Saturday, November 29, 2003

The end of November cometh...

mood: winding down
music: AM Radio - Everclear
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Well, I didn't change another word, just validated the file last night. I had a bit of a panic time when our Internet connection seemed to be in jeopardy, but Terry came through and got it fixed up. It's a great feeling to have accomplished that many words this time around again--and especially to have reached an ending. But wow, it was a lot harder than last year! I naively expected to sail through the month in "fast forward" again, accomplishing the novel and much more in fine style, but it turned out to be a different kettle of fish.

It was also great being an ML, even though there were only a handful of us. There was a nice note in the forums from one C.B. wrimo thanking me for all the support--she got to 50k after almost giving up three times, so I feel like it was worth it. I'll definitely do it again next year.

So, some general reminders for next year:
1) Don't start the month tired out already.
2) Try to work in those early-morning writing sessions; they get your brain working on the story subconsciously all day.
3) Do more planning ahead of time if possible.

Now it's full speed ahead into Christmas, I guess! That will be the next big topic.
Once I get a little more sleep...

Thursday, November 27, 2003

Woo-hoo!

mood: ecstatic
music:
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YES! 50715 words and the last two are "The End!"

I haven't validated it yet as I may do a bit of fixing-up tomorrow when I read over what I wrote tonight, but wow, is it a great feeling!

I should sleep well tonight!

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

Almost...

mood: tired
music:
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Word count: 48628. Any other night I could probably keep on going to get to 50k, but I'm so tired tonight that I actually caught myself closing my eyes 'just for a few seconds' as I sat at the computer. And I have the nagging feeling that what I did write tonight was the crappiest piece of prose I've penned this month. So I'm stopping tonight and catching some Z's, and hoping that I can fly past the 50k goal post tomorrow night feeling a little more pleased with what's on the page.

What will I find to talk about when this ceases to be so much a NaNoWriMo journal and becomes just a...blog? Guess I'll have to make sure I keep lots of projects on the go. Already thinking of a short I'd like to write for an anthology coming up in the spring...

Sunday, November 23, 2003

Rolling along...

mood: Up
music:
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Passed 43k tonight and things are going well. But I need to get those @#$*&% wormholes figured out! Where they go, how they connect each of the star systems. I thought I could figure it out later (using question marks as placeholders in the meantime) but now it's become important to how my characters get out of the pickle they're in, and I don't know if I can take the time to sit down and map it out! I'll have to try tomorrow, I think, because it's going to be awfully hard to work this out otherwise. They're on the run from the baddies and a lot hinges on how many skips it will take them to get to a particular system, which systems they pass through on their way there, and how many alternative wormholes open into each of those systems. It would be much easier to have it worked out than to fake it, unfortunately.

However, I'm not too worried about finishing on time, anyway, barring any major disasters. If I can keep up this pace I could finish midweek, so I have a little leeway still if things go badly.

On the whole I'm still pleased with the novel and actually looking forward to going back and filling in the gaps once November is over. And I'm determined to type "The End" before the end of this month--I've decided that's an extremely important goal for me to have for NaNoWriMo. Just getting 50k is not good enough if I'm not at the end of the story. I'll have to be sure and keep that in mind for next year...

Saturday, November 22, 2003

The paranoia that goes with success

mood: very good
music: Forest by George Winston
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Ah, how the paranoia sets in as the word count goes up! The first few days of writing, you make sure you save your file when you're done and that's about it. As the thousands click over, you save it on your hard drive, and on a floppy disk as well. By the time you're at 40k, you're saving it on all the computers in your house, on a floppy, burning it to a CDRom and zipping it up in a password-protected file every night and uploading it to a secret and hidden directory on your web server. Because you know if something happened to it, you'd never, ever be able to write it again.

Passed the 41k mark tonight so prospects for finishing are looking good. I've already started a file of notes for things that must be added or better explained in the rewrite, but that's a good thing. That means that despite the frantic and sometimes difficult pace at which it's being written, I assume it's going to be good enough to deserve a rewrite. How long that will last, I don't know, but for now I'm taking it as a good sign.

And I'm actually getting to bed a little earlier tonight. Now if only the kids will sleep late in the morning...

Thursday, November 20, 2003

And the clouds parted...

mood: tired but happy
music: George Winston, Plains
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A miraculous thing happened tonight while I was making supper--the rest of my novel (or most of it, anyway) fell into place in my head. Poof! Like magic! I realized how I could solve the overarching problem facing the characters, and how things I'd banged into the novel earlier on a whim could all click together--almost like I'd planned it! Wow, what an epiphany. Isn't the subconscious a wonderful thing? Now if I can just hang onto it all and make it work without realizing there's some big gaping hole I hadn't thought about...

Reached the 35k mark tonight so am feeling that I'm in good shape to finish on schedule and that the first draft will fit nicely into the allotted number of words. Had a lovely chat about the whole process with my fellow Wrimo and good friend Nancy, and came away feeling quite inspired. We're both having a very different novel-writing experience than we did last year, and it's nice to know that one is not alone. So on that happy note...off to bed.

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

Slogging continues apace

mood: tired
music:
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My characters seem to be taking a long time to get to an important conversation, but at least they're moving. Passed the 33.5k mark tonight, which proves that it is indeed persistence and not necessarily inspiration that gets novels written. Once again I will not be getting up early in the morning to write, but once again I am simply pleased that I haven't fallen behind.

Sometimes that's enough to let you lay your head on the pillow with a good feeling.

Monday, November 17, 2003

Ah, the sweet sound of 30K

mood: good
music:
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Last night I barely cracked the door of 30,000 words and tonight I've stuck my foot in a little further. It's hard slogging these days (or should I say nights) as I'm so tired when I finally get to write that my brain doesn't want to get out of first gear (or to use the parlance of my SF novel, go from main drive to skip (faster-than-light) drive. However, I continue to plug along, since the NaNoWriMo battle cry of "quantity, not quality" allows for all manner of things I would never let myself get away with otherwise.

There's a very interesting series of articles on the 25 Most Provocative Science Questions at http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2003/11/10/science/text/index.html. If you don't have time to read the articles, just glancing down the list of questions is thought-provoking in itself: things like Can Robots Become Conscious?, Are Animals Smarter Than We Think?, and Can Science Prove the Existence of God? to name a few (some, however, are neither very scientific nor provocative, such as Will We Ever Find Atlantis?). (You must register to access the articles, but it's quick, free and easy.)

And now, back to work! I'd love to regain the pace I had last year, even just for a while.

Thursday, November 13, 2003

Another woo-hoo (or two)!

mood: very good
music: CBC radio
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Ended up last night at 22.4k words, so things are rolling right along despite the fact that I'm in a pretty unplanned part of the story right now. But here's the big news: my short story "On the Road with Fiamong's Rule" has been accepted for reprint in the anthology Dark Highways, due out from Cyber-Pulp next year! And what's more, Prof. Ron Primeau, author of "Romance of the Road: The Literature of the American Highway" and other books and professor at Central Michigan University (who is writing the preface to the anthology) wants to use my story in his class! How cool is that?!

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Woo-hoo!

mood: tired but happy
music: just the whir of my hard drive
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Crossed the 20K mark on my word count tonight: 20,690! Some interesting things are happening. I don't know what they mean or where they're taking the story, but it's keeping me interested, at least. And my characters are about to undertake an extremely dangerous journey through an unstable wormhole, during which more interesting things will come to light.

Unless something drastic happens I should easily be at the halfway point of 25k by the time the 15th rolls around. Things are going well.

Some people on the NaNoWriMo site have word counts of over 100,000 words posted already. Even a couple over 200,000. I hate to sound harsh, but I find it hard to believe them. Or to believe in the existence of the kind of life you would have to have in order for it to be possible.

But maybe that's just me. :-)

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Heading into NaNoWriMo Week Two...

mood: determined
music: All the Seasons of George Winston
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I was extremely late getting started tonight so I don't know if I'll make the word count for the day today or not--I'm writing this in a short break to give my thoughts a second to get straightened out. However, I logged in at 17, 204 words last night, so I'm definitely on track. I've reached the end of "part one" (of three parts, I think) but unfortunately am not sure what's going to happen in the next two. One of my characters is being extremely annoying--I originally thought he'd be dead long before this and now he insists on actually getting stronger! I've had to do a lot more thinking about the wormholes/FTL travel than I thought I would, but it's interesting and I think I've worked out a plausible way for it to work.

Ugh, had a rejection today as well. I was hoping not to have any in November as they are immeasurably more distressing when one is attempting to write a novel in thirty days. However, it will simply have to go into the pile of "things to look at in December if I absolutely can't get to them in November."

It's getting to be quite a large pile. :)

However, I've begun Christmas shopping and the house is mostly back in order after the renovations. So it's actually possible to do more than just write a novel in a month and keep a household running (almost) smoothly. That's good to know.

By the way, there's an excerpt from my novel on the NaNoWriMo website now: go to www.nanowrimo.org, "Authors & Novels," and type wordsmith into the box for "Find authors whose Username contains" then click "Go." When the list of all the "wordsmith's" comes up, click on my username and it will take you to my profile; then just scroll down.

Thanks to all of you who are plugging for me (and you know who you are). Now, back to work!

Friday, November 07, 2003

A new low

mood: wry
music: hotel paper by michelle branch
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So I'm not doing very well this year with my plan of getting up an hour early every morning and using that hour to get a head start on the days' word count. Some mornings I'm managing a half-hour or forty minutes, and the number of words is not stellar. This morning I hit a new low, however. 64 words in half an hour! I just kept reading over things I'd written previously, trying to get the wheels rolling. Abysmal! Now I have a big chunk to write tonight unless I can steal a little time between now and then.

If you need an interesting time-waster and are beginning to feel the stirrings of Return of the King excitement, you can click over to the Hobbit Namer and find out what your name would be if you were a Hobbit. There's also an Elven Namer if you feel you're more an elf-type.

There's an interesting summary about the asteroid Hermes here. Looking at the diagram of its highly elliptical orbit is somewhat chilling.

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

Like the name says...

mood: good
music:
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...this blog may deal with anything under the stars. I have a few things on my mind tonight.

First off, you should go and read this. Voyager 1 is now 90 AU (astronomical units) away, or roughly 8.4 billion miles. It is the most distant human made object in the universe and continues to add to our knowledge of this solar system and beyond. Mind-boggling.

On a completely different note, what is up with all the stores lately having their cashiers ask you if you "found everything you were looking for today?" A new pinnacle in annoying. And pointless, because if you haven't, it's kind of late. You're checking out. And the cashier can't very well walk off to help you find things. I wonder where people in marketing get these ideas. Don't they live in the real world?

On the Nanowrimo front: yesterday was not good. Got up early, all right, but then had plans to go out in the evening and was behind on the word count. Even stayed up late trying to cut it, but no go. Then the vicious circle began: couldn't get up early because I stayed up too late. However. I've been pecking away at it today whenever I got a chance and should be able to do some catching up now without breaking curfew. If I can get back on schedule it will be good. Some interesting things are cropping up--like a possible love triangle I hadn't expected. Really hadn't expected since one of the characters involved was supposed to be dead by now. I don't think he's going to lay down and die all nice and neat like I thought. Also I think some unexpected trouble is about to go down once my main character finishes a short reminiscence about her childhood. Hmmm...

Saturday, November 01, 2003

And they're off!

mood: better
music:
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Well, although I did NOT get up early in order to get a jump on the day's word count, I did manage to log a respectable number of words throughout the day and am feeling better about the whole noveling thing. Hopefully it will keep getting easier from here on in. Already some interesting things are happening.

And I did get to see a wonderful Northern Lights show Thursday night. Incredibly beautiful! There were more colors than I've ever seen before, and they covered the whole sky above us with patches of red, white, and green. It was spectacular. We all went outside and marveled at it--even the kids were impressed.