Losening up

I attended the write-in today at Dazbog. We had a good turnout, with seven people showing up besides me. Mostly we wrote, but there was good conversation and laughs as well. I got 1001 words while I was there and finished up tonight.

I decided to start giving insights into what my antagonists were doing today. As I wrote it, other connections on both sides started to unfold. I am writing a prequel, see, and things have to end up a certain way, and progress more or less a particular way, given an explanation in the WIP that this story is the prequel to. While I had begun to think the framework was going to be too limiting, I found a vast sea of wiggle room in other characters I had not fully considered before. Now I am scheming for the best way to utilize this new, uncharted possibility. Should be fun!

Words yesterday: 1182
Words today: 1722
Words total: 11783

Rough Patch

The story is stumbling as of late. I’m trying to get to some juicy bits but it’s taking more effort than I thought to get the chess pieces in position. They are moving, kinda, but slowly. I’ll need to light some fires, just as soon as I find some firewood. And a match.

Words today: 1679
Words total: 8879

The stage is set

Didn’t make my newly-minted daily goal, but I bested the NaNo daily goal and my total is still ahead of the curve.

I had a rough day so I didn’t get started until late, and I have a pile of laundry next to me that has been assigned to me for folding.

The stage for the plot has been set by some political maneuverings. Not a lot of action since the opening scene, but that will change. The intrigue quotient is about to be ramped up, and things are about to get very interesting indeed.

Words Today: 1883
Words Total: 7200

Pulling something out of… somewhere…

Good things are happening. After re-engineering the plot and starting point of my novel, I’ve been able to dig in for some serious writing. Not only am I exceeding the daily NaNo wordcount goals, the story is starting to take on a life of its own. It’s flowing, much better than I had hoped, and the joy has surfaced. This makes me happy.

Today’s scenes set the tone for the rest of the novel. A major set of events has been put in motion, but it will turn out to be but a stage for the important events to be revealed, a point of entry which will open the can of worms that the story will inevitably focus on. As such, this may prove to be one of the most complicated plots I have ever attempted (not that any of my other plots were particularly complex). This has me excited and apprehensive at the same time.

In other words, I’m looking at another fun and enjoyable NaNo effort!

New goal: 2500 words per day

Words today: 2664
Words total: 5317

Here we go again

Yes indeed, it’s NaNoWriMo time! As I do every year I try to update my blog with my writing status daily.

You can stop laughing now.

This year got off to a rough start. I made it to the Kickoff party, which had a much higher turnout than expected. We didn’t manage to blow a fuse, but  I did walk out with over 1000 words in the first 45 minutes.

On my way home, I discovered I had made a mistake.

You see, I NaNo snuck up on me this year. I didn’t prepare, so I had to scramble for an idea. I was going to use a short-story idea I had, but I scrapped it at the last minute because I want to do that story justice. Instead I decided to do a prequel to a rough draft I wrote back earlier this year.

That particular story has two main characters, and I wanted to give some background context to the story as well as the origins of the two main characters. The idea gelled pretty quickly, and the 1000+ words I wrote comprised an important, complete scene involving one of the main characters. It was the start of my Chapter 1, and I left very happy and enthusiastic about the story.

On the way home, I realized the character was the younger of the two, and therefor was born after the other character. By the time the scene I wrote had occurred, the backstory would have already happened.

I slept on it (a wise move) and spent most of the day working through the rough plot points. Thankfully I hadn’t had time to do this yet, so I didn’t have to adjust much, just use the other set of parents for the focus of some action instead of the other parents. By late afternoon I had enough to restart the process, and after forcibly willing a few supporting characters in to being from the raw firmament, was able to get back in gear and start writing again. I just got done with the new first scene which I very much enjoyed writing.

I know what should happen, roughly, in the next scene. I’m a bit nervous that I don’t know exactly what’s coming, but I didn’t have the whole scene I just wrote in my head either, and it turned out fine. It rolled off the fingers as I went, the creative process working as I think it should. I guess that’s why I enjoyed it so much.

Words today: 2653
Words total: 2653

Other obsessions

Few people know that I have recently been bitten by two obsessions, both which threaten to cause large holes in my pocketbook.

One obsession grew out of a home-based business that I tried to get off the ground last year (just before the meltdown in the market). I discovered Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab through Neil Gaiman, as BPAL has a few scents inspired by his work that have proceeds going to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The scents from BPAL are amazing, and I’m starting to have enough to almost qualify as a collection.

My other new obsession is Fountain Pens. I have one really good pen, a Lamy 2000, which never leaves the house, and a less expensive Lamy Safari (Charcoal) that is my every day pen. Never one to leave enough alone, I’ve gathered several inks, and I picked up some new ones today.

After reading some posts on the BPAL forum, I’m now using the perfume oils to scent the inks. The scents are subtle in the ink, and you can’t add too much or you mess up the ink. Right now I’m using a combination of Aurora Black ink and the Tezcatlipoca scent from BPAL. So far this combination works very well, and the oil has not affected the flow of the ink or the drying time on paper.

I don’t expect the scent to last long on the paper (scenting the paper would be better for that), but writing with it has a time release-like effect with the scent, which transforms writing into an aromatherapy session, in a very subtle way.

Ten Commandments for the Happy Writer

From the blog of Nathan Bransford, Literary Agent:

Ten Commandments for the Happy Writer.

Here’s the one I always have trouble with; it’s the part in the emphasis (which I added):

5. Don’t Quit Your Day Job. Quitting a job you need to pay the bills in order to write a novel is like selling your house and putting the proceeds into a lottery ticket. You don’t have to quit your job to write. There is time in the day. You may have to sacrifice your relaxation time or sleep time or reality television habit, but there is time. You just have to do it.

Distractions are my biggest problem. The occasional Good Eats episode, my sandbox server environment, games, other hobbies… I have to force myself to write. It needs to be part of my day. Still working on that.

And we're off

No, I don’t have a ficlet to share yet. Instead, my muse tossed a scene at me that demanded to be written. And write it I did. And now, 1936 words later, it’s done. It’s rough, of course, and will need massaging, but the main plot bits and goals were achieved. I can’t share it with you because it’s in the middle area of the novel (as best as I can tell) and represents a significant development. That’s all I can say for now, but it matters because it is the first part of the project that I have written.

New project

I think NaNoWriMo is getting to me. My muse hit me with a background concept recently, one that took root in my mind and refused to leave. After it distracted me long enough I decided to put my ideas into a file in my Scrivener software. It germinated, and last night I set forth on the character background for the MC, and this morning I did the one for the secondary MC. Sitting here after finishing it, I suddenly realized what I was doing:
I’m working on a novel outside NaNo.
I have no hope of saving this one until November. It’s the end of December, for Pete’s sake. I’m going to have to work it, an idea that excites me and frightens me at the same time. Ideas are coming fast now, and I have some ideas for background ficlets like I did for NaNo this year. I will post them once I get to them.

This is going to be interesting

Things I’ve already learned about this year’s NaNo run:

• The switch to Dvorak is more of a detriment than I thought (shocker!)
• I have no idea what’s going to happen after my initial opening scene
• I still don’t have a clear idea where I want this thing to end up
• Somehow, I’m still not worried

I went to a kickoff party last night, had a ball, and still managed over 1000 words before leaving for home. Great night. Even with the uncertainty of the plot, I still think this is going too be a great run.