murder in nanoland: day 8

Word count update: 17,478 ...

The following was originally posted at
The NaNo Project blog
by Dot.

I was typing away, blissful in the productivity I was able to attain once I actually got to the writing meet-up with my buddy this morning. (It took a while, we were both late, but we did eventually make it.)

Then, all of a sudden, from out of the blue, it happened.

The story wants one of my characters dead.

I'm not ready to kill someone off, yet. And not this character. She was going to be one of the primaries once I get to the exciting part of this plot. But, no - they want her dead. I'm currently deciding whether to overrule with my author's privilege and just have her be injured and taken to the hospital - I'll even give them a coma if they want. But I don't want her dead. No.

Who wins? The characters or me? What will I lose later if I try to play god in my story now? Or am I already god and this is their way of rebelling?

Oh, a NaNo dilemma.

I don't mind killing off a character. Really. And it - to be totally, brutally, honest with myself - is about time something exciting happened; I will give them that one. This plot needs to move along. Although I suppose that slow and plodding has its benefits during NaNo. But still.

Oh, what to do?

NaNoWriMo: day 7

originally posted at

The NaNo Project

by Dot

Today has been stormy. I overslept. Which is to say that I slept. A full 8 hours - no, not 8 hours all together - 6 hours, woke up, back to sleep within 20 or 30 minutes for another 2 hours. I still had just enough time to go for my 10 miles walk and get back in time for the next thing. But I did not make it 10 miles - only 6 and with 4 legs of hills. I have run a little low on sleep until last night (only 12 hours total for the previous 3 days) - and my body said no way was it going 10 miles. Plus it started to rain a lot heavier than I was dressed for. I was dressed for rain - layers, a waterproof rain jacket - but not the downpour that started, so I headed home, 2 miles away from the house. By the time I got home it was torrential; truly. About 5 minutes later there was a lot of thunder and the rain kept pouring. Later there was a rainbow and I was wet and still cold to the bone; a phrase I don't often use because I have not experienced that feeling until now.

But you know what? Guess what started to come out in the next chapter of my novel. One of my characters decided to go for a training walk and it started to rain! Woo hoo. She is talking herself through it now -- or was when I had to stop to get to work.

I had a massage after a hot shower (I didn't plan to get soaked before the massage, but she has a table warmer so it was actually perfect!), went out for a quick dinner with my partner, then to a friend's art opening and sale.

Then, finally, to SE Grind for a couple hours of writing. And after a few minutes, the story started to unfold about one of my main characters heading out for a training walk, in the rain, and all she wanted to do was go home...

The Art of NaNoWriMo - imitating life.

Current word count is 16,597.
.

NaNoWriMo: day 6

An extremely sleep deprived day. I did not get to sleep immediately upon arriving home from work in the week hours of the morning today. Right now I cannot even remember what it was that was so important to do when I got home - but it was, I swear! I did it quickly, but it still delayed getting to bed for an hour. Then I had a very early job so that my number of hours I had to sleep was absolutely horrible. I did squeeze in two 10 minute naps today - which helps.

I came up with a new metaphor. These last two days have felt like the "old days" when you scrounged through the sofa and the car seats, collecting whatever coins you could so you could drive to the gas station and buy 5o cents or 75 cents of gas to get you around for a couple of days.

I've been scrambling around in search of long enough blocks of time to take a nap: 10 here, 15 there, another 10, and even a 30 last night. Just long enough for me to catch a little down time, eyes shut, lessening the chatter in my brain, to make it do-able to get through the next stretch of work.

But tonight - I will go to bed and I will sleep. I can't sleep as long as I want, since I have to do a 10 mile pace walk tomorrow. But, if I can wrap this post up and get to bed right now, I should be able to get a full 8 hours before I walk.

My reward will be a massage in the early afternoon.

Woo.

Oh, and my current word count? Give it up for me, who has passed another major milestone: 15,608 ! Yay.

NaNoWriMo: day 5

I've hit the sleep wall a little too early in the process. Ouch. I did manage one 15-minute nap, one 10-minute nap, and one 30-minute nap today; amazing for a person who doesn't generally take naps! But they were severely needed.

A couple more hours of writing tonight between work gigs, and about 45 minutes or an hour with Jenny. She is awesome and a wonderful writing partner and friendly competitor. It's nice to have someone you can truly mutually inspire and be inspired by, as well as have all in good fun rivalry!

My new word count is 12,472. Woo - the words are moving along nicely, even if the story seems to be taking a while to get to the synopsis I wrote. Oh well, the characters have a bit to say, I guess, before we get there.

NaNoWriMo: day 4

Today was a day off. By which I mean a day off from my regular income producing work. Because it was not "off" from my life nor "off" from appointments; on the contrary, it was full of appointments and meetings, almost straight through from 10:00 AM until, well, now.

Right now it is just past 11:30 PM and I am sitting in the cafe with Alexander. Jenny was here earlier; she left about half an hour ago. I'm done with my goal for today (exceeded it actually, which is cool) and so am doing a quick scan of emails and Facebook, but think I'll skip Twitter tonight.

Alexander is just wrapping up his story for the night, too. This was his first time joining us for the nanowrite. I gave him a block buster tool which I made from the one I received a few months ago from Ariel Gore. It's great to have another friend in this experience with me.

So, as I close up my writing shop for the night, I leave the story at 10,103 words!

NaNoWriMo: day 3

Today is a lower word count - as I knew it would be. The day has been full of work with minimal time in between. Luckily there was a good 30 minutes of down time in one job and I managed to hand write about 500 words.

Then one assignment ended about 30 minutes early, which gave me enough time to run by my PO Box and - yes, there was a check. Thank you, universe! Deposit it, stop by a cafe with free wi-fi between post office, bank, final job of the day. Where I ate dinner while typing up those 500 words and adding a few more. Type a paragraph - take a bite - sip some coffee; repeat.

My ending word count for today is 7436 (or right about there; I know it's 7,40o plus a few).

And I just had another two characters show up. Sheesh, this novel is getting crowded. Wait. I did say a team of eight plus two drivers. Oh, right. I'll still have to pick up a few more along the way somewhere, because two of the characters so far have refused to do the relay.

Speaking of which: tomorrow night is the second meeting of the walking relay team. I am printing out a handy dandy checklist for team members tomorrow, which goes with the clinic we'll be having (thank you, Nikki!) and with our field trip to a giant shoe store weekend after next.

Life is good.

NaNo note for November 2nd

I arrived at the designated cafe about 20 minutes ago to meet up with Jenny and write. I was a little later than I'd hoped, since today was my pace training day and not a short one at that. I was scheduled to do five miles, fast - or fast pace - something, whatever, language escapes me at this moment, which is not a good thing.

So I was supposed to do five miles - and I did five miles. After talking myself into getting out there to do it. "Skip it," I taunted myself. "No," I replied. "Yes, one day won't hurt. Go write. You know you want to." I almost caved. Then I thought that I really can't skip at this point because - well, the half marathon is only 27 days away (now if this was in my nanonovel I would have written twenty seven days because that gives me a word count of three instead of two - but I'm not so you get the contractions and the digits normally).

I did the five miles at a decent pace. And ran into construction on the way here - typical of Portland in the fall.

And now I have food and coffee and water and my laptop open, with Jenny in front of me.

Distracting myself.

Her I go, back to nanoland. My beginning word count for today is 3,956. I'll let you know where I land when I have to rush off the get to the trainers. Before the Write Around Portland group. And then end with a stint of work.

Procrastination is ending now.

NaNo - ho!

NaNoWriMo: 1 hr 30 min

...updated word count is 2151 words...

(I promise I will not be posting updates every hour or two from here on out)

NaNoWriMo - the first 30 minutes

...off to a good start: my goal for this first write-in was 1500 words in 2 hours...

...first 30 minutes just passed and I already have 1326 words...

...yay...