words burn, falling from her lips

Yup, I missed Days 1-3. Days 1 and 2 were spent in Egypt or flying back, and though I was writing both days, I was generally filling in background for my characters rather than writing out scenes. Day 3, once I got back from step aerobics, I wrote 147 words, and then went to bed as soon as Mike came home. So now that I have no more excuses (beyond a headache and a list of other things to do), I begin.

I calculated that I need to write around 2k words a day to finish on time/early. Trying to catch up all at once was a little too overwhelming. I like this pacing better.

While I write plenty of livejournal entries in the first person, I'm really fighting writing an entire novel that way. However, I think it will work out best for the subject matter. Stupid logical considerations.

Total written: 2,012 (I got that far mostly because I was up waiting for election results, not because I was engaged with what I was writing)

Worst obstacle faced: I have been fumbling, fumbling, fumbling, trying to figure out who my main character is. It's getting harder and harder to ignore the push to work on the story about Greg, instead. Only that's currently narrated in the first person as well, from the POV of a minor character who, compared to Greg, is about as interesting as boiled milk.

It's been a while, no? Well, since I was told at VP that I'm really starting novels in the guise of writing short stories, I thought I'd go ahead and write another one--or at least as much of one as I was able during November.

You can find my NaNoWriMo user info here. I'm cascade-fire on the site as well.

The description of the novel is fluid. The first half--the part about it involving a clone--is correct. The second half--about other clones being killed--is probably true. The how and why are still in flux. I've picked up a few books on world building and writing mysteries in the hope that I can digest the information well enough to spit out a near-future scifi mystery in November. But the idea has been percolating for a while. As I figure out the structure, I also need to meet the characters and scope out settings. That will make the whole thing go smoother.

Ah, yes. And did I mention I only have two more weeks before I go on a two-week vacation? And that I'm taking classes, applying for jobs, and trying to run through my to-do list in the intervening time?

And...go!

Plenty of internal tell-don't-show and a mid-paragraph POV shift. Yikes.

Today's events: Ian dances with Aysha; Brian watches them and makes observations; Ian takes off in pursuit of a waif who's being pursued by a wolf; nobody saves the day. There's lots of blood and knives.

Total word count: 3,345 (on track)

Favorite line: His hair had the sheen of worn vinyl.

Started up my NaNoNovel, today. It's a chunk of my reallybiglongstory that I want to get written, so I'm treating it like a sequel. Nothing exciting is happening--Ian is checking out a club, mostly in the hopes he'll find Aysha there. He's also trying to find some adults to spend time with--he spends too much time hanging out with the teenaged waiters at the restaurant. (Or, at least, that's his excuse for wanting a night on the town.) Not much action: Ian waits in line, chats with the bouncers (what the bouncers are is still a mystery to me, but there's Something Significant about them), and is finally let in. He finds Aysha far too quickly, and they dance. End of Day 1.

Total word count: 1,753 (the site is being slooooow and not letting me update, so I wanted to record that I made my quota)

Have the first 2.5 chapters of NaNoNovel A plotted out. When I started officially plotting on Saturday, I realized that Victorian London fails as a setting, so I'm just going to scrap London and go with a made-up city that fits my needs. (If I was going to use a real city, everything was going to be factually accurate. That became a problem as soon as I read that the trains didn't go directly into London for many years after railways started being constructed, since people who were grazing sheep in the city didn't want the smoke from the trains dirtying their animals' fleece. Go figure.)

When I started plotting NaNoNovel B, I realized I was working on the sequel rather than the first book. As it was, the characters were established and everybody knew everybody else, so there was no entry point for a reader. I'm not sure who I could use to bring readers into the story, since few "normal" people have roles in the story, and those who do don't get too deeply involved. Sigh.

So, if Novel A implodes (previous to Nov 1), I move on to Novel B. If Novel B implodes...then what do I do?

Less than two months before NaNoWriMo starts up again. October has been set aside for research and formulating a plan, beginning with a simple toss of a coin: do I go with the familiar or strike out into the unknown? Do I spend the month killing parasites and walking the Road with Ian, Rune, and Aysha, or do I attempt an alternate history revolution-that-wasn't taking place in Victorian England? Decisions, decisions. (As much as I love my reallybiglongstory, I'm currently leaning toward the alternate history. I know, I reek of favoritism.)

Mostly, I'm overwhelmed by the amount of research that needs to be done. I have plenty of books on the medicinal properties of herbs, the language of flowers, and what groups of things are called, and I have my favorite books on Victorian England that live at the library, but I'm going to need to go deeper than that.

I can imagine all sorts of things cropping up in the midst of writing that I hadn't thought of, and then what? Press on with "insert pertinent detail here"? Often, research (in)forms what I write. The way "Hungry Ghosts" was written depended on what I'd found during my research.

Research can also hold you up, however--Mike's been working on a short story for several months because he keeps having to stop and wait for books to come in. (He is a stickler for physically/historically accurate details.) The novel he was working on when I met him took him over three years to write due to the amount of research he did.

Then there are the facts you can't find or verify, no matter how nicely you ask the internets. For example, when I was on a tour in Ireland, the tour guide told us that one of the reasons there were so many blind Irish poets was because the families burned peat, and children who were sensitized/allergic to the smoke became blind. I've never been able to find anything to back this up, but I really want to use it.

Balancing out the year with NaNoWriMo in November and IFJM in April worked for 06-07, though I'm going to have to rethink the format for IFJM. Trying to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and an end every day got tiring. Next year might be poetry, instead. Or a story in postcards as the main character moves from place to place. Trying to hit 1k words every day was difficult when I didn't have the structure of a longer piece to go on (especially when I chucked the outline out the window after the third day and made it up as I went along after that.)

I like the community that springs up around NaNoWriMo, too. Needs must get myself a Web site for IFJM and find some more people to play along.

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