NaNoWriMo 2012

[Xiabei]

Damn, this month is going way too fast! Doesn't help when I'm obsessed with finding a job; tends to cloud over everything. So I doubt I'll make it on time, but that's ok; at least I'm doing something.

[TerryE]

Thanks, Lucian. The past 2 nights, I've been to bed early, exhausted. Yesterday morning, I got a little done and hit that 10,000k. At this point, I don't think I'll hit 50,000 before the end of the month, but I'm going to see it out, no matter what.

I kinda miss my free time. The DVR is filling up, and netflix envelopes unopened, but this is more important right now.

[Lucian Poll]

Hi, Xiabei. My very best wishes in landing a job. I hope you keep nibbling away at your story in the meantime. As you say, at least you are doing something. (In other news I now have a near complete collection of Black Static back issues, which I'll put up on my collectors thread when this is all over, complete with a brief index of the fiction in each issue, unless someone has already beaten me to it.)

Hi Terry. Have you gotten any further with your story? I've seen you mention that it's part of a larger universe. Have you many other companion pieces?

Has anyone else got an update they'd like to share, whatever the word count? Adamjames? Sock Monkey? I can see that RJK is doing great.

I've hit the 35K mark: 35,736 words to be exact. Getting this story down is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. I reckoned that taking time off work would give me glorious 16 hour days to fill with gory storytelling, but I'm barely ahead of schedule. That said I have one last chapter of build-up to write before I get down to the business of kicking arse and maniacally ripping things up, so perhaps my word rate will jump from there.

Oh, and now my boiler has gone the same way as my laptop. It's a wee bit chilly in Poll Palace at the moment, and will be for the next couple of days. I'm telling you, my novel is jinxed! I can't imagine why...

[TerryE]

Way to go Lucian (and RJK, too). Apparently 5 hours of sleep every night, ain't cuttin' it. I was going pretty good, but exhausted the past week. 10 hours of work each day (and it's been a stressful couple weeks), trying to spend quality time with the family (with the little guy it is especially important), and the holidays winding up, writing time has been short. I thought I would catch up a little last weekend, but it was so busy. Then on top of that, Sunday night was out because of the football game, and I slept through most of the second half of that. I tell you, November is not the best time for this. But the story has not hit any snags, so I'll soldier on whether I make the word count or not. Although next month, I may lay it aside to finish a story that I want to finish for the CD submission.

My story takes place in my fictional county. I actually have several story ideas that share this setting. I'm not sure why I didn't dive into one of them for this month, but I'm still discovering things about this town that I never thought about before. I quite like it. And I think I said before that I made an offhand mention of an event during this novel, and it could become a whole other short story. Another time I came up with a name for a road (Work Camp Road) and that inspired another bit of history. The county has a hydroelectric dam, and hey, Work Camp Road was built as a connector to the constructions site which, come to think of it, was a works project during the Depression, and there was an influx of population before the War, and that can lead to all kinds of things to be brought to life in other stories. It's fun.

[TerryE]

I hope the Americans here had a good Thanksgiving. We had a good day, but not much writing got done tonight. However, I did have a fairly disturbing dream this morning, and I think I now have a direction for the ending of my tale.

[RJK1981]

November is almost over, only 4 days left, including today! Good luck, should be at 45,000 at the end of today. I started at just a little under that, so I will definitely make it to that goal and roll right on past it. Hopefully can finish this tomorrow or Thursday. Would be cool to finish it today, but don't expect to.

Will likely not get to the end of the story and will not worry about doing that right away so that I can write a short story for Cemetery Dance magazine submission. I already got a basic idea of what I will be doing and have a location for it. I have a good place to have it located based on where I was at when I was in Iraq, and even where I ended up serving my year could be used as both locations are prime locations for a spooky story!

[TerryE]

Way to go RJK. I haven't had nearly the time required to make it, but I've gotten into better habits with my writing. I definitely won't make the goal, but I'm happy with the start I got, and (like you) am only taking a break to finish a story for CD. That one is about 1/3 of the way in already and fully plotted (unlike anything I've done), so hopefully it can be done in a couple weeks.

My novel has several characters I really like, I've learned more about the setting, which has been germinating for years, and a couple sequences that I'm really proud of.

I hope you and Lucian keep rolling and hit the magic number.

[Lucian Poll]

Thanks, Terry, I hit the big five-oh-oh-oh-oh around an hour after you posted, so I am very pleased. I didn't get to sleep until stupid o'clock because my brain was buzzing so much!

Hitting 50K also saw the completion of my novel's middle act. I've probably got around another 30K to go before typing "The End", but I'm determined to get it done before Christmas. I've got one story hump to get over, where I'll be drawing from the research I've undertaken, and then we're into the big hold-on-to-your-hats finale.

I'm glad to hear that NaNoWriMo has been worthwhile and both you and RJK have my best wishes with your respective CD submissions. The story I was going to submit is 2000 words too long so I might also take a short break to write something else. I had an idea yesterday that fits in well with a "behind closed doors" theme I've got going at the moment, so I might see where that takes me.

[RJK1981]

Well, I will definitely hit my 50,000 word count today for sure. Only need a few hundred more words, then it is time to start on my Cemeery Dance short story.

There will be a lof editing needed with this NaNo story, and that will include a lot of trashing of stuff. I rewrote one scene in particular a few times. Not going back and changing the scene though, literally rewriting it without deleting a single word. I just oved the versions I intend to trash to a new chapter so I could keep it seperate from the rest of the story. My male and female characters kept moving in a different direction than I want them going at that early stage of their brand new relationship, lol. One thing that never changed though is that the male main character always rushes to answer the door after being woken up by pounding on his front door and always forgetting to put any clothes on (He sleeps naked, lol), and the person at the door is the female main character, who is his best friend and girlfriend as of the night before.

I still haven't completely decided on who is the bad guy. Either the male main character is both the good guy and the bad guy, or the bad guy is another character who is the female main character's 'uncle' (or even a remote possibility it is both of them), who may not actually be related to her. I am also not sure yet how the bad guy can be stopped. Sounds pretty complicated, doesn't it? It sure does to me, lol, and it is a lot of fun just thinking about the possibilities. I may end up writing two or three versions to see how it plays out with different options for the bad guy. That will all happen later since I want to start writing a short story for possible publication.

[TerryE]

Congrats, guys. I'm hoping to hit the 1/4 mark by tomorrow. Then, like RJ, I hope to finish a short story for CD. After that I want to come back to this story, to finish it. I have way too many unfinished items.

RJ, how can you be over 170 pages into a book and not know the bad guy? Is it because of the fluid nature of dreams?

[RJK1981]

RJ, how can you be over 170 pages into a book and not know the bad guy? Is it because of the fluid nature of dreams?

Yeah, kind of. Once I get back to writing more of this story I will be introducing a pivotal plot twist regarding his dreams and whether they are actually dreams or not.

I added some excerpts for anyone who wants to check them out. They have not beeing edited, so I wouldn't be surprised if I needed to edit them all, lol

http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/particip...s/dark-dreamer

[TerryE]

Well, I hit the 12,500 goal that I set for myself a couple days ago. Tonight was 2 short chapters, that I'm pretty happy with. I didn't get the purple number, but that's okay for this year. I lasted all month (if not every day), and I feel I'm about halfway through the story, which should end up novella length anyway. My habits are getting a little better, even if I'm still not much faster than 500 words per hour. I have to be happy with the slower daily output, because I just cannot stay up until midnight every night of the week. Whew.

I'm glad you guys did so well, and hope you see them through, and they bring you much happiness. Oh, and success, too!

[Lucian Poll]

Hi RJK, congratulations on winning! I had a look at your excerpts. I liked the final excerpt re: the drawing of the smiling face. Nice and creepy!

Congratulations to you too, Terry, for seeing out the month and having a good chunk of story to show for it. I couldn't have done the 50K without the lengthy spell off work, and having no dependents also helped, so hats off to you!

I look forward to hearing what you guys do with your stories. Hopefully we'll all be vying for the attention of assorted agents and publishers next year!

It seems publishers have warmed to the eBook a little more of late, finally realising they can put out a larger number of titles each year than they could with print, and a damned sight quicker too. It should also mean that they can take more of a chance with an author, which can only be good for up-and-comers.

For example not only has CD cast their net for eBooks to publish but I see Random House has recently opened up an eBook imprint called Hydra for sci-fi/horror/fantasy novels and novellas:

http://atrandom.com/eoriginals

(Of course, this could also be Random House fighting back against agents who have turned themselves into eBook publishers!)

See you in the bestseller charts, guys!

[RJK1981]

Hi RJK, congratulations on winning! I had a look at your excerpts. I liked the final excerpt re: the drawing of the smiling face. Nice and creepy!

Thanks, glad you like it. That part is probably my favorite part from that whole scene and is basically the end of it and would likely be the end of a chapter. If I were to have the book published in a serial format I would likely want that to end that part of the serial and leave readers off on that for however long it is between the serial pieces. That whole scene was fun to write and is fun to imagine. How could someone write the words and draw the things he drew with closed eyes and no memory of actually doing it. Then if you think of it, that would be horrible to have happen to you. Knowing you are having these nightmares but never remembering them, and then not remembering anything between putting your pen/pencil to the paper and a knock on the door? I don't know how I would react to that!

The question is, where did that face come from? It doesn't match the writing or the detailed drawing that came before it.

I can even give you what the answer to that question is right now: I don't know, lol! I have a couple ideas, but I still have to decide/discover the answer to that question. Might end up writing more than one version to see how I like my options of who the bad guy (or guys) will end up being.

I may end up going back to my NaNo story and working on that sooner than planned. I still have not successfully begun my short story for CD. I know at least part of the setting and can describe a vital building, but I can't decide how to start it and don't know very much about will happen. I was going to write this one in first person but I may have to get location and character sketches done and then shelve the story for now. Hopefully more will come to me here soon. If not, oh well.

[TerryE]

Hey RJ, if you don't know the beginning, start in the middle and fill in the rest with backstory.

Also, guys, if you ever want any help with proofreading or critque, I'd be glad to help.

I know that part of the point of NaNo is to turn off the inner editor, but that was hard for me. It always is. It doesn't help that the laptop has a sticky keyboard and spelling errors (which drive me nuts) keep popping up. I avoided doing a complete reread and fix every time I sat down, which was a big step for me, but I still would go back if I needed to set something up, or wanted to make things fit better. At least I don't feel like the whole story will need to be fixed. There was one person on the Maryland page who said she would have to put all of the scenes in order when she was done. I don't get that at all.