NaNoWriMo 2010 day 30

Today was the last day! According to the offical word counter on the NaNoWriMo.org web site, I have 63,750 words.

Though Open Office places the count a little higher than 64,000, I will go with the official number. I added around 4,000 words today and closed out the storyline. As usual, I don't like the level of detail in the last part, but it at least makes sense in light of the rest of the story to change gears like I did at the point where I did. Either that or I am just rationalizing my sprint across the finish line. Either way, it's done!

Here's my word count graph, showing that I was a total slacker around Thanksgiving (but you already knew that):

I'm going to do something else now... :-)

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 29

Today was a good day. I added 5,012 words to the story and broke 60k. I am now at 60,493 and I have somewhat of a direction to take the story next. The bad part is that I don't think I am going to get to the end of the story before the month ends unless I crank out about 10,000 words tomorrow. The last day looms!

The added character finally reappeared and started kicking ass.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 28

The "something" I wrote about in the post about yesterday's writing wanted to change today. I ended up adding 1,246 words to chapter one to make it feel a little more integrated. And here I thought I was done with chapter one. No such luck.

Chapter two eluded me for quite some time. I wrote out a list of future events that needed to be included, and tried to section them off, but the step between the end of chapter one and the first "next step" was a maddening empty space. I hammered on this for a little while and came up with what I think is a decent 300-word sketch of the chapter (these words don't count towards my total for the day). Now I have to write it out, so that I can get to the rest of the events.

At the end of the day, I added 2,215 words, with a little more than half of these going into chapter one. I'm not entirely happy with chapter two as it is right now, but at least it is something to bridge the gap. Current total word count: 55,481.

NaNoWriMo 2010 days 24-27

Over Thanksgiving, I cooked and played. I did not write. My word count from Nov 24 to Nov 26 was 0.

On November 27th, I added 2,014 words and finished Book III, Chapter 1. Total word count for this year is now 53,266 words.

Storywise, I went off on a small tangent. I say "small" only because my notes included "something" here, but it was very vague. The actual story I put in was a little different from what I expected, but still conformed to putting "something" in.

I am still a bit perplexed about what to do with the newer character, but I have an idea I would like to follow up on. She's been conspicuously absent ever since the attempt on her life.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 23

Today went by much faster than I wanted it to. It started by me sleeping in until about 10:00, which was unusual enough. After that, we started to plan out the menu for Thanksgiving, and then went shopping at four different stores for the stuff we needed to cook. I didn't get to writing until after 10 PM at least.

I was able to sneak 1,467 new words in today before midnight (word count 51,053), and kept writing after midnight adding another couple hundred words after midnight. I have a bit of direction on the story in Book III, but it's not exactly "flowing" right now. I feel like I'm trying to push-start a car whose battery had gone dead. It's giving me signs that it wants to return to life, but hasn't started and run on its own just yet. I need to keep pushing until that spark catches.

In my favor, I passed 50,000 words and got my green bar. To my detriment, I should really have reached this milestone days ago, and from here, I have a long way to go before the story will be finished. I hope I don't have to do what I did last year, which was to essentially go into outline mode at the end of the story just to make it complete for fear of running out of time. I'm not sure that will be possible.

And I still don't know how this is actually going to end. I mean, it could follow my outline, or it could surprise me. We'll see....

As to what has happened in the story developing? Really, nothing. I hate to say it, but the bad guy is right back where he was at the end of Book II and is no longer in charge. After this? Well... it will hopefully lead somewhere. It has to, right?

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 22

The blank page at the top of Book III hates me. 565 new words today and I am still under 50k. Currently sitting at 49,586.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 21

I didn't cross the finish line yet. I did work at the horse rescue, and I did cook a few things. I also wrote, just not enough. Current word count: 49,021. That's only 518 new words today. Sleepy now. May be working at the horse rescue tomorrow, too.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 20

Today was a good day for writing. I added 4,467 words, for a total of 48,503. I'm pretty sure I will cross the 50k mark tomorrow, after working at the horse rescue.

Story-wise, quite a bit has happened, including several battles between the good guys and the bad guys. Right now, the bad guy's on the run, and the good guys recovered a prisoner of war (also one of the main characters). He's in really bad shape, though. Part of the good guy's (new for some) home city is gone, as well.

I've been looking at my outline lately, and not sure if I'm going to remain faithful to it for the rest of the story. There are definitely some loose ends to tie up, but I don't know that taking the story in the direction I originally laid out makes the most sense. Time will tell, I suppose, though I'm running out of time!

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 19

Not much writing was accomplished today. My errands kept me out of the house hours longer than I expected. I know, I know; excuses, excuses.

268 words added today. The only good thing is that I forced myself to sit down and write at least a little bit before going to bed. Current word count is 44,036. I have less than 6,000 to go, and should have the house to myself for several hours tomorrow morning. /crosses fingers

NaNoWriMo 2010 days 17 and 18

Day 17: I didn't write. I really have to stop doing that. We were distracted by company, though. And Scotch.

Day 18: Back on the horse. 3,468 new words, for a total of 43,768 words. The good news is that I have several things sketched out to happen next, so when I next get to write (probably tomorrow evening), I will not have to break through a blank page!

And now on to bed.

Falling Awake - reading

Finished "Falling Awake" by Jayne Ann Krentz. I really did not like this one, for a lot of reasons.

First and foremost, it needed another editor to clean up the language and events. There was no normal dialogue among the characters. Everything seemed a little too scripted, too wooden, including the fully-qualified names for things, such as the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research. I swear if the name if the place were "The Honolulu Branch of the Pinkleton/Belvedere University Hospital Center for Sleep Research and Lucid Dream Control Development," the characters would have said the whole thing while talking to each other, despite the fact that both characters were familiar with the entity.

I got tired of hearing the need for "context." I know what context means. There has to be another way to say it. And while I can appreciate a pun, the "dream" and "nightmare" puns were a bit too thick for me. I kept wanting the story to end, but it dragged itself on and on beyond the point where I had any interest in what happens next. Particularly at the end, the author needed to return to a "show, don't tell" mantra. There was far too much telling.

Ultimately, the sense I got from it was that it was the first draft of some housewife's daydreaming fantasy put to paper.

Repeal "refudiate!" Happy World Literacy Day!

Repeal "refudiate!" Happy World Literacy Day!

NaNoWriMo 2010 days 15 and 16

The summary for day 15 is easy: I didn't write. That's not exactly good for such a milestone day as the half-way point.

Today - day 16 - was a much better day. At lunch I challenged another WriMo to a word war of sorts. It was pretty close. I think I had more words by about 100. She then took a break later in the day and added to her word count (Go! Go! Go!) and we chatted about where she thought she would be at the end of the day. She set her goal and I matched it, proposing that I add as many words as she would.

I started at 37,206. 38,873 would be par (+1,667); 39,420 would match her goal (+2,214); 39,687 would match my average words per day so far (+2,481); 40,000 would be a nice, even number (+2,794)

I reached 40,300 words. Not bad! I added 3,094 words today. I rewarded myself with some chocolate. :-) (I'm actually kindof surprised I didn't cheat and just eat the chocolate. It's almost like I had some willpower!)

As to the story itself, I closed out chapter two (of Part II), added chapter three and began chapter four. The players in these chapters were the bad guy, the good guys and the new girl, along with a bunch of smaller roles.

There's a bit of fighting going on in the story now, and the new character I added interposed herself squarely between the good guys and the bad guys. She almost got herself squished, too. She fought the good guys in one chapter, and fought the bad guy in another chapter. In the first two chapters I worked on today, the stakes ratcheted up and the wins and losses became a little more evident. The chapter I'm currently working on is more of a regrouping effort on all sides - both in terms of licking their wounds and evaluating their winnings - preparing for a larger confrontation coming up.

Writing momentum has come and gone. As the characters come together, the scenes write themselves a little better. It's the push to get them together that I find a little harder to come up with without sounding completely contrived.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 14

As expected, today sucked:
Woke up
-> breakfast
-> horse rescue
-> lunch
-> care of our horse
-> grocery shopping
-> came home and put groceries away
-> felt sick, possibly from lunch and possibly from dehydration

I lay down for a little while watching the second quarter of a football game (Patriots vs. Steelers), waiting for the uncomfortable feelings to pass. They did, eventually, and I returned to the computer around 9 PM. When I started looking at where I was and where I was going, I realized I needed a timeline to bind things together. As is common with NaNoWriMo, I was writing by the seat of my pants. Before things got too convoluted, though, I went back through what I had written and scribbled notes on Post-It notes, putting a crude timeline in order.

The timeline now spans 67 days, and I am writing the events that happen on day 69 or so, when a few threads come together. It really helped me to put the pieces together in a way that kindof makes sense. With that said, today got me 2,138 new words, for a total of 37,206 words. What's more, it looks like my original fifteen-sentence outline is still holding, despite having introduced the unexpected character a couple days ago. I am currently working on what happens between sentences seven and eight, though sentence nine is already underway. It's just happening sooner than I expected when I wrote the as-yet-unrevised fifteen-sentence version of the story on the first of the month.

Now I'm tired.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 13

Today kindof sucked. I'm stuck in the story and not sure how many details to add - there are a lot that could be added, but many of them would be boring to read. On the one hand, I think, "Everybody knows where this is going." On the other hand, I know the details and where things go from here, and it seems obvious to me. Maybe it won't seem obvious to the reader.

Anyway, long story short (no pun intended): current word count is 35,068.

Tomorrow's going to be bad. First is horse rescue - our first time there while there's snow on the ground; then lunch; then feed our horse; finally there's grocery shopping. Maybe even in that order. By the time all that is done, the sky will be dark. So much for making up ground this weekend. I'm barely treading water!

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 12

When I ended and my word count was 33,332, I had to add one more word and end on 33,333 words. That's 1,844 new words today. Hopefully I will be able to make up some ground this weekend.

Storywise, I stared at the equivalent of a blank page for the first two hours or so. This is the start of "Book II" and I am moving the story ahead. I just wasn't quite sure how far. Then I started writing, and found I was doing a lot of telling and no showing, so what I had written simply became my list of notes. I then started a narrative that incorporated those notes, and I like the result. Well, a little at least.

Book I was 13 chapters. Book II now has one chapter.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 11

New words: 2,748 (kindof weak)
Total words: 31,489

I broke 30k words today. I discovered that going to a write-in and trying to write on my old, decrepit laptop is not at all effective. I barely pushed 1,000 words out in 2 1/2 hours because I wasted half an hour waiting for the laptop to get to the point where I could start. Also, I was distracted at this particular write-in (at a coffee shop in Longmont) and didn't feel like I could focus on writing. Lesson learned, I guess.

When I got home, I wrote nearly another 1,700 words, in part because I was very close to 30,000 and in part because I finally got through a scene that was really slowing me down. This took me a little over an hour.

When I came up with my outline, I divided the story into three sections or books. Book I is now done, keeping in mind that everything during NaNo is a first draft. There will be a set of assumptions that need to be made between Book I and Book II because I am not planning to spell everything out between those two points. I haven't started on Book II yet, apart from the outline and a couple ideas on what should happen at the start.

There is one monkey wrench in all this. During Book I, I introduced a character I wasn't expecting would be in the story. I have a few ideas of what is going to happen with her, but nothing is in the outline. That means I'm going to have to revise my outline soon.

After having written one of the action scenes in Book I, I get the sense that I may regret the direction I am taking the story, since more action is coming up. Then again, it's just practice, right? Right?

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 10

It was a long day. I went in to work today. We had a team lunch. I left close to 5:00 and drove through pretty heavy traffic to the ranch where it took me a while to walk out and get the horse in the dark. After feeding and grooming her, I drove home where the IFGS Society Board meeting was somewhat in progress. ("Somewhat" means they were actually waiting for a fourth member to give them a quorum.) I grabbed food and attended the meeting. After it was done, I talked with my girlfriend for a bit and THEN got to writing.

Now it's nearly 11:30 PM, and I added 2,314 net words today, for a new total of 28,741 words. I say "net" because I did go back and do a little editing. Not too much. There was just something nagging at me, and I had to tweak it to something I could live with.

My main characters were dealt their greatest blow, and they are forever changed. The antagonist has recruited an old ally, and the danger just ratcheted up for the good guys. At this point, though, the heroes are still weak and reeling. If confronted now, they might just choose death.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 9

As I posted to Facebook just now:

I passed the halfway point in my #nanowrimo story. I'm angry with one of my characters. He did what I wanted him to, but he was more brutal than I expected. And he enjoyed it.

My word count is 26,427 - that's 3,305 new words today. And while I did say I passed the halfway point, that really just applies to the 50,000 words needed to "win" NaNoWriMo. I think the story itself will be longer than that. On the other hand, my stories have this annoying habit of coming to an abrupt end. As to the fifteen-sentence summary, I'm firmly on sentence four now.

I think I need to stop for the day, though, and think about what just happened, and where I want to take things from here. My main characters are pissed off and ready for blood. Why not? After all, the antagonist just had some.

The Wall - reading

Finished "The Wall" by Jeff Long. First of all, there are too many books out there named, "The Wall." And no, this has nothing to do with Pink Floyd. It's about a rock climber's midlife reliving of past glory on El Cap in Yosemite, and how his life is tangled up with several others. Had I any knowledge of rock climbing terminology and culture, I would have probably liked it even more, but even without that, I liked it well enough. However, I didn't like the ending. That makes it difficult to say what I didn't like without spoilers. The revealation was fine, but where it went from there just annoyed me. I felt shorted. For the most part, the writing was clean and the descriptions and analogies painted the scenes nicely.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 8

A surprising ally is revealed to the main characters. However, this ally has a price that the protagonists must pay before they can return to their journey. Since the ally has the jailer's ear, they had better do as he asks!

I probably wrote for about two hours today, adding 2,694 new words (22.45 words per minute if you're keeping track, which is a little faster than yesterday but still slow). That brings my total word count up to 23,122. Story progress is quite slow right now. I find myself having to think through all the different things that I am having happen in the story, and the writing flow is somewhat forced. I am anxious to get the main characters underway, but at the same time, the delay in their progress is necessary for future developments that I have mapped out.

NaNoWriMo 2010 days 6 and 7

The summary for day six is easy: I didn't write at all.

Day seven was plotting against me for the longest time. I worked in the morning from 8 until 11:30 (volunteering at the horse rescue), went to lunch with my girlfriend (Thai Kitchen FTW!), and when we got home, I was focused more on giving her feedback on her paper for school than on anything else, really. After that, I left to feed our horse and run to the store quickly -- a three hour jaunt. By the time I got home, I was hungry. Reheating leftover lasagna (my first homemade lasagna = NOM!) took only about fifteen minutes, after which I settled in with Pandora playing my "Orbital/Halcyon + on + on" techno station and started writing. This was about 7:15 PM. It is now 11 PM and I got 4,299 words today, including a little editing of the beginning of chapter seven. That's 19.1 words per minute, which seems about right for me. My total word count is now 20,428.

As to the story itself, I finally got to the part I wanted to write about! It's been fun coming up with what happens here. It's not too much to say that there's a little comedy relief going on. It was needed after the (in-story) funeral.

It gets tougher from here. Vacation is over, and I go back to work tomorrow.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 5

I wrote more in the morning today than I have any other day during this year's NaNoWriMo. The trouble is, once it was time to feed the horse (about 2:00), I just stopped and didn't go back. I still added 3,752 words, so I'm up to 16,129 words.

If you saw my three five-sentence paragraph outline (no, it wasn't publicly available), I'm currently between sentence two and three of the first paragraph. It felt like work bringing the story here in an entertaining way, mostly because I was looking forward to getting here and writing this part. While I was feeding the horse, I thought of an addition to this part that made me laugh out loud. The horse probably thinks I'm weird.

On the down side, I'm having second thoughts about some of the stuff I've already written. It feels like I'm spelling things out too much for the reader. Then again, I always think that way when I write.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 4

I admit: I goofed off today.

I also admit: I edited today.

In a way, I stayed away from writing intentionally. I felt like I was being impatient with my story and needed to just take a bit of time to breathe, think about where I was with the story and where it was going. Then, later in the evening, after spending time driving down to take care of the horse (and thinking about the story), I patched up the part where I thought I was being really impatient. Now it feels more like a story I would want to read rather than just the rushed recap of such a story.

The bottom line: It's a better story, but I only gained 373 words today. I'll still take it! I'm currently sitting at 12,377 words.

On the bright side, the NaNoWriMo.org site is reporting that they fixed some problem they were having with their database, and the site is actually responding now. I hope it stays that way (again).

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 3 part 2

After returning home, I was able to spend a couple hours writing, and reached 12,004 words. Since I started at 5,711 today, that gives me 6,293 total words on the day! All of this got me to the second sentence in my five-sentence snowflake paragraph.

So I doubled my words today. If I can double them again for the next three days, I'll be done, right?

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 3

I may or may not have a chance to write more later. If I do, I will post a separate update on it. Today is my girlfriend's son's 14th birthday. He's due home from school any minute now.

I'm currently at 9,305 words, giving me 3,594 words for today. We are in chapter five. The invasion army is in motion, and events are beginning to unfold that will change the courses of the main characters' lives. I've also determined that the Lirris Device makes a good alarm clock. I'm not sure what else it does, but we'll find out!

In other news, the NaNoWriMo site has gone from an ugly "can't connect" error to a friendly "over capacity" error akin to Twitter's Fail Whale that suggests I have a cup of coffee. But the site is still failing, so I once again can't update my word count there. I hope they get this straightened out soon.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 2

Today's word count ended up being 5,711, meaning only 589 new words today. It's an anemic number, I know, but instead of writing, I got to play a game with my girlfriend - something we haven't done in a long time. I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I am hoping to make up some ground today.

As to the story itself, it takes place in a fantasy world of my own devising where there is only a little magic, and it's not well known in two respects: not many people can use it, and not many people can even identify it as magic. So far, I've introduced a bit of the military heirarchy and several of the key players within that heirarchy. I've revealed that there is an upcoming invasion, and that the city of Corburn*, where the story thus far has taken place, is the one doing the invading. Raykeep* is their target.

I also finally introduced the main characters, Kada and Ismo, in chapter three. I had just finished chapter four when I realized that I left out a few details about them that I wanted to make sure were there, so tomorrow I am going back and adding those details in. It's almost like editing, which is a NaNoWriMo sin, but I feel it's absolutely necessary to the story.

After that, I hope to push forward through the other two chapters I have vaguely outlined. Wish me luck!

I should add the other frustration of my day: When I went to update my word count on the nanowrimo.org web site, it was "down for maintenence." This has been a big frustration this year. I rather enjoy pushing my word count up every day and seeing it on that site makes it more tangible to me somehow.

* Note: All names should be considered malleable.

NaNoWriMo 2010 day 1

While I spent most of the morning working on the "snowflake" of the story I'm writing -- I really should have done more prep work -- and while my actual word count at 1 PM today was still 0 despite having worked on elements of the story all morning, I made up ground this afternoon. I took a two-hour break to feed the horse, but wrote both before and after, ending up with 5,122 words at the end of the first day. Given that the pace I need to keep is 1,667 words per day, this is an excellent start. What's more, I like what I wrote (mostly), and think that it is on track with regard to the quick outline I put together.