Waaaaahhh! NaNoWriMo Days 8 and 9

On Tuesday, I hit a wall. That would be the wall of lack of sleep and the wall of holy crap I've done so much already this month and the wall of I am blowing my own mind. Word count: 24068, about 2400 under par for the old Double NaNo challenge.

On Wednesday, I punched through the wall using the super fist of I can't quit now and I shall overcome and behold my awesomeness. So much is happening in my book now! We're talking body hopping and profound spiritual rituals and nasty revelations that are far nastier than I'd planned. Thank you, subconscious, for storing all those nightmares for me! They are coming in handy right now. Word count: 29499, about 500 words below par.

Now it's Thursday, and time to begin writing again. Many plots to plan and plans to plot.

Via Graphics Grotto

Making a List, Checking it About a Hundred Times a Day: NaNoWriMo Days 6 and 7

I made it through an action-packed weekend with my word count more or less intact. Despite attending an emergency summit of girlfriends, teaching a double tai chi class on Saturday, and running a four-hour intensive workshop on Sunday, I kept on writing.

By the end of Sunday (Day 6), my word count was at 18953. Day 7, and I'm at 22648. My people are due for a mini-event that will presage the (disastrous) turning point of the end of Act 1. It should make the next couple of days relatively easy to write.

A while back a very wise writer from my home town told me that it's a great idea to keep a running list of characters as you write a novel-length project. Of course it is. I have a terrible habit of forgetting even major characters' names over the course of a ten-page short story. They often get renamed several times - a problem I deal with in revision.

With this project, I have a huge cast I'm working with, and many of the people appear only for a  moment to be disposed of in nasty ways, but you never know - they could show up later. This is a story that deals with life after death and harnessing spirits, after all. I realized I might be causing myself problems later on by not tracking character names, so today before I wrote I sat down and combed through the 36 pages of my manuscript, noting anyone who is mentioned in the course of the story, whether that character is central or not, onstage or not. The list is pretty and of limited legibility. I'm naming people on the fly and will probably do more checking later to see if I've introduced any anachronisms with these names. Major characters are in red; everyone else gets plain old black ink.

Craig Ferguson Cold Open Dance Party and NaNoWriMo Day 5

I defy you to avoid boogying to this jam, especially once the sharks get into it.



Oh, and I'm at 16725 words.

Dangerous on the Dance Floor (NaNoWriMo Days 3 and 4)

I am buckling down, my pretties. Yesterday, NaNoWriMo day three, my word count was at 11 957. Today was not an awesome day for writing - Fridays and weekends tend not to be, because that's when I do the majority of my teaching - but I am still ahead of the 100k in 30 days quota at 13 599. After working with my primary MC for the last three days, I've introduced someone new. Someone fabulous. 

I've started making a list of perfectly logical consequences of the way magic works in the story. I can't wait to swing these consequences on my characters. It's going to be awesome, and should make things much, much worse for them. I've named the list "Gruesome Discoveries." In honour of the list, here are my favourite pictures from an image search for "gruesome discoveries." Enjoy, and happy writing.

  

NaNoWriMo Day 2

The sleep deprivation is definitely kicking in. I worked out this evening so I could stretch my old bones and not die when I teach my usual (excessive) round of tai chi classes plus a four-hour workshop this weekend, but then I came home and got right back into the writing. It's day two. I feel a certain obligation to keep up my high volume word count while enthusiasm is still high and my idea still feels good.

I will say this: aiming to write over 3k a day really helps with continuity and keeping the story foremost in your mind. If I'm not getting inky fingers at my desk, I'm thinking about what I'm going to write next. I'm using a tip I learned in grad school while writing the dreaded thesis: park on the downhill slope. Meaning, stop writing for the day in the middle of a good scene that you know will be easy to pick up again the next day. I find it helpful to do that.

Anyhoo, I've chosen a working title: A Plague of Witches. In the car on the way home tonight, Dave cheekily suggested Witch Plague as an alternative, and we got caught up in a discussion about the problem of titles that seem to be asking questions. Say it out loud, with a question mark at the end: Witch Plague?

I also know that at some point there will be golems.

Day two word count: 7604.

Source

NaNoWriMo Day 1

Yeeeahhhhhh! (Foam is coming out of my mouth right now. That's normal, right?)

I wrote 3714 words today. My book opens in the year 1348, when the Black Death struck Britain. (It hit bits of the rest of Europe the year before.) My idea concerns death and magic and diverges from what really happened historically on page one. I have no title, not even a working title, and that is driving me nuts.

Beginnings are fun but I know from experience that I have to move carefully. I'm trying to pack my opening scene with good, useful stuff for later, and not garbage that I'll wish I hadn't included. Because NaNo novels fly by so quickly, they need to have solid stuff that you can use later or else they turn into weird fluff by the end of the month. I don't want the fluff. I want necromancy and kickass chicks. Eventually I'll include a cast of thousands (well, tens), but for now my MC / focal point character is turning out to be messed up and cool in all kinds of great ways.

My outline includes the term "farm hooker," although my book will not.

Happy writing, Wrimos.

Coffin Hop Winner and Other Small Matters of Concern in November

The Coffin Hop is over! Booooo! The only thing I can say is that I wish it had gone on for a little longer, so I could have visited more sites while the cool giveaways were still happening. The best thing about the hop, though (besides the terrific badges) is that we can still visit the amazing writers who participated and get to know them that much better. Second best thing: there's going to be another one next year.

(Third best thing: I befuddled many people this past week by using the phrase "I've been coffin hopping" out of context.)

I absolutely loved the answers everyone gave to the question of what you'd like to be buried with. You guys made my Halloween with your awesome, Klingon-funeral wanting, bury-me-with-books needing ways. I love you all equally, but (dum dum dum!):

The winner of the One Buck Horror e-zine collection and the tiny copy of The Ancient Mariner is: Deborah Walker, aka Kelda Crich. Congratulations! I'll be in touch.

As a side note, the response that won my foul little heart was Anthony J Rapino's:

I'd like to be buried naked on a bed of red leaf lettuce. I should shimmer with a sweet glaze of honey (raw and unprocessed please). At my side I'd like a quart of barbeque sauce and some celery sticks.

Bon appetit.

You are sick, sir. And I salute you.

In other news, I won a skill-based ("skill-based") Coffin Hop contest over at Macromere Press, publisher of David Ewald's He Who Shall Remain Shameless. The book consists of fictional conversations with real-life dead people. The contest required you to name a deceased real-life person who you would like to see in the book, and give some reason why. I gave the creepiest answer I could muster, and I won some Amazon dollars for my troubles. I picked up a copy of He Who Shall Remain Shameless with it, because it looks smart and concerns some profound themes and I want to read it and you should too.

Finally, it is that time of year when we lose our heads and decide to write a novel. It's okay, though, because everybody's doing it. And yes, I would jump off a bridge if everyone else was. Hey, swimming together is fun! Posting in November will probably concern NaNoWriMo exclusively, so if you're not into it, you might want to duck and cover because it is going to get obnoxious in here.