s white elephant office gift exchange. Newly off-balance, the lateral force of my fall began as I rolled off the marble and launched the projectile down the sidewalk, rolling down the hill my apartment entrance lies atop. In a crash, my shoulder had the good fortune of landing on the trash bag, its torn side splitting under the pressure of my impact with it, divulging the rest of its contents in a splash of debris and trash from my home office.

I righted myself to a sitting position and heard the faint intake of air into the bag now that my weight was off it as I watched the marble’s impressive progress down the hill towards the cards stopped at the intersection at the bottom. My only saving grace now is the crookedness of the sidewalk that guided the marble through the occasional irregularly-shaped edge of a yard, the grass and dirt taking away from the velocity of the ball almost as much as gravity added.

I sprang to my feet and chased the errant ball cum missile down the block in the faint hope that I might prevent it from impacting against the side of the car waiting for the traffic light to turn, its driver obliviously leaning her head on her hand, her elbow resting on the open window frame. When I saw that no more patches of grass or jutting bits of yard remained between the marble and the woman’s Subaru, I ran headlong down the block with only slightly more guidance than the marble had on its journey.

By the time we got to the intersection, the ball was once again traveling at least as fast as I was after my downhill sprint. The ball fell off the curb and bounced far higher than I would have expected, aiming – like I was – directly for the woman’s window. As I leapt next to the car, I reached ahead, fingers outstretched, trying to catch the marble or at the very least deflect it so that it doesn’t cause any harm to the innocent bystander. Miraculously, the arc of the bounce led the ball through the open driver’s side window and the open passenger’s side window touching neither car nor driver in its traversal. I was not so lucky, my forearm catching the roof of the car as I launched myself upward. The drag of my arm started the aerial pirouette that sent my ass over my teakettle and my teakettle over the surprised driver and her car.

My shoulder touched the roof of the car as I rolled over into oblivion. “Oblivion” in this case was the name of the product displayed prominently on the city bus advertisement that I crashed into a moment after the errant chunk of marble. I took what felt like a slow slide down the side of the public transportation, looking around enough to glance at the faces o surprised pedestrians and drivers all around, among them the Subaru woman who was closest to the blur that crossed her vision a moment before. I landed on the street next to the bus with only the chunk of marble to break my fall – and my third and fourth rib on my right side. The Subaru driver was out in a flash and at my side, tugging on my arm to help me to a sitting position and making sure I could feel every broken bone and bruise I received since I walked out my front door thirty seconds before.

And that’s how I met your mother.

My Reading 2009 #2

The last book I blogged about was Dirty Play. I think that was before NaNoWriMo.

After that, I finished Hyperion by Dan Simmons on about December 15. In a word: Epic. I liked it a lot. I would like to find out what happens after the events of the book. It seems like the author spent a lot of time telling the reader about who the characters are. The question becomes: Then what happens? I want to know.

After Hyperion, I went for something a little shorter: Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris. This is the story of Hannibal Lechter and how he became who he was in the Silence of the Lambs. It was well researched and the story was complete and entertaining. It had its moments, but it wasn't overtly gory or hard to get through.

Critique Me

Does anyone have an interest in critiquing my 2008 NaNo first draft? I need some critical feedback on it. I would classify initial feedback as "good, but really biased." If you're not sure what I mean, read what I've been told and by whom:

My mom wrote, "Wow! I just finished all 77 pages. It really held my attention. [...] Did you give it a title? I can see it turned into a film. Compelling."

Shelly (mother of two of my kids) wrote, "Very good! Kept me reading til the end. I couldn't stop reading it once I started...geesh."

Shelly also said a few more critical things about pacing and some story content, so it's not like it's all praise. My intent is to take it to a second draft next. To get there, I need to know what's wrong with it, what's right with it, and what needs to happen to make it better.

Getting back on the horse

Not that I've been thrown off or anything. The story is still pretty fresh for me, but it has been nearly two weeks since my last writing session. Tonight's writing session was spent more in trying to figure out a good point to begin expanding the climax and dénouement, followed by a little bit of writing. I'm currently working on pages 98 to 100 out of 110, I reached 351 net new words, though some words were removed in the process of cleaning up the text and getting started.

December 9:
Words today: 351
Words in December: 351
Words total: 64,412

Where From Here?

In general, I'm more satisfied with the story I wrote last year for NaNo, even though it's around 10k words shorter than what I wrote this year. This year's story just isn't quite what I would think of as finished, even as a first draft. I mean, it does tell the whole story, but the climax is dull and lifeless at this point, and my style of writing changes midway through. The dull climax problem is an issue to fix in the first draft. The writing style changes will be addressed in the second.

So what do I do? I am looking for people to give me comments on my story from last year, and I'll take a shot at a second draft of it when I hear back. In the meantime, I'd like to work on putting some more detail and action into the climax of this year's story. I don't like the fact that I haven't written anything in nearly two weeks. With the pressure of NaNoWriMo gone, I haven't set aside time like I did in November. Even an hour a day would be a huge step forward for me. I could probably get another 20,000 words a month written if I did that.

That sounds like a goal. Hmm...

2009 Word Count Graph and Useless Statistics

Here is my word count graph for the month:

The NaNoWriMo site added a gray bar that shows your goal for each day. This year, I didn't skip any days until the very end after I declared myself "done," which is a good feeling.

Some useless statistics:

Average words per day: 2,288.7

Median words per day: 1,944

Minimum: 251

Maximum: 7,642 (on the last day!)

Number of days where I wrote: 28

Total words written:

--> 64,061 according to Word;

--> 64,088 according to NaNoWriMo;

--> 64,019 according to counting the individual words

Number of unique words used: 5,535
Average number of times a word gets used: 11.6
Most used words: The (4,196), To (2,180), And (1,860), She (1,331), Her (1,230)
Most used meaningful words: Kaylee (596), Room (243), Door (223), Going (177), Time (162)
I used 2,653 words only once each

I wrote this year's story in present tense, which was a challenge sometimes. Several times, I had to go back through what I wrote and change it from past tense to reflect that. I'm not sure I got them all, either. I'm also not sure what the rule is about writing something in past tense within the text if you're writing about something now that happened before, and I don't mean in dialogue, either.

As happened last year, I think the story ended too abruptly. Last year's story actually kindof made sense. This year's story, I think there's a different pacing to the last part of the story. The first part is more descriptive and paced. The last part is all crazy-like. This might show what I mean:

Chapter 1: 2,946 words
Chapter 2: 2,218 words
Chapter 3: 3,418 words
Chapter 4: 2,385 words
Chapter 5: 1,656 words
Chapter 6: 773 words
Chapter 7: 1,985 words
Chapter 8: 2,339 words
Chapter 9: 1,959 words
Chapter 10: 2,413 words
Chapter 11: 2,379 words
Chapter 12: 2,317 words
Chapter 13: 2,186 words
Chapter 14: 2,549 words
Chapter 15: 3,823 words
Chapter 16: 3,036 words
Chapter 17: 2,971 words
Chapter 18: 15,068 words!!!
Chapter 19: 7,621 words!

After chapter 17, things changed!

Okay, enough stats for now.

NaNo Day 28

I'm done.

Today was huge. While I was initially going for 10,000 words today, I fell short of that mark somewhat. On the other hand, my story wound down and ended on me faster than I expected. At the end, I do leave quite a bit up to the imagination of the reader, and could probably go back and fill in some of those gaps, but the story is basically whole and complete now. I'm reasonably happy with it, though give me a few months and I'll come back and read through it and let you know what I really feel about it. (Maybe.)

November 28:
Words today: 7,642
Words total: 64,061

Note that the official NaNoWriMo site counts my words as 64,083, a discrepancy of only 22 words.

NaNo Day 27

I honestly don't remember two days ago. It was apparently a decent writing day.

Yesterday, while Thanksgiving stuff was cooking, I reread much of what I have already written, doing some continuity checking of my story. Much of it was good. I fixed a couple oversights and fixed one place where I accidentally mistook one character for another and used the wrong name for a while. Everything seems to be back together now, and more cohesive. I realize this is all in the category of "editing" and is therefore bad during NaNo, but I needed to do it to move forward.

Today after returning from a painting excursion, I put all the pieces together and mapped out not only where everything is, but where it is going and how it reaches its eventual conclusion. The good news is that everything seems to fit well with my last revised outline. The bad news is that it looks like it will take another thirteen sections (many of them may be short) to get there! At the start of NaNo, I was writing one section a day or so. Section 18 ended up being five-and-a-half times longer than a normal section at 22 pages in length. That's about 23 sections written. To have another 13 or MORE to go is seriously daunting!

What all this review and planning means is very few new words in the last couple days, but really, I think it is worth it.

November 25:
Words today: 2,394
Words total: 55,449

November 26:
Words today: 463
Words total: 55,912

November 27:
Words today: 507
Words total: 56,419

NaNo Day 24

Not a good day for writing, though the reason is that I am at a fairly critical point in the story. I need to decide where things go from here, and I have some loose ends to tie up. I'm essentially taking the night off, I guess. I hope to pick the story up again tomorrow and push on. I'm going to have to if I have any hope of making my revised goal!

November 24:
Words today: 368
Words total: 53,055

NaNo Day 23

I have revamped my goal. I am now shooting for a story with at least 70,000 words, and preferably one with 75,000 words. 75,000 words means a pace of at least 2,500 words per day. It also means that with the pace I've gone so far, I'm actually behind. After today's writing, I'm behind by 4,813 words, though to be fair, I'm changing the finish line after having written for three weeks aiming at a closer finish line. Today, I only made it 35 words past that minimum, so the gap isn't closing by much.

November 23:
Words today: 2,535
Words total: 52,687

NaNo Day 22

I crossed the line! I didn't think I was going to make it today, but I did! I'm going to celebrate by doing something that isn't writing and looks a lot more like drinking a glass of wine and watching Dexter. :)

I'm setting a dangerous precedent, though, having crossed the 50,000 word mark on November 22 last year as well. This story is far from over, though, so its word count is likely to continue to grow until the end of the month. Last year, I hit 50,000 and boom, the story ended.

November 22:
Words today: 4,503
Words total: 50,152

NaNo Day 21

As expected, yesterday wasn't a good day for writing. I spent maybe thirty minutes frantically tapping keys while balancing my laptop in my lap. Today wasn't all that good, either, though better than yesterday. Both days were under par for NaNo (1,667 words per day). I spent much of today finishing the migration of http://www.orcsports.com/ to its new home, and trying to reverse the damage done by a hacker to another web site I am responsible for. Each of those cost me several hours today.

Tomorrow is the 22nd of the month, which is the day I crossed 50,000 last year so I am feeling some pressure for a repeat performance. With 4,351 words to go to reach that mark, though, I'm not sure I will have enough contiguous time to devote to writing to make it, but I will try.

November 20:
Words today: 610
Words total: 44,451

November 21:
Words today: 1,198
Words total: 45,649

NaNo Day 19

Very quickly, as it's getting late: Today was a good day, even though I didn't start until late at night. Work came first, then the long commute home, then dinner and THEN I could start writing. The story is picking up and even though I haven't had one of those occasions where I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with the story as it unfolds, I was doing pretty good. I can feel the pace of the writing accelerating, and it's a good feeling. I almost don't want to put it down, but I have to get to bed so I can get up for work tomorrow.

Tomorrow's going to be a long day and I expect I may not even be able to get around to writing unless I sneak some time in at lunch or something. We'll see.

November 19:
Words today: 2,058
Words total: 43,841

NaNo Day 18

I wrote a little while waiting for my son to get done at his appointment. I also wrote when I got home. It was a productive day. I'm to the point where the action of the story can start. Yes, on page 73, the action can START. No, the book isn't going to be some massive huge novel when I'm done. It's just the way this story ended up being structured. It isn't as though nothing has happened up to this point. Honest!

November 18:
Words today: 2,112
Words total: 41,783

NaNo day 17

I haven't tracked my progress in a few days, not because I haven't been writing, but because I've been squeezing it in between other activites, and I always deemed posting here to be a lower priority. I could always catch up, right? Well, here it is a few days later and I am catching up, but I know I lost touch with the feelings I had writing on each day. I know one day I was frustrated, but don't remember why. I know another day I spent more time playing than I should have and didn't bring up the word count. I also know that yesterday I hit exactly 1,667 words, which I thought was amusing (since that's the pace you need to keep every day for NaNoWriMo). Looking once again at my word count, I am very tempted to try to break 40,000 today, but it is getting late and I have a busy day tomorrow. Here's the summary.

November 14:
Words today: 882
Words total: 33,253

November 15:
Words today: 1,359
Words total: 34,612

November 16:
Words today: 1,667
Words total: 36,279

November 17:
Words today: 3,392
Words total: 39,671

NaNo 2009 on Friday the 13th

I woke up late this morning, had breakfast with my girlfriend and my son and then went shopping for paint and supplies. Next, my son and I drove to the house (I think we left Longmont at noon) and proceeded to mask and paint the main bedroom. With a break for a long trip to the pharmacy and another for dinner, we got done with the first coat and cleaned up at about 11 PM, at which time I started writing. I tried the Write or Die site, which I may or may not use again later. I'm not sure it is effective in motivating me personally. Anyway, that explains my word count today.

We're going to be painting again tomorrow, and heading back to Longmont, so I expect my word count for Saturday to be anemic, too.

November 13:
Words today: 1,116 in about 30 minutes
Words total: 32,371

NaNo Day 12

Not a good day for writing. Good day for working around the house. Oh, and cooking. I did some of that today. And I played Everquest with my girlfriend for a while. Now we're going to watch Dexter (Season 2 Disc 4). Tomorrow and Saturday don't look promising for writing, either, unless I do it very late or very early.

November 12:
Words today: 251 (BOOOOOO!)
Words total: 31,255

NaNo Day 11

I started the day surprised to be facing yet another block, but I was able to work through that one as well. I got the words flowing again a little later in the afternoon and moved the story ahead one chapter.

My intent when I started the month was to work on one chapter per day, getting maybe 2,500 words in that chapter. I think I can sustain that pace. I'm at 2,818 words per day right now. I wrote at around 2,350 words per day during last year's NaNoWriMo. After several days, I realized I fell away from the approach not in word count, but in the idea of focusing on one chapter per day. I'm leaning back towards that again now, and it's going pretty well. For now.

November 11:

Words today: 3,003
Words total: 31,004

NaNo Day 10

A much better day. I worked through the block I was having, and got to the point where the next few chapters are laid out and ready to be written. It was amusing trying to catch one of my writing buddies. She had quite a few more words than I did, so I wrote until I caught up. Then I refreshed the page and saw that she wrote more, so I wrote more and caught up. This repeated at least four times until finally I had more words than she did (though not by much). Content with my progress (plus the fact that my girlfriend got home from class), I stopped for the day. I checked back a little while later and saw that she passed me again by just over 1,000 words! Yay for motivation! Tomorrow should be good!

November 10:
Words today: 3,259
Words total: 28,001

NaNo Day 9

More distractions! Today was a horrible day for writing. I don't like the point I am at in the story and am feeling hopelessly UNcreative today. I need to break through this problem. Maybe a change of venue would help. My word count is low. I know I took at least a couple hundred words back out as I continue to sin against NaNo and edit what I have. It's a bad habit I must break ASAP!

November 9:
Words today: 381 (OMG that's horrible!)
Words total: 24,742

NaNo Day 8

Today was full of distractions. I was only able to spend about an hour writing after everything else quieted down. The result: not much progress. I'm actually pretty nervous about the state of my story at the moment. Some things have progressed faster than I wanted them to, and I am not sure there is enough of a story left to tell from this point forward. I will find out soon enough if I am right. After all, NaNoWriMo is only a month long, right?

November 8:
Words today: 1,823
Words total: 24,361

My Reading 2009 #1

I decided to add what I read to this site, just to keep literary stuff in one place. To that end, here are some books I recently finished:

(Some time in the summer): Dune. This was fantastic and well-written. The movies (both versions) and the miniseries don't do it justice. For a sci-fi book, the world-building was amazing and consistent and the characters well-developed.

(Beginning of September): "Girls of Riyadh" by Rajaa Alsanea. Basically, it was Saudi Arabia gossip, though it did give some insight into their culture (from one person's perspective, anyway).

9/16/2009: "The Naked Sun" by Isaac Asimov. It was alright, I guess. I didn't believe a senior investigator would get so flustered by one naked spacer, though. The story seemed pretty innocent and naive, like comparing TNG to DS9. *ahem* Those are Star Trek references. Sorry.

10/5/2009: "Articles of War" by Nick Arvin. Elegant prose; colorful descriptions of a wide variety of situations; and a well-defined main character I couldn't care less about.

10/9/2009: "The Rescue" by Nicholas Sparks (same guy who wrote The Notebook, on which the movie was based). Cute story, but it alternated between feeling like a soap opera and feeling like I'm reading the second or third draft of someone's NaNoWriMo novel, where they're trying like crazy to make their word count.

(The end of October): "Dirty Play" by Sandra Brown. The characters in this book confused me at first, and the author played a maddening game of "I'll tell you later," but in the end, once I got with the tempo, it was a fun little ride.

That's all for now, though I've currently got three books underway. I suspect that November is not a good month for reading, however.

NaNo Day Seven

I'm not going to midnight tonight, unlike several other nights this week. I'm spending some time with my girlfriend instead. I know, "novel concept." Ha ha. Okay, bad pun. Here's today's words:

November 7:
Words today: 5,080
Words total: 22,538

Catching Up

I missed doing this for the past couple days. I must've been distracted by something!

November 5:
Words today: 2,615
Words total: 15,628

November 6:
Words today: 1,830
Words total: 17,458

Scared Myself

I scared myself this morning. I forgot that the very last part I wrote last night was on an earlier chapter. I opened my Word document this morning and Ctrl-Ended to the bottom. Reading through what was written there, my heart leapt into my throat. My most recently added words were gone!

No, not gone. Just not at that part of the story. Everything's alright again! /whew

NaNo 2009 Day Four

Today was rough. I didn't like the way two of my characters were introduced to each other, or the interaction between them after that, so I decided to sin against NaNoWriMo and rewrite part of it. I basically had to address a 2,500 word section of prose and change it around enough so that the introduction of the two characters made sense. That meant that all the interaction between them after that had to be changed as well, though the changes weren't as indepth as I thought they were going to be. At the end, I had exactly 30 more words than before, and the passage made far more sense then.

After that, I was able to add some new content to the story, and embellish a few places that were lacking. All in all, I was still shy of my goal for today, which was 13,333 (par for day 8 of NaNo), but I'm happy with where I am.

November 4:
Words today: 2,381 (net, though there were far more in the reworking effort)
Words total: 13,013

NaNo 2009 Day Three

Today was taken up with work followed by the drive to Longmont for some birthday festivities for my girlfriend's son, who turned 13 today. We had dinner out, dessert at another place, and when we got home we watched a movie together. At around 11:10, I was able to start writing for the day.

After I got done writing and posting my word count on the NaNoWriMo site, I looked at twitter, which brought me to a couple NaNo participant's blogs. They're doing it, so I'm going to do it. In fact, I'll go back and do it for the past couple days all at once:

November 1:
Words today: 5,499
Words total: 5,499

November 2:
Words today: 4,007
Words total: 9,506

November 3:
Words today: 1,126
Words total: 10,632

While my word count is trending down, my morale is good. I'm actually quite pleased about my 1,126 words in under an hour today, especially considering the fact that I GOT RID OF THE HATED PARAGRAPH! The replacement paragraph is a little shorter, but still has a reference to nipples. At least I like this one.

Bad Line

I am totally obsessing over a paragraph I wrote last night. I hate it. I want to take it out, but I want something to put in its place and I can't think of anything to use. No, I'm not going to share the paragraph I hate. I hate it that much. Hopefully something will come to me soon.

NaNoWriMo 2009 begins

I finally started working on the story yesterday. It's the same story I blogged about here in June. I'm actually surprised I was able to sit on it for that long. Hopefully that gave me enough time to come up with good ideas for the plot. We'll see.

Yesterday morning, I woke up just after 7, poured a bowl of cereal and made some tea. I checked email briefly, and started writing. It took me at least an hour, maybe 90 minutes, before I had 70 or so words written because I was coming up with names for my main character and supporting characters, doing a little last-minute research, and reviewing my outline. After that, I went headlong into chapter one. I posted my word count each time it rose significantly, so 70-ish, 140-ish, 380, 800, and so on. I finished the first two chapters of my outline and started on chapter three. My final word count for day one, posted at 11:57 PM (thank you for the extra hour, time change) was 5,499 words.

I did take a couple breaks during the day to grab food, run to the store and play Everquest with Ray - we did the Halloween-themed quests. We also got a visit from the landlord to fix a couple things around the house. I didn't do a lot of the things on my to-do list, like balance my checkbook, clean up my office or finish laundry. I didn't realize until Ray pointed it out that my pajama bottoms were hanging off the TV in my office while the landlord was here! (D'oh!) I put them there when I changed clothes in my office. I was trying to be nice and not wake Ray.

This morning, I woke up with a couple ideas for the story, so rather than open the story document and leave late for work, I emailed them to myself. I checked the NaNoWriMo site and found that since my last update, one of my writing buddies has about a thousand more words than I do. She had about a hundred fewer yesterday. I will have to remedy that! (Yes, I'm competitive that way sometimes.) I'm not sure when I will be able to write today, as I have to work, but I'm sure I will fit it in. I'll be at my old house tonight, which might help since there are fewer distractions there, but might be a hindrance because there is still work to be done there. I must find a balance.

Wee!

"Hope Vibrates"

The auditorium fell silent as the two teams set to work. On the left, the “Spring Dodgers” were quietly discussing the question. On the right, members of the “Babbleshop Quartet” were staring at each other in silence, sometimes looking around the room hoping to find inspiration in the familiar curtains of the high school stage.

Robbie, a Dodger, glanced up from the team’s chatter and was hopeful, seeing the expressions of their opponents. She returned her attention to the team’s planning, hoping to come up with an answer to the question posed to the teams by the moderator of the competition. When she looked up again, however, her mouth gaped, her eyes opened wide, and she began to pressure her teammates in a panic to hurry.

“Come on, we have to hurry. They’re going to get the answer first!”

“I thought they were spacing out!”

“They were, but now they know what they’re doing.”

“How do you know?”

“When Hope knows the answer, she vibrates. I can just about feel it from here!”

The team returned to the question, but were too late. They jumped when they heard the bell from the other side of the stage, rung by Hope, the Quartet leader. The moderator prompted the team to respond.

“Is it 107x squared?”

The moderator checked his card. “Yes, it is. You are correct and you win this round! Congratulations!”

(This writing prompt took 5 minutes to conceptualize and write. 233 words = about 46 wpm)

NaNoWriMo 2009 Outline

Rather than going in to work today, I spent some time at the house waiting for the person who provides official measurements for carpet installation. He called this morning and told me that my two-hour window for measurement was between 12:15 and 2:15, so I took a late-morning breakfast break around 10:30, going out in the cooler weather to The Egg and I.

After eating, I was listening to classical music and sipping tea, thinking about the possible directions for the story I am considering trying to write in November. I scribbled a page of notes on it, and turned that into what is basically an outline to a story with some HUGE, GLARING HOLES in it. I'm okay with what is missing at the moment since the overall story has taken on a pretty interesting shape. Now the challenge becomes seeing if I have enough time to commit to writing at least 1667 words a day next month!

Along with this, I feel a nagging need to find or write a tool that will take what I write and check it for word and phrase proximity. That is, I obsessively worry that I'm using the same phrase too many times in a row, or too close to each other, and I would love to have a tool that goes through my work and checks that for me, letting me know where a synonym might be a good idea.

Keeping Pace with Priest

NaNoWriMo is beginning to loom once again, and I'm trying to get geared up for writing. I was able to keep an average pace of about 2,250 words per day during last year's event, but I have proven that I'm not a writer. I'm not talking about the story that came out of my last NaNo attempt. I just re-read my story, and for a first draft, I'm actually pretty happy with it. I'm referring to the fact that since NaNo last year, I have not written every day. I have not written consistently week to week. I've not written much of anything story-wise, really.

I read a lot, between books and blogs. Several of the blogs I read are about writing. One such blog, written by Cherie Priest, keeps frequent track of how many words she has written on her stories in a given day. She posted a blog back on April 15, 2008 (http://www.cheriepriest.com/2008/04/15/april-15-2008/) in which she explains her word count scale. It looks like this:

1000 words - Marginally acceptable
2000 words - Fair
3000 words - Good
4000+ words - Glorious

So on this scale, I had seven days that were too low to count, three that were marginally acceptable, five that were fair, six that were good and one that was glorious. My average pace of 2,250 words a day is just north of Fair.

Or is it? I ask because often, Cherie also makes a little comment about how she feels about her word count. I think the scale she actually holds herself to is a little more strict than what she quoted in April. Based on her blog word count comments, I came up with this Real Cherie Priest Word Count Scale:

Under 1,000 words: Boo. Not good.
1,000 to 2,000 words: Meh (though I've seen Meh range as high as 3,211, I'll consider that an outlier.)
2,001 to 3,750 words: Now we're in the Not Bad to Pretty Good range
3,751 to 4,050 words: Very good. It's a small range because over 4,050, she gets a little more excited.
4,051 up: BOOYAH! HUZZAH! GLORIOUS! RAR! HELLS YEAH! SWEET!

On this revised scale, my average NaNo pace is Not Bad. I had one BOOYAH day (at 5,986 words), a week of Boos (three of which were total non-writing days), three Mehs and eleven Not Bads in my 22 days of writing before my trip to Dallas. I wonder if I can get my average up to the Very Good range this year. I'm competitive that way sometimes.

As an aside, I have to say that I have consistently enjoyed reading Cherie's blog, including the stories of her cats, costumes and steam, as well as the links she shares. One of these days, I will have to pick up one of her books to read. Time and money being what they are, though, I don't know when that will be.

"The speaker was on fire"

This is a writing prompt, the first I've done in a while. Only 200 words came out in something like 6 minutes, and it describes much of what went through my mind when I read the prompt itself, wondering which direction it should go. The subject of this post was supposed to be the first line of the story.

“The speaker was on fire.” The words, printed across the top of the report, left Rod unsure what he was going to read. At first, his mind flashed to a speaker in the back of a souped-up Chevelle, a discarded Zippo burning into it and starting a car fire. He imagined a couple of stoned guys sitting listening to music when suddenly the balance was thrown off by the flaming speaker. They would “dude” each other obliviously as the flames climbed higher in the back.

His next thought was political, where some otherwise innocuous person suddenly lashes out with gasoline and a match inside the House, setting the Speaker of the House on fire. “Much screaming and running around would ensue, but at least the same amount of work would get done as usual,” he thought darkly.

Finally, he began to read the contents of the report, where an enthusiastic fan reported on a guest speaker at a local church function. He was a real “fire and brimstone” preacher, working the congregation up into a yelling, cheering frenzy about the Lord.

Disappointed, he cast the story aside, knowing it wasn’t going to be good enough to print in today’s paper.

Possible story idea?

This is awkward.

I came up with a premise that I think could make a good story for NaNoWriMo 2009, but it's only June! I have to put this on ice for another 4 1/2 months. The most I should let myself do is come up with an outline for the overall story before the month starts.

I used an outline for my NaNo story last year, and it worked out pretty well for me. Really, the only chapter that I wrote out of order was the very first chapter. Everything else fell into place, regardless of how much I abandoned the "robbing a store" scene.

Want to write again

Since the end of NaNo, almost six months ago, I haven't really written anything, and I'm starting to get the feeling that I would like to write again. The trouble is how much school is interfering with my ability to do anything but schoolwork. That ends at the end of June, so I just need to hold out until then.

On the other hand, once the 2009 NaNoWriMo rolls around, I have no idea what I will be writing about. I have lots of different ideas, but nothing that I think would make a good novel-length story. I don't want to do a sequel of my '08 NaNo novel, even though it's probably open to one. The other stories I have in my head (or in my notes folder) don't seem to quite have the potential to flesh out enough.

In the meantime, I should probably get back into the habit of writing a little something every day, maybe a few hundred words. There's something called flash fiction that fits this pretty well, but it's a different style than the wordcount explosion that is NaNo. But it's better than nothing, right?

Now watch - now that I've said this, I won't write again until November 1.

TWE weekly task - Jan 7

There is a blog called The Writing Endeavor (http://thewritingendeavor.blogspot.com/) that seemed like a good idea, if only a little nascent and non-secular. The request for the first week was to "have your character give a reason why he or she likes (or maybe even dislikes) the end of the week. It could be something trivial or something huge (there's free lattes at the coffee shop on Saturday nights, or your character gets a break from work school, etc)."

While I have not written anything on the story I have in mind, I do know what the character is like to some extent. With that, I was able to formulate a response, though it is quite short:

The end of the week means the weekend is nigh, and schedules change. Expectations are different then, and excuses become far thinner. Maybe I should just change my work schedule. People don't notice when you're not there on a Tuesday when they're busy with their own lives. Yes, that's what I shall do.