Labor Day Novel 2010

Yes, I did it again this year. No, no plan this time either. I didn't have any excuses for not cranking out a ton of words like I had the previous two years, but alas, it looks like a lack of plan does me in just fine anyway.

Day 1: 3677 words toward Vengeance
Day 2: 3861 toward Hand
Day 3: 266 words toward ... never mind. T.T

The first two days, I made a fair amount of good progress. The overall goal was just to write a lot, advance the amount of material to edit later. Well, I managed to accomplish that.

Day 1 was all about Vengeance. I wrote out yet another version of the planning in the park, then gave up on giving it a good ending and went on to the good part - getting them into the warehouse. That was a lot of fun. Lots of fast-paced action, and the writing went by really fast.

Then I got stuck on how they were actually going to get back out of the warehouse. It sank underground and now has a heavy metal plate over the hatch. My vision of things involves them doing something ingenious and complex going back out through the roof. This rules out any underground tunnels Hernando might know about in the area and tell Rumen about. Rumen could also call on his other underlings (Edward and David are still back home), but I'd like them to do it on their own. They have a ton of combat and trespassing skills among them, they should use them.

Unfortunately, my current setup isn't very complex, and there's only one exit. So, well, I guess they need to either find or create another one in the roof that the Bad Guy somehow doesn't have covered (even though he was very well-prepared for their arrival; he didn't have intel on them in particular, just knew "someone" would likely show up).

Also, it occurs to me that the Bad Guy wouldn't just leave them to sit around doing nothing (and possibly coming up with escape plans). He'd torment them to keep them busy, fill up their time so they don't have time to plan anything about getting out or messing up the midnight plans with Aaron. So, I need torture ideas too. They would probably be generalized ones to cover a lot of different types of creatures since he didn't know who exactly was going to come.

Hmmm. I suppose some of the torture plans might provide openings on how to get them back out of there. Especially if there's only one way in or out. Any tormentors would have to go in and out the same way, right?

The other thing I did that I really like is a scene from Aaron's POV. I hadn't originally wanted to do anything other than Craig's, but Aaron wanted to be written. I started at just before he had to leave the bookstore, agonizing about how Craig had stood him up. It went until he got to the warehouse (of course he was going), and Thorme has proposed the partnership. Now he's demanding to see Alice. He wants to make sure she's all right, and he'd like for her to go home before he agrees to anything, but Thorme isn't going with that.

Unfortunately, when I tried to write him and Alice meeting up, that didn't go anywhere useful. So I have to rethink what Alice's role is going to be in this whole thing.

Day 2 was all about the Tragedy of the Hand. Since I was stuck at the warehouse scene, and the Alice scene had floundered, I figured I'd do something else instead.

Again, I liked the progress I made. I realized that the story actually starts back when the rogue vampire (the ancient retard) eats the Drunin witch. So I wrote that first. It sucked, but I can fix it in the rewrite. Then they were at the coroner, and then I touched on a whole lot of other minor plot points that needed to be introduced, and then I wrote the Council meeting. It turned out to be the best meeting scene I've written yet. I found it wildly entertaining, when normally my meetings tend to be really boring. So, yay. ;)

Then I stalled out when the meeting was almost over, on how exactly to introduce Cassandra's decoy subplot. Now that I've thought about it some, I might just delete that whole part out of the meeting and have it in discussion with Blaze instead. Or something.

I also finally got around to rereading the material from Labor Day 2008, when I first started this project. Gray's personality is completely different when he's talking to Cassandra. o.o He's also a lot more open about himself than I envision him now. Fortunately, I think the first scene, at least, is probably salvageable nearly as-is, and I can probably cannibalize large chunks of the second scene. Regardless, in this 2010 version, I haven't even introduced Cassandra yet. Though it should be only a scene or two away from the Council meeting scene.

As for Day 3 which is the end of today... not so good. T.T I didn't write anything meaningful at all, and not for lack of trying. There was lots of staring at a blank screen. I was stalled out on the warehouse ambush, stalled out on what to do next with Aaron (i.e. Alice), stalled out on how to finish up the Council meeting, and stalled out on what to do with the Jenya plotline. I tried to write some from the Rumen travel plotline - the part where he hands over Jenya to the Drunin - but it completely sucked, and I stopped after 226 words.

Which pretty much took out everyhting I had in mind to write. And so I sat there... and just had word constipation all day long.


In general. I need to get back to planning in regular fiction writing, in amongst all the freelancing I've been doing. Maybe one or two weekends a month or something. I've got three regular content-site gigs to juggle now though, so I don't know if I'll ever have time. I absolutely need to make at least $500 a month, absolute minimum. Until I can manage to do that and have time left over, fiction keeps ending up at the back of the line, and that needs to change.

Plus Nanowrimo is coming up fast, and I need to plan for it - both what I'm actually going to write (Triangle?) and how I'm going to do it and still pay bills without making it an all-savings month.