Thus endeth 2014 Nanowrimo

Final wordcount: 51317.

I wrote about 1300 words while at the last official write-in of the month, but mostly I was just there to give other people moral support and was a total slacker about doing any of my own writing.

All of the new words were in Birthright. I wrote a scene where Allen tells Nathaniel about seeing the phoenix, and had to reread chunks of Triangle I  to figure out what he would've known about and when. I don't think I quite have that part down yet. There'll have to be some revision later for the parts where he's talking to Janis and Elena, I think (from yesterday's words).

I guess now that the month is done, I should give it a break for a week, then go into revision mode. There might be more unofficial write-ins if anyone besides me is interested. Those turn out to be pretty helpful actually for keeping me focused. December will probably turn out to be a bad time to do more of them overall, but maybe in January I'll see who's still hanging around on the Nano forum....

50,008 at the bottom of the 29th

50,008 is what the official validator says. 49,984 is what Scrivener says, and I have 635 discard words, so I figure tomorrow I should write 700 more words to make it inarguable.

Today's total wordcount was 5888, which makes it the highest wordcount in one day (of Nanowrimo) ever (not counting 2009 or 2010, when I apparently forgot to take detailed notes (or, alternately, I have it in a separate file somewhere that I'm too lazy to look for right now)).

Final breakdown was:
Amulet I - 4214
Triangle I - 2234
Triangle II - 19,092
Birthright - 16,585
Myan - 7224

I never did get to Temple I guess, or Amulet II. But those were the first two I did (2004, 2005) and they're kind of cringe-inducing.

I don't really have any profound thoughts about the month at the moment. It was a long slog of mostly chipping away at things. There wasn't a single point of epic meltdown, but there were times when I flaked out and went all neurotic in hopefully small bursts. I have noticed that I write dialogue very fast now; the characters and basic storyline are developed enough that I can just put two or more of them in a scene together and then just write down whatever they say to each other. Descriptive stuff is a lot slower.

Also, large chunks of the end of Birthright consists of characters telling each other about everything they'd done in the story up to that point, in great detail. Some of it is important, some of it might be too much rehash.

I did put the sinister claw into Myan. It added a lot of words, but I'm not sure what story it's part of. It might be the precursor to the Janis/Arthur storyline about the unravelling of reality, that happens after the end of Myan. Not sure if I'm ready to write that one yet; it's kind of in the range of horror, and I'm not so sure I want to write horror while sitting around at home by myself, and there's probably only so many write-ins I can get Brent to agree to on a weekly basis... oh well, before I get too far into that, I need to do heavy revision for everything I've already written in the rest of the series.

One other thought. I have officially passed the milestone where I can now set up my workspace in the middle of a construction zone. Some of the write-ins this month were in super busy and noisy places, with crying babies and etc., and as long as I know what I'm doing, it doesn't slow me down at all.

Things are going too slow ...

35,795 words in the middle of the 26th.

My wordcount progress has slowed to a crawl. Lots of stuff going on in Real Life getting in the way I guess. There's only a few days left, and I have to somehow write at least 3k words per day. I hope I make it. It would kind of suck if it's the first time I don't (not counting last year).

Most of the newest words have been for Birthright. I've been adding scenes into the mobsters part of the storyline, and trying to come up with plausible Belgians. They're supposed to steal the box and this somehow leads to their downfall in the story. They've stolen the box, but not for any good reason, and I'm not really sure what to do to them next. Meanwhile, in another part of the storyline, I wrote a couple more scenes relating to the explosion of the cargo ship, and then there's going to be a second banquet at Mindy's where she yells at everyone involved. There's a total of 7939 words for Birthright now.

I also need to somehow add mention of the spirit wolves to Triangle II and Amulet II. They were there, and there needs to be some background development since they were sparked to life in Triangle I  and there's basically nothing about them after that until they die in Temple.

I also kind of want to dump the whole Sundering idea. But then I'm back at the original problem with the second part of Amulet I - why would the Eenin help the Duchenes.

I think for now, I'm going to see if I can put some of the Mort Lewis / Demon conversations on stage, see how many words that turns into. Then, I'm kind of tempted to put that claw from the Dark Ages game into the southwest part of the plain - the one that pierces through every layer of reality. It would make the most sense for it to have appeared after Nathaniel and the Demon battle each other. The fun part is, that part of the plain is also where Lady Valdren's lair is. Of course, she's been making Zerg since she moved in, so maybe it would make sense for her to be a little bit evil.

Oh well, off to write some words while I'm at an actual write-in (though it's a small one with just Brent).

General updates

I'm at 31,032 words near the bottom of the 21st. I'm a bit behind, but hopefully will manage to catch up over the weekend, assuming I can come up with things to write about. I'm kind of stalled out on just about everything at this point.

Amulet I - I caved and wrote down the entire backstory for the Demon part of the storyline, beginning with when Allen's mage circle summoned him in the first place, and stopping when they were in Aunlania. Amazingly, I'd never written any of this down anywhere before, other than bits and pieces in Light's Spiral into Blackness (an oWoD Dark Ages game I ran on RPoL). That got me 610 words. I suppose I should continue it in backstory mode to explain what the Sundering is, since at this point I have no idea how to tell that part of the story. This is what first drafts are for for most people, aren't they? To ramble on endlessly about backstory and info dump until I figure out what the info actually is?

As for James, I get the impression that the next scene to write is going to be set far in the future from the first scene, and it'll involve Charles coming home, and I won't know what goes into it until after I find out what happens with Charles and Felna.

Triangle II - well, I got past the part where Rebecca tries to eat Janis. There are now about 2600 words to a set of scenes that don't seem to have any purpose. And now I'm back to where I was before, with no idea where to go next.

Amulet II - I opened it and looked. I think what I'm going to end up doing is keep the main plotline about the Glorian artwork, the university vs. Mindy's farm, etc. and dump most of the other bits about land disputes. The land dispute parts were boring to write the first time, and as they say, the readers always can tell when the author is bored, so I might as well just dump it.

That means heavy revision moreso than adding new words. I'm not even sure how I'd continue from where I left off - which was, of course, why I probably stopped in the first place.

Temple - I suspect that I'm going to have to start working on this over the weekend. I need 9000 new words by the end. Probably won't make it, but it works better to aim high.

Myan - well, I have about 3000 words for the zombies demolishing Myan, then going to Fortress Launne, and attacking Lady Valdren's haven and the university. I stopped when I got the parts where I have to figure out who wins and who's going to be where to oppose them.

Passed 25k Today

Well, the theme of this whole Nanowrimo seems to be to do lots and lots of beginnings, and then stall out when I get to the part where plot needs to appear, and then move on to something else instead of trying to push through. So far I've done:

Amulet I - I wrote about 2200 words of James going back to the Duchene estate in Lagarnica, and meeting his current wife and new brother William. I'm not really sure where to go from there at this point. The new wife wants to kill James off so that William will inherit the estate. But I'm not sure if I'm all that excited about that storyline, not enough to actually write it.

Triangle I - I haven't done anything with this since the first day. 2200 words about Frank getting installed into his new body. It'll get broken up into individual scenes and put into appropriate places in the rest of the story later.

Triangle II - I have the most words on this one so far. 17.5k following what happens to Thomas in Jacob's house, getting the cure done, and then they and Josephine went off to Wild-hunt foodbeasts under the full moon. Meanwhile, Janis has a bunch more conversations with her grandmother. It stalled out where Janis was headed to talk to the city Eenin. She ran into Rebecca, who wants to eat her. Unfortunately, I'm not actually sure how exactly the protection on Janis works, because, once again, I need to figure out what the heck Aliacorba and Iorli agreed to, and it's stuck until I do. It has occurred to me, though, that Aliacorba would've had to give Iorli something in exchange during the pact, and I don't really know what that could be.

Amulet II - so far I haven't even opened this one. It's the farthest from my mind at the moment.

Temple - nothing on this one yet either. I'm assuming that this is going to be a huge project, and might be procrastinating starting on it until I've run out of all other, smaller things in the series to work on. This is probably going to be soon though, if I continue to be stuck on all the stuff I've already worked on.

Birthright - this was where I focused today. I wrote 3300 words covering what happens after they open the magic box. They ended up on the plain with the lamp post and met Arthur Glorian, and had a lot to say to each other. Then I tried to write about what happened after that scene, and I'm not actually sure what needs to happen next, without doing a lot of rereading of past material.

Myan - 1100 words so far. I started writing the attack on Myan from one of the zombies' point of view. They went through the center of the city, and then to Fortress Launne, and now they're about to attack the anchorpoints of Nathaniel's spell. The zombie that I'm following is headed over to the old art museum. Since zombies don't do a whole lot of thinking, or observing, of basically anything, I can almost freewrite what happens. Basically I'm just trying to get an idea of what actually happens, and I'll probably have to revise most of it later when I redo it from the point of view of actual characters. Once I figure out which characters that'll be.

Top of Day 12

17,937 words.

I'm basically stuck pretty good on Triangle II at the moment. Things have reached the point where before anything else can advance, Janis needs to decide that she wants to open a history/culture center. So far that thought has not occurred to her. She needs to go visit the city Eenin again to find out that they could really benefit from such a center. And that it would help the outlanders understand the forest Eenin better also, instead of being mired in all the misconceptions that they have about the native folk. Especially since the city Eenin don't, themselves, have a good grasp on their own heritage.

Unfortunately, that means I have to invent the city Eenin. Or re-invent them, rather. I had stuff from 2006, and maybe I can even figure out a way to use some of it, because there were some compelling scenes out of it. The whole context for their existence has shifted a lot, though. And now I'm kind of stuck on how to go about it.

On the other hand, while I was digging around in my notes from over a decade ago, back when this was still a WoD setting, to try to find the original inspiration behind why Janis wants to open the culture/history center (there basically wasn't anything specific), I stumbled across notes for the Myan end of the storyline. And now I kind of want to go work on that instead.

I wrote in this blog back then (2009) that the biggest problem was a lack of viewpoint characters. At this point I've decided that those are going to be Suunja Henderson and Martha Bernice Carlson to start with. That's going to be revision work though, not new work. What I need to write is the actual battles that destroy the city (or cities).

It occurs to me that it might actually work best to write that from the viewpoint of one of the zombies. Or, by extension, from the viewpoint of the Demon.

So far the Demon has had no screentime at all, no character development, nothing but a name. His role for most of the series is to be asleep. But I need to write him anyway because he's going to be in the third part of Amulet I. So why not get some glimpses into what he's like, what his motivations are, etc. as filtered through the eyes of a zombie?

I need 3000 words today. I think that's what I'm going to try next.

Late into Day 9

15,679 words so far. Most of them are in Triangle II.

I seem to be seriously stuck at the moment. Basically all of the plague parts of the story are done, and Jacob now knows that Janis and Thomas are related to each other in some way, and that she should stop trying to find him. He's still waiting for Thomas to try to escape from his house, which hasn't happened yet, because at the moment Thomas is set up pretty well there - he has standing social agreements with Asher Veren and Karai'nown, namely to teach them what he knows about the swamp plants, and he only just finished getting the age reversal ritual to Karai'nown. He has as much garden space as he needs, he was able to build himself a shed, etc. Basically he has a pretty good home and there's not really any good reason to want to leave it behind, other than that he's not allowed to go anywhere else without Jacob.

The biggest piece still missing from the story is that Janis needs to spend more time talking to the city Eenin, so that she can eventually have the brilliant idea to build a cultural center so that they can learn about their own culture and heritage without having to go all the way to the forest. I have no idea how to get this started or where it fits into the overall timeline. I tried rereading what I wrote in 2006 about it, but it's so dramatically overwrought and filled with parts that I can't use, that there's not really an obvious way to continue from it.

I suppose I could just skip ahead to where she already has the idea and is pitching it to Collins.

Or maybe I should look at other parts of the timeline for a while.

Hmm.

End of Day 4 on Nanowrimo 2014

Well, I seem to be at a stall point. That means it's time to update ye olde blog.

On Day 1, I wrote 2,374 words toward Triangle I. Basically I wrote out all the parts about Frank getting installed into his new body. That's pretty much all I had planned for Triangle I.

Then I started working on Triangle II. So far, there's been a scene where Jacob and Janis talk to each other as college professor and student, and he doesn't know who she is yet. He's assigned for his mentee, Mark, to accompany Janis on her next trip to visit the Eenin. That's actually the next thing I need to write - Janis showing Mark around Branitel before leaving him there (because he's not allowed to go farther than that) while she visits her grandmother to tell her what happened with Aliacorba.

Meanwhile, Thomas is at Jacob's house, plugging away at making a cure. He's set up his garden again, built a shed, and has just finished sending a sample plus instructions to the king (via Jacob). I'll need to add in later that he should've sent in some of the ingredients also. I haven't decided if I need a scene where Jacob talks to Henry, or if that would just go about completely uneventfully with nothing new introduced. I might try to write it to find out later.

At the moment, Thomas is in the garden talking to Asher Veren and a life shaman from the forest. That scene is kind of stuck at the moment. So I'll probably start tomorrow with Janis.

5535 total words so far.

My original plan was to do 4000 words per day that I don't have anything else to do (weekends, Thanksgiving) and 2000 words per Wednesday, and not plan anything for M, T, R, or F due to work. So far this isn't going according to plan. I didn't write nearly enough over the weekend, partly because I ended up doing a lot more socializing than I really should've - two write-ins where one was the kickoff meet and I wrote 87 words for the discard pile, and the other I managed about half normal speed. Hopefully the rest of the write-ins will be more about writing and less about talking, so that I get stuff done. And tomorrow (a Wed) if I focus, I should be able to knock out 2000 words in the morning before I have to attend a work-related webinar in the afternoon. That would only leave me about 4k words behind. :p