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

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.