Passages of Light and Darkness

Woohoo! I broke 50,000 words last night (Nove. 18). The computer started acting up, so I left well enough alone and quit for the night. And I’m still a bit short of my daily writing goals, but not by much. The novel still looks to be around 80,000 to 90,000 words so that at least is still on track.

But I spent this morning get notes down for another short story. It kept running around in my head, and I had to get it out to make room to work on the Nanowrimo novel. Gotta work on compartmentalizing more.

After getting through over half the novel, I’m finally getting the hang of getting into the POV character’s head and telling the story from each different viewpoint. But, I’ll have to go back and rewrite the earlier chapters so the reader can feel what the characters feel.

Got to go. Not sure if I’ll post again tonight, we’ll have to see. Woohoo!

I got to thinking about what I’ve written so far and came to the conclusion I’ll need to go through the manuscript and:

-          Find all the seem’s and appear’s and similar words and replace them or rewrite the sentences to make them stronger.

-          Find all the clichés I used and modify them so as not to be so, well, cliché. For instance, instead of writing she couldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. I wrote, she couldn’t trust him farther than elephants could fly.

I took an editing course that covered this, so I can’t believe I put in so many of the over used clichés. (Sigh) It’ll give me something to do in December.

I got over 46,000 words today. Sometimes my mind runs ahead of my typing. (It doesn’t help me wearing this wrist splint either). And if I miss putting in something, which I did today, and have to go back and put in more info, it slows me down. And then I forget the other excellent idea I had to improve the story.

Years ago, I suggested to the powers that be to make 40 hour days and 10 day weeks. That way I could get everything done. Nobody listened. Oh well.

I got into sections pertaining to the relationship between the two protagonists. It went pretty well for the first draft. I ended tonight still in the scene where they both shift and are romping through the woods. The romp is a G rated romp, but it’ll get hot and heavy when they get back.

I’ve decided to add a scene where the male protagonist tells his father he wants to spend his life with the female protagonist. His father explodes, saying he has to think of keeping the family of Shifter bears going no matter what his personal feelings are. It will all work out, but I hope it’ll add some tension in the burgeoning relationship.

My total count is over 42,000 words. And while I still have times when I just sit and stare at the computer, they’re getting fewer and fewer.   

The more I think about my story, the more details I either want to add or change. I’ve started putting * with comments after them to remind me what I want to do. If I finish before the end, I can start doing some of these.

So far I’ve decided to give Obsidian (that’s the name I gave the Disruptor bad guy) an assistant, which at first seems human. Whether or not he really is, I haven’t decided. I thought this would make the danger more immediate than to just have this bad guy in another dimension wanting to take over. Now some bad things can happen here without Obsidian being around.  

And I want to expand the scene where Gary is trapped in a magic laden room bound to a metal chair. I can put in other sensory items there and even give him a minor injury or two.

I went over 38,000 words today. I haven’t updated the Nanowrimo page yet, but did update some of my personal data.

I’ve also started writing down ideas for another novel and things to change for a rewrite of the first novel I wrote. I think the characters will stay the same, but some of the background will change. There’s a possibility it can become a UF (Urban Fantasy) novel. Time will tell.

I’m over 32,000 words. However thinking about the story has only led to more problems.

First I decided to add a human component to the bad guy’s side. I’m not sure if he’s totally human or something else, it hasn’t jelled yet. But I chose a character who’s already in the story. I’ll just have to increase his part. If I finish the story before the end of the month, I’ll start writing him into more sections early in the story. He’s already got an attitude against the police so that won’t change.

Parts of the story are getting easier to write and others have me sitting in front of the computer wondering how to get there from here. And some of the characters are telling me what they want to do or say, while others, you guessed it, just sit there and don’t say or do a thing. Why can’t everyone be on the same page?

I’m almost halfway through the outline, so I may finish the novel before the end of the month. But if I don’t it’s no biggie. I’ll put aside some time each day to finish it. What I am worried about though is I’d planned to submit a couple of short stories, and while I did submit one and have started another, I want to spend as much time on the first draft of this as it takes. I neglected last year’s Nanowrimo novel because the software then wouldn’t let me submit it. I use adaptive equipment to access the Internet – a screen reader. I got real frustrated and left the end of the story in outline form. That caused problems down the line, so I’ll finish the first draft this one no matter how long it takes.    

Ah, the writing life.

I’d hoped to make it to 30,000 words by tonight, but fell a little over 1,000 short. There were two reasons for the shortfall.

First, I made a posting to the main blog. It had to do with something I’ve been reading and I wanted to get it down before it slid into the jumble of crap that’s wandering around in my head. Second, we had to pick up my daughter at college tonight and that cut my writing time short. But there’s a posting on the main blog called, Quality, Performance, and Pride. It’s a build-up for other articles I’ve got planned.

I’m getting into the back story scenes in the novel. I hope to handle them better than with the last novel. The earlier one is in the critique stage and has gone through many revisions, some major. And I still don’t like the ending, so it may change.

As for the ending for the current WIP, I still have to add some action scenes about the demise of the bad guys.  

I got a lot done today. I now have over 24,000 words on my Nanowrimo novel. The writing was pretty straight forward, no surprises and I only deviated slightly from the outline.  

And in addition, I submitted a short-short (or a long flash) for publication in “The Pedestal” mag. The submissions for the next issue are being judged by Bruce Boston and his wife, Marge Simons. I took a Spec Fic course from Bruce a while ago, which I enjoyed and I learned a lot.

I also started researching for another article on the main blog. This one too will be about safety and BP. Hopefully, it will be up by the end of the week.

I subscribe to several Health e-zines. One had an interesting article on fast food, which may decide to become another posting on the main blog. We’ll have to see – it still needs more research.   

I went over 20,000 today. Though I’m still a bit behind where I think I should be, that’s not bad. I made some changes to the outline, but haven’t thought them all the way to the end of the story.

The other day I introduced some silver rings. I’m still not sure what significance they’ll have, but I’ve got this feeling they should be there. And if the story ends and they don’t come back, I can always go back and delete the references to them.

Also in the outline Gary disappeared and I didn’t have a place where he came back before his mother picked him up. So I put that in too.

I went to the Nanowrimo site today to update my word count and it wasn’t as slow as it has been. I still haven’t finished updating my personal info. The last time I tried to do it, I hit the wrong key combination and got thrown out of Internet Explorer. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.

No new characters added, but I did give names to some of the city officials. Got to remember to add their names to the character list. Take care, Barbara

Nanowrimo Day 8:

It’s Monday. Most of the weekend was taken up by family stuff. My daughter had to be picked up from college in a neighboring state Friday night, and brought back Sunday night.  And my son came home for his birthday. He brought his girlfriend and I made a corned beef dinner. The dinner came out well, even though he showed up later than I’d expected. Crockpots are wonderful sometimes. He and girlfriend left with the leftovers and the rest of the ice cream cake. I didn’t need that cake around as temptation.

So, I didn’t get as much done this weekend as I wanted to on my novel.

Today I had a doctor’s appointment and my husband had to go in for blood work. That took a chunk out of today. My current count is 18,278. I’m still a bit behind. Hopefully I’ll make it up during the week.

I had an idea for a slightly different ending than the one I have written down. I’ll let it gel for a couple of days and see if it sticks or not. Sometimes story ideas are like spaghetti. You throw them against the wall and if they stick, they’re ready to use. So off to test the spaghetti.   

I didn’t post yesterday. We went to pick up my daughter at college so she could spend the weekend here. Not for a moment did I think she’d actually spend time here; she has her own plans. But tomorrow, I’d planned to celebrate my son, Brian’s, birthday as a family. He’s living in Boston now, and even though I didn’t see him much when he was in college, it’s worse somehow now he has a “life of his own”. But on the other hand, I’m really proud he’s doing as well as he is.

So, I’m making a corned beef dinner for him and his girlfriend, me, my husband, and our daughter.

So, this family get together means another day of not much writing.

I decided to figure out how much I need to write the way another writer is doing it. I estimated the total length of my novel to be 85,000 words. Then divided that by 30 for the number of days in November, 30. It came out to 28333. So for the end of day 6 I should have 16,998 words. Right now I have only 12, 599 words. So if I figure it this way, I’m behind. Hopefully, this mode of thinking will keep my butt in gear. We’ll see. If this weekend goes the way I think it will, next week could be a killer. So much for being ahead of the game.