HATCHA!!

So after writing 25,000 words in a week (8,000 words in four hours) and leaving 10,000 for today, I emerge from writer's block and crazy busy fray. While this is by far the worst novel I've written in my four years of NaNoWriMo successes, I'm still at 50,000 words. My final blurb? "Get your cunt ass bucket over here now," I yelled, them slammed the phone against the wall and slumped to the ass brown carpet, defeated. Typos and all.

It definitely helps the word count when your characters curse like sailors. Now that it's an hour and a half from the Nov. 30 deadline, post your success stories (and not-so-success stories). What did you do that worked? What did you do that sucked? Let it all out here.

OH NOES

ONLY NINE DAYS TO GO AND I JUST HIT HALFWAY THROUGH.

James ... can I borrow some of your word count?

How is everyone else doing?

(And LS: Sorry I wasn't at the write-in last Thursday. I was actually in Newark, hating life.)

6x6 Join the Revolution

Tangent!

Ok, this is from a while back, but since we are doing speed writing, I figured I'd repost it here.

"We'll be brief: Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") and is said to have called it his best work. So we asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves."

WIRED magazine asked a group of authors to write 6 sentience stories, the results are amazing, if you haven't yet, you need to check this out:

http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html

Common, who wouldn't want to do this? It's a hell of a lot of fun, the prose writers' response to the Haiku. Take a quick NaNo break and get at it!

Here are my 6 by 6:

1. Gun cocked, detective sees dead wife.

2. "What does this big red butto-"

3. DC paper: sniper rifle, slightly used.

4. Robot seeks new heart, preferably human.

5. "The baby isn't human, get gun."

6. Writer starts revolution, apocalypse then ensues.

Narratives and POV Switches

So, I meant the little prayer service with this Hill character to be an interlude between two scenes with the Imperial Captain Marshall, but it seems as if it is going to go longer. I know what I want to do with Marshall; I'm just not sure how to get there. Hill on the other hand is waffling between two different destinies in my mind at the moment. I rather like him and, in homage to Dixon Hill, the fictional fictional noir detective from Star Trek, his scenes have gained a hint of Noir. I recently read an article on the Gears of War port coming out for computers and the developer's short paragraph about the marble, granite and concrete of the Gears universe particularly attracted me, so I've decided that the colony on which Hill resides should have some marble, granite and concrete in it as well.

I like how the little town center's image is shaping up in my head, though it may not turn out so well on paper, it defines 'aspirations of grandeur.' For bonus points, the main prayer center (and the center of town) is built as a huge metal and glass obelisk, with turrets inset into it. I'm not really sure how much is going to go on in this town, but since I'm putting such effort into it, I guess more then I expect.

I'm not really sure how this whole POV (point of view for the non-writers out there) switching thing is going. I'm not sure if I want to add another character or not. I was sort of planning to, because I want the single monolithic "Empire of Terra" (Yes, cliché, I know, I'm writing on a deadline here, so suck it up and I'll figure something else better later) to split up into three distinct factions which will get thrown into chaos (further?) by the twist I'm planning at about 75-80% of the way through. Specifically (and yes, prepare for an overdose of sci-fi here) The Spatial Colony and Economy Consortium, The Independent Colonists, and The New Terran Imperium (by the way, WTF Bill Gates? Why is neither Terran or Imperium in the Word dictionary?). My hope was to do the whole illustrating big events through semi-related individuals, 'cause I love that sort of thing. We'll have to see how this develops.

On an unrelated note:

Sci Fi channel is turning The Wizard of Oz into a mini-series!? Called Tin Man it turns out that Oz is in fact an acronym for the Infinite Outer Zones or something like that. Sci Fi has a freaky but really cool looking flash website up: http://www.scifi.com/tinman/oz/ and a more normal looking site at http://www.scifi.com/tinman/ . I would like to note, that you have to watch an ad before you can watch the ad for the show >.<.

Fun stuff, I hope. It looks really cool, but re-imaginings and universe expansions can go drastically wrong. However, The Wizard of Oz's adaptations have almost all gone off really well, so I have hope.

 

Anyway, Hill is, at this moment, inching closer and closer to the obelisk, when I left off he was hearing something (voices I suspect). I want to get back to writing so I can find out what the hell it is.

 

Your torture of the day, another excerpt:

"Me?" Hill walked out the door, facing the bleak landscape of a colony leaking into gray scale he responded without stopping or turning around. "I'm going to bed early. Got to get up for my scouting mission."

where the heck were you?

you know who you are. I brought tasty little appetizers. had to throw half of the the mozz sticks away . . . next time it's apples and whole grains, so there.

2 Write-Ins down, 6 to go

Well we've had our first two write-ins, and I must say they were thoroughly enjoyable. I'm dubious about my product, though; yesterday I composed a 1000 word digression on rats. I'm in the fragment zone . . .

Juggling It All

Well. I started out on NaNoWriMo well. Here's the first blog post I wrote on the very first day (on my blog Newsy Girl Speaks, before I was logged into this one).

"Wrote my first 1634 words at the JC Info Desk tonight- it was great fun.

Very easy, just flowed out, a great stress reliever on a night where I really needed one.
I had a very -not fun- conversation with an ex that left me in tears for a while, but after I got back to the desk and got back to writing, I was back in good spirits in no time!

Novel writing- the secret to happiness?

Sshhhh we can't tell anyone- what would all the psychiatrists eat after all the miserable people left them?

: )
Way excited about this!

<3-r"

So now, a couple days later, I'm back at the JC Info Desk on my Monday morning shift and I'm at...1634 words.

-hangs head in shame-

I haven't found the time to write since then- which I know is utterly ridiculous, of course, you can make time in the day for anything that's important to you (I'm writing on this blog after all). It's just something about working at Broadside all weekend, attempting to crash-read three long books on Vietnam by Tuesday, suffering from sudden fits of exhaustion from post-election guide production fallout (that was all I did Monday/Tuesday of last week), and attempting to retain some semblance of sanity by the end that has me so behind.

I knew it would be hard when I agreed to do NaNoWriMo. I came very close to refusing to participate at all, knowing how crazy my schedule usually is. (I'm one of those crazy kids who goes through the week without sleep or regular meals) But just that feeling I had the first night after writing- just that utter involvement and relaxation. It's so relaxing writing something straight out of my own head, without fears of having to back anything up in case someone tries to sue me (life of a reporter)- it's just such a stress reliever.

I'm determined to continue, come hell or high water. I may always run four days behind, I may always be playing catch-up- but I love that feeling and I want to get it back.

Plus my novel idea is just too darn good to waste. : )

Here's a brief excerpt. I wrote this part the way I thought the character would be thinking upon waking up.

"She woke up and looked around.

The walls were white, blinding white. There was a chair, yellow gingham cloth covered. A table- with a small squat yellow vase, and flowers stuffed inside it. They were a mix of daisies and other yellow flowers she couldn't identify.

She looked closer. The flowers were fake.

The only other thing she saw in the room was a doorway, right in front of her, with a hanging folder on it with files.

It looked like a hospital.

She looked down at herself. She was in a bed with yellow sheets, two yellow covered pillows.
Her arms had cords and wires on them. She was on an IV.

She reached up her hand gingerly to touch her head. There was a bandage there, covering her entire scalp.

She could not feel any hair- it was gone.
Her entire head was shaved.

She sat quietly and looked around and realized that she didn't know where she was or what she was doing there or what happened at all.

She thought quietly to herself and realized that she could not remember her name."

Yes, yes- I'm excited about this.

Now I have to get back to reading about Vietnam. I hope to treat myself to half an hour or so of writing on my novel later, after I finish Daniel Ellsberg's "Secrets."

: )

Newsy Girl
(aka Rachael)

Begin Again

So, the time has come for NaNoWriMo again. Last year I finally made it to 50,000, after three years of trying. This year I, like the lovely Whit, feel the pressure of Broadside bearing down on my usual time allotment for novel writing. Not to mention the rest of my work and orgs. However, I'm aiming to make it again. It seems crazy, but I am determined to make another go at it.

It's three days into NaNoWriMo and I must admit, ashamedly, that I am already behind. Though there are no excuse, I do have somewhat of an excuse. Half way through the first page I came to the realization that my main character, who was dodging an exploded asteroid shell, was a useless idiot. So I decided to kill him off. Needless to say, the situation he was in made it extremely easy, and nothing bloats word count like senseless violence (with the exception, so I'm told, of random sex scenes) so it didn't turn out too badly. I put in a new main character, created a magic mineral used for fuel named (pitifully) petroid (I am really really bad at making up names) and figured out the novel's central conflict. Or at least, the central conflict for now. I'm sure that something else will come along.

I abandoned my original novel idea, because, while a cool concept, it had no people. Literally. The idea involved a post-apocalyptic world where mankind had mutated into brainless demon monsters and were kept in check by a fleet of robots that were coordinated by some central mind thingie. It was a cool idea, but I did the list from the No Plot, No Problem and realized that robots don't really have complex political plots nor backstab. It goes without saying that brainless demons don't either. Since I like both those things, I nixed the idea and just started writing instead. Not really sure where we're going from here, but I do know it will involve a split in political powers, some sort of race for minerals and location, and… I don't know… aliens?

 

Also, on a completely random note, just in case this post looks as if it was formatted by a illiterate, for the first time I am attempting to post to blogger using Word 2007's Blog Publishing mode. Go figure. This will be its field test!

 

Because I'm a wrathful person, I will now force you to read an excerpt from the unholy crapshoot that is my insta-novel. I swear to god, I normally write with a level of skill… really!

"Sir, I heard that the Empire has switched their focus? That they don't think there is anything worth having out here. I heard they sent sleeper ships out across the Velokahn Expanse to the next spiral arm. Is there any way I can get on one of those?"

"Son," the Pastor began. "Your Emperor has placed you out here for a reason, that reason is still true and valid, otherwise the emperor would have recalled you. Do you not believe this is true?"

"Well yes, but," Eirin replied with a stutter.

"Then your god has given you a decree and it would be presumptuous to think that you can do better."