National Novel Writing Month

[Dirty n Evil]

Life has chosen a bad time to become busy, complicated, and full of headaches. I'm getting behind on my writing, and things keep getting thrown in my way to address. This is not good for this project.

[Searcher]

Don't despair! You're not far short! One, single spark of inspiration should catch you up with words to spare !

Dispair me ???? Yea I go with dispair ... Sunday is my only day off so hopefully I can get some buffer time in.

Among other things, when she speaks to flowers, they are not supposed to talk back.

Depends on how much cough syrup you drink ... especially if you use the old formula fro the 1800 that had a bit of opium in it.

And on top of all of that, I have to somehow discover the carrying capacity of an eight-year-old farmgirl. Where on earth am I going to find that out? I might have to actually register on their website so that I can ask the resources forum...

I hope this doesn't sound flipping but most young children (especially the girls) worked with the farm animals and/or in the house because they couldn't carry much at that age.

...On the other hand, I've already made 103 notes or so in 7,000 words, and probably written about a thousand words worth of comments, so... I'm not certain how long it will take me to work through all of those comments...

That is my biggest failing so far ... write a couple hours spend equal amount if not more editing and changing a lot. I need to stop doing that, you know you take a break, run spell checker (mine is rebelling right now) and I think ... you know that would sound better if I do this ... er wait now i have to change this here ... umm now that doesn't over here ...

[Jane]

Ah, it's not for farmwork that I need to figure out how much she can carry - circumstances required that she carry a significant quantity of water a long distance, and I'm uncertain as to how much she could plausibly carry. As it stands, I think she can probably carry the water I've assigned her, though her means of doing so is quite awkward, but I don't believe I have her carrying enough for her purposes... But, eh, it's not REALLY that important a detail. It will bug me, but the reader will probably gloss over the point.

That said, that observation does play in to why she is the way she is, to a degree; she was just becoming old enough to actually be somewhat useful, a distinction she had very much wished to claim.

On an unrelated note, they didn't keep livestock; they would only be useful in this setting for the production of cheese, which is considered a precious delicacy, but as their home was located particularly close to the tall grasses*, it was considered unsuitable; not only did the close proximity make the livestock restless, such locations had a tendency to attract predators. Big cats, mostly, but snakes and more exotic threats were not unheard of. It was bad enough that they would kill the livestock, but it also puts the workers of the farms at risk. This is aside from the difficulty in getting them to the farms; they rarely survive the journey across the desert, and travelling the rim of the steppes can be a journey of years. For marginal farms such as this one, the grasses usually reclaim the fertile land within that time.

I know, I know, you didn't ask for a paragraph on the livestock industry of a fictional realm, but as I'll not have the opportunity to mention it in the text ...

*Ugh, I want to call it a "Grass Ocean" or somesuch, but then I'll feel like I'm just taking it from Geroge RR Martin . "Tall Grasses" or "Razor Grasses" are probably the most natural names I've come up with for it, but neither really seems evocative enough... "Tall" doesn't cover the vast, vast expanses they cover, or their deadly nature, while "razor" doesn't cover the height or the scope... I'm half-tempted to just call them "Grassy Expanses of Doom" or something equally cheesy until a name just flashes and clicks with me.

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That is my biggest failing so far ... write a couple hours spend equal amount if not more editing and changing a lot. I need to stop doing that, you know you take a break, run spell checker (mine is rebelling right now) and I think ... you know that would sound better if I do this ... er wait now i have to change this here ... umm now that doesn't over here ...

Mmm, my advice for that would be to not read a single thing you've written that's before the paragraph you're working on. If you realize that you left out a horribly important detail, feel free to go and slide it back in, but otherwise, the only story that exists is the paragraph you're on now*. And if that paragraph is giving you grief, slap a comment on it mentioning why it doesn't feel right, so that you can get back to writing and keep the narrative flowing.

If you simply can't resist the urge to tweak your text, resolve to do so only after you've reached your word count for the day - telling yourself that you're just focusing over here right now, and will be right back to fix what you noticed once you're done with that, can help balance your need for fixing with your need for writing.

Alternately, if your problem is that you keep reading what you've written during breaks, give yourself incentive to avoid breaks - tape a knife made of paper to the ceiling above where you work, and tell yourself that if you tarry, the knife will surely fall and kill you .

Of course, you've probably heard this advice a dozen times by now . It's the sort of thing that's significantly easier to say than to do. But I'm certain that it will become easier for you as you persevere ^^ . As you get going, you'll find yourself falling into a sequence that just makes the words pour out, until you glance at the clock and see that three hours are gone and five six thousand new words are on your page ^^ .

*Of course, this is the same technique which left my main character taking a significant detour that may or may not need to see significant portions excised from the final draft**, so... It is not without drawbacks.

**Although I do hope I can keep her absurd conversations with the flower. Those were fun, albeit ridiculously stilted.

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Life has chosen a bad time to become busy, complicated, and full of headaches. I'm getting behind on my writing, and things keep getting thrown in my way to address. This is not good for this project.

Ugh, I know exactly how that can be . I've meant to do Nano several times in the past, and each November, Something Came Up. Major work slam, moving, Friendship Crisis... I never even got started >< . I was really expecting something would happen this year as well... I still half-do, really, which is why I'm impersonating my character's dedication unti I get two weeks ahead of schedule, or so >_o .

But, well, those were all Big, Elaborate Events ^^ . Hopefully your own troubles will swiftly clear!

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Saturday Afternoon Edit: Yeeeeesh, I've not been able to write a word today . I took care of some light business in the morning, but most of my time has been spent looking at the page, tabbing out into the TV tropes indices of antiheros and villains, tabbing back to the page, tabbing into the news, tabbing back to the page, tabbing into a couple of Mary Sue* tests, tabbing back to the page, tabbing into reading about OTHER people Nanoing, etc. I haven't put a single word on the page yet, though I'll still make my daily wordcount. I just can't frame how I want her to wake up from her fever. I used up most of the good fever dreams in her earlier hallucinations, and the audience has probably seen enough Character Significant But Plot Irrelevant Visions anyway, but I don't want the immediate next line to be her waking up having been cured by her rescuers, either. Oh! I know! I'll cut to her love interest's** PoV instead! I wanted to introduce who the characters were first, but this will still establish Why Group B Is Relevant To Character A while maintaining continuity with the previous event! And, as an added advantage, switching to someone who already knows them allows me to introduce the character's names and one or two identifying characteristics while they're actually doing something, thus bypassing the jarring, "Oh, yeah, this is x, y, and z, they're q, r, ands s, and you should care because g, h, and i. Did you already forget the first half of that sentence?" infodump that I was wondering how to get around! HaHA! I knew all I'd have to do was write what the problem was, and an answer would strike me! Although, since this PoV character already knows some things that I mean to reveal later, I'll have to be careful to avoid situations that will bring them to mind... Though, maybe I could drop a hint or two, it would be amusing for me, and it's not as though the reader will be treating this as some huge riddle, especially when the answer to it comes within the next fifty pages***...

*Not that I was entertaining concerns that she was, honestly. If anything, I'm more concerned that she's acting like an anti-sue; if she doesn't start doing some things that the audience will sympathize with, the reader's opinion is going to become rather firm, and this plot won't work if the audience doesn't care about the characters involved. Not that the audience has to like her, mind you,

**Well, you know, future love interest. Given that they're both eight at the moment.

***Well, assuming the characters don't have ANOTHER detour in mind. They probably do.

[Searcher]

I finally broke 10,000 .. today has been a good day

[Jane]

Ugh, today was terrible. I don't know if I slept on my eye in a strange manner, or if I got some shampoo in it, or it burst a minor capillary* or what, but my left eye has been sore all day. Whatever it was, it's also caused this dull ache across extending up to my temple, with the ocasional brief, flashes of pain.

Since I can't actually write at length until I focus long enough to get the first couple of sentences down, and this ache is prevents me from focusing for long enough to get the scene going, it completely shot my work for the day. I was hoping to get a couple of days worth of buffer, but I barely met my daily word count** .

On the upside, throwing up my hands in the morning let me reschedule some of my postponed appointments back to today. I had cleared my schedule for the start of NaNoWriMo, but this will let me free up some time later in the month. I hope a good night's sleep is enough to fix this...

*Probably not, that tends to cause more reddening of the eye... But the capillaries in my eye ARE more visible than they normally are. Really, it only comes to mind because of randomly encountered medical trivia, rather than anything actually pointing to it.

**Though I do quite enjoy this conversation with Esme. Though it's no clear yet, she so rarely gets flustered with characters other than Alarin, whose... Unique, way of interacting with people completely flummoxes her. I do hope her dialogue sounds more natural than previous ones.

[Fen]

My main character is already creeping me out.
I thought this would happen after more than 10 pages o.O

[Searcher]

I want to punch one of my charaters ... I really worry about myslef when I can create such dispictable people that even Satan would be like "Dude be cool, take a chill pill!"

[Artemisia]

Well...I haven't written anything other than working on my thesis. Two more weeks and I have to have the final draft in, week after that the polished draft....I think I can do it.

[Jane]

Blaaaaah, it's almost midnight, and I'm still down 3,500 words from where I want to be tonight (at 29,814 as time of writing) >_o . I'll still have a night's buffer if I can't get these words down, but I'm going to need a good week's worth of buffer by the end of the month... I hope I can get into a nice writing trance tonight.

I know what I want to start writing here, but I just can't find the right set of sentences to go with - the next set scene involves Esme joining a hunt in the grasses, which is a bit inconvinient for me since I want to make it somewhat exotic, but not terribly, followed by her return to the group, and "studying the Teachings of Sekat together" with Alarin - in quotes, because Esme only has a superficial knowledge of the topic, despite her claims, while Alarin knows a great deal more. This part will require exact quotes of the Teachings, which don't come readily to mind for me.

My character relationships took a bit of an unexpected swerve tonight when Alarin managed to actually insult Esme, by being dismissive of her own deceased mother. It seemed natural enough for Alarin, who never really knew her, but Esme was deeply disturbed at the notion, as she's very much devoted to her own, quite-alive mother. It's a nice break from the way things were going, because Esme was becoming too attached to Alarin too quickly, and I want her to be a good character on her own, but I'm not wholly certain as to how I'm going to reconcile them - Alarin isn't aware of what she's done, and Esme, while hard to offend, tends to hold on to offenses for quite some time. Plus, I intend to time-skip before too long (I was honestly intending to some ten thousand words or so earlier, actually), and that needs to be wrapped up before I can do so.

Oh, Kemat, I just realized that this is a third of the way through the first book and the main characters are still eight. ...Maybe editing will tighten that up a bit <_<; .

I also have no clue as to what happens after Alarin and Esme next speak, since we're still somewhat off course, but I'm not terribly concerned about that. With the way Esme's been letting item after item slip, she's bound to give the game away before long. Alarin just needs to soften up a bit before that, which "Esme's Ridiculously Botched Theology Sessions!" should help with. Not that I know exactly what she's going to say, but, well, she's terrible at speaking to Alarin. She's bound to say something that's wildly out of line with the Teachings of Sekat, but which helps advance the plot.

...I really kind of want to get them to town now, though, so that Esme can prove that it's only Alarin that she's bad at talking to. I don't want her to come off as dim, or anything.

Edit: Erk! Except, there's two different things elements in the hunting scene that reveal things that the reader isn't supposed to know for a couple more scenes, as they should be revealed at the same time as Alarin discovers them. Only, there's something in that scene that I want to include so that it's certain the reader isn't confused for the next scene... Ack @_@ . Maybe... Find an excuse to switch to Alarin now, switch to Esme mid-hunt, then cut back to Alarin for the theology lesson?... Possibly? Hm. Or... Switch to the PoV of the prey, maybe... That... Could... Maybe work. Kind of. Oh, curses, I don't know what I'm doing with this thorny mess, I'll just make something up and flag the entire section for revision later...

My eye pain cleared up, but I think it was a prelude to actual illness . My nose has been a bit runny these last two days, and my throat scratchy. Also, I've been a bit more tired than I normally am, and my head a bit cottony. I hope this clears up quickly, as it's most inconvinient.

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It's nice to here that everyone else's characters are coming off nicely colorful, though ^^ . Vibrant characters make for wonderful books, and unpleasant characters can make for some very effective conflict ^^ .

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I hope you make your deadline! I always get uncomfortable when my own deadlines are a few weeks away, but I have faith that you can make it .

[Fen]

I lost