CURRENT WORD COUNT: approx 42k GOAL FOR 31 OCTOBER: 45k (hahaha as if) GOAL FOR 30 NOVEMBER: 70k
I'm going to try to finish this godawful draft for NaNo. Right now I'm falling into weird middle bits where characters don't feel right, I don't really know what I'm doing, I changed too much to stick to my original plan for the draft, and I sound like I'm 15 again (literally, I found 30k of my NaNo from 2011 and. ouchies).
I don't have any word crawls picked out yet, but we'll see how I feel on 1 November! Right now I'm just trying to get caught up so my goal for November will be 800 words/day ish.
My actual goal is to finish this draft by the end of December, so NaNo will be a good leg up!
To round off this post, have a recent snippet:
Spoiler! :
The scream was deep and primal. It brought flashes to the forefront of visions—of heat, of light, of a frantic hunt and memories of a long, forgotten night. Memories of moonlight that cascaded through her fingertips, seeping into her hair until she forgot who she was and there was only the Hunt; there was only the stag; there was only the scream. She opened her mouth to join it but was muted, deafened, by the cacophony ringing off the walls that centered on her—her chest, her throat, under such pressure.
It rang with more voices than one person should have, a wail of wind on the bluffs, a low groan of rock crashing into the sea. The crowd parted like foam on buffeting waves, the musicians silent as death, letting the creature pace one foot by one foot towards the dais.
It was drowned; its skin was the gray-green of a watery death. Its flesh bloated, tight, over its bones like that of a fish in the sun. Its eyes were white and blind, its sharp teeth parted in a bony howl, and the white gown it wore was stained with streaks of red blood. It had been a woman, once—now its lank black hair dripped water where it walked and the dancers looked around in confusion.
Oops I've basically written nothing since Saturday c: Thanks to an epic emotional detox, I got wound up in myself for a whole three days and didn't hit my goal of 45k by the beginning of NaNo... Oh well! Things happen, and I'm not going for gold, after all. I'd be very happy with bronze, the way my life is going.
I still haven't picked a word crawl to use, even though they're by far my favorite creative way to get in the mood to write. I'll probably go down the list later today, maybe tomorrow, and see what I can start with!
So, I guess:
CURRENT WORD COUNT: 42k GOAL FOR 30 NOVEMBER: 70k DAILY WORD GOAL: 933
And a snippet! This is a longer one featuring Justin and the previously-unintroduced Karma.
Spoiler! :
“Who are you?” She was a child—no, a barely-adult locked in awkward adolescence. Her clothes fit her perfectly, but she wore them off-kilter, shirt off one shoulder and jeans shredded over her knees. Her dark brown hair was tugged into a messy ponytail, and she popped one hip as she studied him on the stump of the oak.
Karma, Justin wanted to call out to her, I’m so sorry. The words that cut the air, though, were a tenuous, “I’m…Justin.” He’d seen enough of the human world to guess at a name. Now he grimaced and wished he had told her the truth. My name is Iustinian, don’t come near—
“Well,” the young woman fussed, “this is private property—Justin.” She rested her hands on her hips and gave him a critical once-over. He had been wearing loose muslin pants and a linen shirt, and nothing else but the amulet at his throat and the mask hidden in his skin, his hair tied up with tangles of twigs and leaves. Next to her modernity, he looked more than out of place. “What are you, some kind of fugitive hippie?”
“Karma—” Justin, now, broke through the binds of the vision and spoke to the past. To the present.
The awkward adult glanced up, and her face grew leaner, hungrier. Her hair cut off brutally at her shoulders, her eyebrows furrowed in an eternally discerning stare. Her old clothes melted into a pristine blazer and skirt, and she checked the watch on her left wrist. “Justin,” she hissed. “What is this—you know I hate this kind of thing.” She shook her head. “I’m on my way to a meeting with an extremely important client. I cannot be late. If you would so kindly release me—”
“It’s about Zelda.” His skin crawled at the thought of anything bad happening to either of them. For all he knew, Nerissa had found him, she could have tracked Karma down as well. She needed to be near—to be safe. Zelda was the most important part of his life—Karma gave him purpose. She pushed him to be better than he was the day before.
“What? Another fight? You could have called—”
“She’s been taken,” he confessed, suddenly, with an ache in his chest from holding it back. “By my sister. To…the Other.”
Okay I didn't know word crawls were such a creative and organized thing, and this is a game-changer. Procrastination tactic #1: figuring out which one I want to try!
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
@Carlito I know right! Word crawls are how I live through NaNo, especially when I'm not in the mood for more of the organized chaos of word wars. A few of my favorites are the Extreme HP Crawl (also available in Google Docs and Sheets form for all 7 years -- it's posted in the NaNo forum somewhere, I'd have to find it), the super productive Hamilton Crawl, and for a shorter (but still fun!) experience there's the Dice Bag Mini Crawl (which is based off the classic tabletop RPG dice bag, and you can find online dice rollers as well) or the Solar System Crawl!
Extreme HP is an experience. I've never actually finished the entire thing before. It gets more and more challenging as you go along, and I'm sure all 7 years will finish you a novel and then some!
Right now I'm going to start with my Dice Bag crawl because I have some beautiful new dice I've been dying to use. I'll probably update this thread again after tonight's novelling sesh, and we'll see where I'm at!
DAILY WRITING: 1768 / 933 words NANO TO DATE: 1768 / 38000 words CURRENT WORD COUNT: 43803 words
I got a lot written today. I think it's honestly the effects of my recent emotional detox, as I've unwound myself from some things that had very bad effects on my life, and I'm finally finding the place I want to be. I also had a great cry session with my partner last night and we got everything in order re: our plans for the next few years. It needs some more drafting, but all in all it makes me a lot more comfortable and a lot more secure even as we don't have a lot of money to spare.
And secure writers write better drafts! While great things come from experiencing insecurity, better things come from writing in a place of security. I finally feel safe again and can allow myself to process much stronger emotions than I could for the last few months.
I know this is basically a blog post at this point; I just wanted to explain why I'm suddenly writing a lot more per day than my "eh, I'll skip a week" recently. I noticed I was writing less and lessand lessand less and I really want to have this draft finished by the new year. Honestly, I just want to prove to myself that I can write a novel! And if I can write it in 6 months, that means I can write two whole novels a year and still take plenty of days off!
Now we'll see how I feel once I get into editing a novel... Yuck.
Anyway, I started the Dice Bag mini word crawl I mentioned above, and got to the d10! When I rolled a 7 and had to write 700 extra words... Hence the ridiculous word count today! I'll probably finish the crawl tomorrow and do a little more planning. I'm paving the path for this novel as I go, and it's a lot of work to remind myself that not every single little thing is important to the story.
However, I've got some nice plot bunnies for side stories, sequels, and edited drafts. c:< I WILL CAUSE YOU ALL PAAAAAIN but especially @blueafrica I'm sorry <3 (spoilers: not actually sorry)
Anyway, here's today's snippet! A shorter one this time, featuring Caidred's POV because let's just ALL be POV characters, right? Oh, and ACTUAL SPOILERS for the main plot.
Spoiler! :
They had to keep her safe. At all costs. Who knew what a royal would do when they got their hands on a true changeling—the last time it happened, it was all-out war. They did their best not to look at the girl; to look was to mourn when they were found, when she was taken, when she was gutted for the power nestled deep in her core.
“Where are we going?” she demanded, trying to wrest her arm away from their grasp.
“To your aunt.” To certain death. “It’s the only way out. Let’s get going.”
Last night was D&D so I got no writing in. Oh well! That'll probably be the same every Friday, and in two weeks' time we'll be spending the weekend in Arkansas, so it's probably good that my goal is looser this year.
“Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.
I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.” — Richard Siken
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