Day 15 - Horse? What Horse?

Still haven't written anymore.  I'd say I was derailed last night by having to replace a door knob and unable to focus on much else besides Doctor Who after watching The Night of the Doctor but I'd be lying.  I just was not in the mood to work on what I've started.

I was talking it over with a friend and said that I think my problem with writing (and sometimes reading) fantasy is that I'm a pretty analytical person and a lot of fantasy requires suspension of disbelief and/or ignoring logical flaws.  For example, if Gandalf had a deal with the giant eagles, why was it necessary for the Hobbits to walk all the way to Mount Doom and throw the ring in when they could have flown?

So, I'm going to finish the opening episode of Steelgrave and then get back to writing crime.  I reread the Banker's Bride fragment I had on my computer yesterday and actually felt excited about getting back on it.  Also, I had some ideas I want to work into the next draft of Between Hell and a Hard Place.  I'm going to work in another suspect.

In other news, Mystic River was great and now I have to see the movie.  Until my last remaining unread Pelecanos book arrives, I'm reading The Insect Cookbook, a Netgalley find that I'm pretty excited about.  I may have to cook up a recipe and blog about it at some point.

Day 12 - Novel? What Novel?

So... How about that local sports team?  I haven't written much in the past few days.  Britt's working six nights in a row starting Thursday so I'll be attacking the work in progress with a vengeance.  I've ironed out some wrinkles and I'm just about ready to saddle up once again.

My "novel" will now be comprised of five (or seven) linked novellas.

In other news, I've read a couple ARCs and am only two books from reaching my goal of 130.  I'm currently reading Mystic River by Dennis Lehane and the 130th book will be What It Was by George Pelecanos, which is also the final book of George Pelecanos I need to read before I can add "Read the complete works of George Pelecanos in 2013" to my geek resume.

In other news, I interviewed Lawrence Block on my book blog today.  I'd say this is the crowning achievement as a book reviewer so far.

Day 7 - The Eureka Moment

For some reason, I had the idea to combine the ex-girlfriend and the bill collector characters earlier, which serves two purposes: to give Jonah a reason to return to Mayfair and also to fill him in on some of the happenings while he's been gone.  Things are back on track-ish.

I'm still planning on doing the linked short story thing and I should be able to recycle most of the material I've already written.  It also solves the "Why are you investigating some missing kids when your mother hasn't been seen in three months?" problem I was wrestling with earlier.

Day 7 - Circling The Drain

I woke up this morning knowing I would probably not do any writing today.  Even though I fixed the first chapter, it's still not working of me.  My main character still isn't active enough. I keep wanting to say "Your mother is missing, asshole!  Stop drinking with your best friend from high school."

Another thing that bothers me about the way it is now, Jonah's mother was grooming him to take her place before he ran off.  If that is the case, he should know more about his heritage and the weird goings on in town, not to mention the existence of the portal.

I'm thinking about structuring it into seven 10k chunks, like seven linked Doctor Who episodes.  It seems like his mother should pass him the torch fairly early on, not halfway through the damn book.

Anyway, I'll chew on this stuff today.  Considering I didn't start until the 11th last time I completed a NaNoWriMo event, I'm not too worried about it.

I have broken one of the NaNoWriMo Commandments!

I'm not sure which number it is but today, I broke one of the NaNoWriMo Commandments: Thou Shalt Not Revise.

Since the first day, a couple things were bothering me about the first chapter and I figured it out on the commute home.  In the old setup, Jonah's high school sweetheart shows up and asks him to find her missing cousin and then casually mentions no one has seen his mother in weeks.  It just didn't ring true to me.  On the way home, I decided that a bill collector tracks him down because his mother hasn't paid her bills in three months.  When he gets to his home town, he learns about the missing girls.

Well, two hours later and I'm back on track.  Due to writing some new material and recycling as much of the old material as I could, I only lost about two hundred words.  I'm feeling good despite spending this evenings writing time mending the space time continuum to accomodate these changes.

Back in the day, I used to post my in progress NaNoWriMo projects in the writing section of my Goodreads page.  I'm thinking about doing that again and taking them down in December.  The extra encouragement gives me a little more incentive to write.

Later on Day 6

I'm up 2700 words for the day and have a tremendous headache.  I intend on writing a bit when I get home but this isn't going to be one of those nights where I write from 5:30 until bedtime.  I'm in the stretch of the story where I'm writing the things that need to be written so I can get to the parts I'm dying to write in a couple days.

I'm still gunning for 25k by the 10, which seems doable, but I'm no longer aching to write all 80k this month.  As long as I make it to 50k, I'll be good.

Plus I really need to do some reading.  I need words coming in or it's hard to have words coming out.

Day 6 - Slowing down

Last night was not a banner night for me.  I got home two hours later than usual and the whole routine was shot, not just for me but for the dogs as well.  I wrote a whopping 300 words before giving up and going to bed.  I did iron out some of the bumps in the first chapter, though, so at least something got accomplished.

However, I'm up 1100 words already today and plan on doing some serious writing thoughout the rest of the day and evening.  I have a rough outline I keep refining as I go.  I still have my doubts about how long Steelgrave is going to go but we'll see.

The concept has morphed quite a bit since I first conceived it.  It started out like Justified with magic but now it feels more like a redneck version of Doctor Who.  One thing I'm struggling with is which characters I want to kill off and which I want to stick around for future stories.

The Fifth Morning

I finished up last night just a gnat's wing shy of 13k.  After checking my records, I had over 18k on Day 4 in 2011 so it isn't a NaNo record.

This morning, I've written down a rough outline of what needs to happen on which day. I'm going to start doing the Michael Moorcock Five Days to Save the World thing pretty soon.  So far, I'm feeling really good about the story.

I'm a little uneasy about not having enough juice to make it past 50k, though.  I'm thinking about doing some chapters from other character's viewpoints to mix things up.  Since I want to use the main character again, I'm going to throw in some hooks for future tales.

Day 3 Closing Thoughts

Day 3 of NaNoWriMo is quickly drawing to a close.  I'm at 9897 words, which is way ahead of where I need to be but not quite as far as I would like.  I'm feeling pretty good about things but I'm wondering if I have enough juice to make it to the end.  I'm not sure I have enough characters and twists to make it to my 80k goal.  On the other hand, everything is taking longer than I thought so I might just make it.

Tomorrow's writing will be Jonah visiting with his bestie Doyle Reed, making his first attempt to check out the Blood Oak House, and taking a look at the books he found in his mother's house.  He's got some dowsing to do but I'm not sure if I'll get to that tomorrow.

Time to read some Christine.

Day 3 - 6596

Top of the morning!  I didn't get any more writing done yesterday but I'm back on the horse this morning and plugging right along.  I just wrapped up the second chapter and I'll start on the third once I take a shower.  Britt's working nights the next four days so I should be in good shape for a while as far as finding time to write is concerned. Jonah's meeting one of the main bad guys for the first time in chapter three and then investigating his mother's house before going to a BBQ at his childhood best friend's place.

In other news, I mentioned having a Lawrence Block ARC on its way to me.  However, when I opened the package, there were two ARCS inside. Borderline by Lawrence Block and The Wrong Quarry by Max Allan Collins.  Also, I read Mr. Majestyk and am chewing away at Christine by Stephen King so the list of remaining books until I hit 130 for the year looks like this:

1. Borderline by Lawrence Block
2. The Wrong Quarry by Max Allan Collins
3. The Long Walk by Stephen King
4. The Claws of the Cat by Susan Spann
5. The Burglar Who Quoted Kipling by Lawrence Block
6. One of the Kindle books I've gotten from www.Freebooksy.com.  Freekbooksy is interesting.  You fill in your email address and preferred genres and every day they send you a list of ebooks you can get for free for that day only.

I'm thinking about pausing Christine and blowing through #1 and #2 on the list.

Time to take a shower and get back on the horse.

NaNoNews and some recentish pics

I finished yesterday with close to 3200 words and I already have 1800 words for today.  After running some errands, I'm hoping to jump back on the horse later and get another thousand or so words on paper.

And now, some recentish pictures.

Day 1 - 2442 so far

It didn't take me long to get back on the writing horse.  Chapter 1 is in the can.  I'm pretty sure I remembered everything I wanted to include.  Here's my favorite sentence so far.

He glanced around the office, seeing all the employees pecking away on their computers or talking on the phone, and smiled. Twenty-first Century Insurance ran like Swiss watch and, at the rate he was going, he'd be the one doing the winding in a few years.

Tomorrow, Jonah has to drive back to his home town.  I'm wondering how much chapter 2 the car ride is going to take.  I have ran into a slight hiccup already though.  Jonah's currently going by an alias, Joe James, so all the dialogue in the first chapter is attributed to Joe.  I think once he gets back to Mayfair, everyone will be calling him Jonah and I'll have to start sticking "Jonah said" at the end of his dialogue.  I'm wondering if I've ever read anything where the main character's name changes at some point.