*ding*
Continue reading →

I got up within a few hundred of being where I should be last night. I only need a couple thousand to be on target for the novel, but I’m going to try and get at least 4K in tonight.

The novel is turning out to be equal parts whacky and emotionally damaging. Last night I had a bit of awkward. While I went out to check and see if there were chalk marks on the car indicating that the parking nazis were watching my ass, I’d left my laptop on the couch I was sitting on between two of the people I knew. When I got back, I discovered that some musical chairs action had gone on and there was now some boy in his early teens sitting next to my spot.

Which would have been fine, except:

a. I’d just finished writing this pretty ugly scene of emotional and sexual blackmail that ended with fading to black on the beginnings of a sex scene.
b. The kid mentioned names of characters in my book that were visible on my screen in the scene that immediately followed it, with the sentence, “I know where you got those names. Solomon, Ophelia and stuff.” “Great,” I said, trying to give him the cold shoulder. The lsat thing I need is to get my chops busted because some kid saw something he shouldn’t have.

Note to self: don’t leave my screen up like that when writing the uglier scenes in the book.

As it was, the kid kept looking over my shoulder at stuff as I wrote. While it didn’t get as seedy as that one scene, it was still not age appropriate.

I’m at about 18,600, putting about 5000 words behind. I got less than a thousand done on Tuesday and just the base amount (1600 or so) done last night. The trap I keep falling into is trying to dig up some research that comes up right as I’m writing.

Tuesday it was trying to come up with a feudal equivalent to an acquisitions department. I failed to come up with anything.

Last night it was trying to find details about half remembered laws regarding a finder’s ability to claim lost items that they turn in. I’d first come across them when I was working Loss Prevention a Fred Meyer. I was kinda thwarted by the fact that there are a million “unclaimed property” Web sites out there that bubble up in Google.

So, yeah, sidetracked by random research. My hope is that I can make serious catchup this weekend. The worst case scenario? I have to start bringing my laptop in to work to write at my lunchbreak.

Having finished reading Twenty Years After, I started reading, The Atrocity Archives. That was probably a mistake. While I tend to do well at dialogue, I tend to suck at describing setting. I’m also not one of those broadly read super-geniuses that can distill vast amounts of knowledge into a tightly packed story. (Cf. Neil Stephenson, Tim Powers, Charles Stross)

So I’m feeling a little humbled. =(

Well, poop. Writing yesterday was kind of a bust. Between errands taking longer than planned, a massive headache most of the day, and then going out drinking around 5… I only got about 1500 words in (for a total of 13500). Sleeping in till 11 after a long night of socializing doesn’t help either.

So I’m almost 5000 words behind where I should be. By the end of today I should be at 20,000. Between now and the end of the day I need to walk and get our car and then I’ll be spending most of my evening at the Wayward write-in. If I can get at least 3000 in, then I can probably close the gap down to 4500. Not great, but better than it could be. My goal is to get about 2K every night this week (except Friday, where I will be occupied all day). And then Saturday will be the first of another large pushes over a 3-day weekend.

No one has made suggestions regarding posting further chunks, so I will refrain from doing so until someone specifically suggests something or asks for a copy.

Got in 3,000 words last night, so I’m just over 12,000. So I’m about 4-5,000 words behind.

Random thoughts:

I hit about 9K last night. If I’m pacing myself well through the month, I should have at least 15K as of last night. So I’m a bit behind. I churned out 3K at the write-in this last night. I hadn’t really expected to get much done, as the socializing at the write-ins is a little distracting, but nevyn522 bullied me into pushing for 3K. I ended up staying an hour later than planned, but I did it.

Things of note:

I’ve been so busy this month that I haven’t had time to update this particular blog. I spent the first four days at AmberCon Northwest and most of my free internet time has been spent either working up my post-con report or frantically

trying to catch up on wordcount. But I’ve got a bit of free time at work to post a quick status update.

I’m just shy of 5000 words. Which puts me about 7000 words behind where I should be. But, still, I just need to get back in the groove. Due to my work schedule this month, I’ll probably have a lot of free days to just sit and write.

I’ve been bad about emailing backups to myself, so I can’t access the latest draft of the document. But I posted an excerpt
on my page on the NaNo site. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do in terms of future excerpts.

I’ve yet to work out how exactly I’m going to do future excerpts. LJ does have a size limit on posts. Last year I had a filter on my private LJ just for NaNo, but I mainly just linked to Word docs on my Web site. If anyone has a suggestion, I’d be happy to hear them.