Friday, November 12, 2010

Day 12 - I am One Cranky Bastard

Yeah, my rocket-like progress this NaNoWriMo is definitely having some side effects.  I'm becoming increasingly short-tempered and irritable.  I'm also on the verge of looking at writing as a troublesome chore rather than a creative endeavor.  I think part of it is trying like hell to hit 50k by Sunday and 100k by the end of the month.  Why I am torturing myself like this?  I think I'm going to relax my daily word goal to 2500 and stop trying to hit 100k in record time.  Instead of trying to do 5k today, I'm going to write one chapter and spend the rest of the day reading.  It's been at least two weeks since I've sat down and read for longer than fifteen minutes.  Maybe a half day of NaNo vacation will do me good.

Here's a few paragraphs that I've written so far this morning that I'm entertained by:

Valaric furrowed his brown and put the spyglass to his eye. At first, he had no idea what he was supposed to be seeing, just the overwhelming blackness of the Celestial Sea and the occasional piece of free-floating rock were apparent. He was about to hand the spyglass back to Zephalmachus and admonish him when he noticed a flicker of movement.

It was a yard long and covered in red bony plates of armor. Hundreds of pairs of legs were flat against the underside of its serpentine abdomen. At the front of the creature was a bullet-shaped head with seven pairs of feeler, flanked on each side by two lobster-like claws.

Valaric counted thirty of the creatures before he deemed it a pointless venture. The organisms traveled in a vast cloud, like a school of fish. Each watched the Silver Scarab and mimicked every adjustment that Jong made.

“Quite captivating. They seem to be a curious combination of prawn and millipede,” Zephalmachus said.

“They are Rokuth larvae,” Bregik said. “Though it is rumored they are quite tasty, catching and eating them is forbidden by most intelligent races that trawl the Celestial Sea.”

“Why is that?” Valaric asked.

“The adult Rokuth are among the most intelligent of known beings, some having reached high levels of proficiency in the magical arts,” Bregik said.

“Eating a sentient species is a repellent idea, no matter how delicious,” Zephalmachus said. “Still, I wouldn't mind a specimen for study.”


I'd better get back to work.  I want to get them to Nal Sakaar before I go out to run errands later.

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