Day 3: 9926 words

Well, I'm basically back on track for doing double-words (goal was 9999). This is a relief, and I'm amazed I made it considering I stopped in the middle of the day to attend a yoga class. (Just trying to counter the effects on my back of sitting in front of a computer all day every day for 16 hours a day...)

I've figured out how to write fast too. I think. Basically what I need is to work out setting and plotlines in advance, but do no character development whatsoever. It's working out a lot better to have characters that start out with barely more than name, general abilities, role in plot, and maybe a personality quirk or two. I don't have to psyche myself up to write for them, and I don't secondguess whether a given phrasing is the way they'd say it or not. I just write down what they're trying to say without worrying about how they'd say it, and move on.

So where last we left off with our anti-heroes, they'd just launched their practice weapon of mass murder. Norm Owani shot up a bunch of mob fronthouses before eventually getting captured by one of the bosses and locked into a dungeon somewhere. Because of the spells on him, he's basically unkillable - and now I'm thinking he might make a reappearance later on, near the end of the story. (Of course, as I type this, I've forgotten what I was thinking to do with him there ... but no matter. If it doesn't come to me by the time I get there, I'll think of something else.)

Meanwhile, our anti-heroes went on to capture their real target, whose name is Zeke. There were many words spent on getting him into the binding ritual - but now he's successfully launched too.

So I'm fast forwarding to a timepoint several years later. (Hrm. I might shorten it to months instead of years, depending on how that might work.) The "good guys" have discovered, for the very first time, the remnants of the zombiemaking ritual that Zeke is using on his victims. Now that they have that info, they can figure out everything they ever wanted to know about the serial killer - and work up to figuring out who his next likely target is. They haven't figured out the link to the zombies yet, and I'm not sure how they'll stumble on that, but that's for later. For the time being I finally have a protagonist! His name is Suunja Henderson, and he's the son of Janis and Mark. I worked out that by that point in the timeline, Janis's kids were going to be grownups, and since I had no existing characters that fit the role of a police investigator, voila. ;)

The next likely target is named Martha. (Yes, the one I was confused about back on Day 1.) She's posing as an executive secretary to a VP of an oil corporation, gathering intel about a new product they're about to release that will ... well, destroy the world, eventually. ;) Her group wants that to not happen. At some point after I've written out the serial killer info with Suunja, I'll be switching to her viewpoint from inside the corporation and with the group she's working with. How does this tie in with the rest of the plot? Well, see. The demon that's ultimately behind the serial killer wants the new gas to be released into the world, which means that Martha needs to be eliminated.

At the moment, I'm not really finding the concept of corporate board meetings that interesting to write about. Hopefully I'll warm up to it though. They are going to be talking about exciting things. I just need to get past the part where I invent all the people in the meetings (by names and roles - e.g. Head of Finance, Head of Research etc.). I've never been a business drone, so without any clue how these things actually work, I'm a bit lost. There are some friends I'll have to pin down and ask about that...

I guess that's where things stand at the end of Day 3. Tomorrow I have to put in a cameo at work, plus the election results are going to be coming in, so I'm not expecting to get much writing done. We'll see though. I don't really want to be 3333 words behind on Wednesday...