Halfway There and Two Days Early!

It's been an odd week. Week Two is normally Hell Week for most nanoers. It's the point where the story's shiny newness has begun to wear off and the characters stop cooperating. It's also the point where people who didn't plan often find out that they don't really have a story in any meaningful sense.

Tuesday I had my first short day. I came in 350 words short. Strangely enough, it was followed by a record word count day on Wednesday and even more on Thursday. Then Friday I had another short day. That however was something of an accident. I was only about 100 words short and I had forgotten that earlier in the day I had penned a snatch of dialog that takes place near the climax of the story and so wrote in the back of my notebook. Had I remembered to add it, I would have (just barely) made quota that day.

My cast of character's is exploding! I have two and a half main characters and the two (full) main characters are each surrounded by more than a dozen supporting characters too many of which are developing personalities and expressing opinions unworthy of background characters. The character that I thought would be the main character's nemesis sort of redeemed himself. At least he's slight more sympathetic than he was. And a new character has arisen to make the MC's life miserable. Unfortunately my MC has just been yanked out of that situation into a better/worse one. Who knows if either of the earlier potential nemesis will reenter his life later.

I have enjoyed discovering unexpected facets of my main characters though. That sort of things always makes writing fun and really helps with the word count.

Having spent all day writing. I'm going to go stand up now (if my legs will still support me) and then go play some DDO to unstress my brain.

NaNoWriMo -- Week 1

This weeks went surprisingly well despite the usual attacks of doubt and a disappointing lack of involvement in the nano community. I haven't attended a single write-in function yet (I at least went to the last 3 kickoff parties--this year they didn't have one) and have barely made an appearance on the forums. As a result, I don't really feel like I'm in NaNoWriMode right now.

The only thing that's saved me so far is that (until now) the story is pretty well-tread ground (in my head.) I've had a good feel for what's going on up to this point, though that will change as soon as I bump up against the edge of my outline.

I still get surprised by my characters, though. For example, my main character (the mage who accidentally defeats a giant and gets recruited in a mercenary warrior guild) was supposed to acquire a minor nemesis from within the guild. In fact when they see that he's not the usual big and strong type, many of the older students will take great delight in beating up the "giant killer" in practice. As I'm setting this up, I introduce a character that I thought would be his friend. Another new recruit that can at least sympathize with the MC while they go through this brutal training, only he's turning out to be quite the jerk. The MC has just met his romantic interest and this guy is making all kinds of rude suggestions as to why he shouldn't be interested in her.

I think he's found his nemesis, only it wasn't who I thought it was.

Anyway, if I can keep my motivation up, I should be Ok, but things will definitely get tougher over the next couple of weeks. The only good thing is that I'll have some time off coming up, hopefully I can use that to put some more numbers on the board (I do expect things to slow down a bit).

Unfortunately, you won't be able to follow my day-to-day progress that well on this site. The old widget, the one that showed the daily totals, no longer works and the new one only gives a running total. I don't know why that is. It's a little disappointing, but I've got other things to worry about right now.