Day 22

Wrote 2661 words today; at 35,202 or 70% of target, with 73% of my time gone. Closing the gap, but on the other hand, the weekend looms, the deadline approaches, and I'm not sure how much time I'll have next week to finish this.

Still, I do have enough of the novel written that I'm positive I'll eventually finish it, win or lose NaNoWriMo. I'm still generally happy with the way novel is developing, though bits here and there need revision. Too much dialog, not enough action or description. but no angst about it being awful, yet.

Bad Christmas Gift Ideas

Stolen from Derryl Murphy's blog: Star Trek Putter I'm not sure whether this shows that the ST generation is aging, or if it means golf has become too mass market to remain a sport of the elite...but either way, it can't be a good sign.

Day 21

Still moving forward. 3032 words today. Transitional scenes to get everyone in place for next bit of action, but again worried that they are too wordy, slowing the pacing. (And again, that sort of reflection is for later. Just need to get everything down on paper and keep moving forward.) Dr.s appointment does not bode well for tomorrow's productivity, but I need a couple more days like to day to catch up. I'm 65% to target, but have used 70% of my time. I need to average about 2000 words a day for next nine days to make target, but I know that Friday and the weekend are not looking promising for productivity. Still, might make it yet.

Day 20

2013 words today, plus a fair amount of revision to previous section -- which doesn't push the word count forward but plugs some of the holes in the plot. Bit disappointed didn't hit thirty-thousand words today -- still 500 short.

I keep having to remind myself to check what each of the characters is doing at any given moment...I get a couple of the leads in dialog and forget that there are a couple of others in the room who may have quite different priorities and motivations. What are they thinking, doing, have to say?

Worst of all, I keep having the hero do this or that, and have to remember that I need to motivate him for these adventures -- why not just say, "On second thought, maybe I should just resign now and do something else," rather than continue to take these outrageous risks. Thankfully, once I thought to put the question to myself, I was able to come up with anwsers and hopefully write more interesting scenes as our hero finds himself constrained by this or that factor into digging himself deeper and deeper into the thickening plot.

Of course the OTHER problem I'm having is a tendency to have the characters say everything they're thinking -- once I've figured out their motive for doing this or that, damn if they don't insist on mentioning it /explaining themselves to each other, or at least the reader. I strongly suspect that I am insulting the reader's intelligence by constantly making everything explicit immediately. So far I only have one scene where the characters figure something out and the reader has to wait three scenes to have it explained. But toning down explicit explanations (or making implicit stuff clearer) is a task for revisions, not NaNoWriMo.

I'll also have to make some decisions about the swearing in the novel at the revision stage. I have some when the characters get upset, but that's a bit of a problem for the SF market where a big chunk of the market is under 12 and book purchases are funded by disapproving parents. further, a lot of common swear words are anachronistic in my future. So, I can either tone the swearing down (somewhat changes the characters) or change it to swear words not currently in our vocabulary (one of the characters uses 'crank' and 'cranking' a lot which sounds a bit rude in context) or just go with the ageless ones. Similarly some of my threat vocabulary seems bit cliched and anachronistic.

On the whole though, still pleased with general direction, quality of the story. Nobody else may care for it, but its the sort of book I would like to read.

Day 19

Another productive day: hit 27,500 words. (Couldn't believe that word count came out an even 500, but that's not an estimate or rounding thing, its the actual number.) Bit concerned the pacing is a bit slow, since its taken a lot of pages/time to set the situation up, but that is a matter for revisions after the first draft is complete. And I do kind of like how each step in itself is almost logical, though the end result is completely in(un?)credible.

Picked a working title: The Flight of the Illynov. It's a bit of a pun since its about the voyage of the spaceship Illynov, but also it is fleeing the collapse of the frontlines. I don't know though, doesn't have the elegance of "Slow Fall to Dawn" or "We all Died at Breakaway Station", two of my favorite titles. Comments Floght of the Illynov its potential as a title gratefully accepted.

Day 18

Smooth sailing today, with 2460 words and two complete scenes, in spite of only having a couple of hours to write.

On the other hand, I have now reached the part of the outline where I introduce the fourth character. It was only as I was writing the scene and settling some of the details in my own mind for description, that I remembered that this aspect of the novel had occured to me as a result of listening to a talk by Sean Stewart on why nobody could write this type of character into an SF novel. So I had one of those, "Hey, I wonder if I could do that" reactions, and some elements of the story line did work better by adopting that motif. But, um, I may have overlooked the part where Sean listed the 27 reasons why almost no author could make it work. And now I'm into it, um, yikes! Talk about presumption! And I thought I'd chosen this novel, out of the dozen outlines I have lying about, because it was the most straight-forward action space opera narrative with no redeeming values or literary merits to get in the way of output. What was I thinking?

Oh well, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Or something like that.

Day 17

Another tough day rewriting that one scene, but I think I finally got it all to click. Tension, humor, romance, potential violence. And cut down from its original bloated size, though that in no way helped my word count. But I needed the scene to work before the characters could go on to the rest of the book. I think the scene advanced the characterization a bit too. So, 21,687 and holding.

Oh, and an email from Neil Gaiman today. How cool is that! Again, it of course went to everyone doing NaNoWriMo, but hey, I'll take the pep talk!

Day 16

Made my quota, 2,240 words, but tough tough day today. Mostly working on a single scene, a key one for this part of the book, that introduces two of the three key characters, has all three interacting for the first time, and with my having to achieve the right balance between romance, humour, and sudden, explosive violence. The scene is premised on a ticking timebomb type deadline, that only two of the characters know about, and a complete misunderstanding of what is going on by the third character, for whom the whole thing is alternately terrifying and infuriating.

My problem as the author is that when I get the pacing right for the humour, the violence falls apart. When I work out the logic of the violence, the romance becomes kind of icky. If I beef up the romance, it becomes too explicit and flops. If I tone it down, it vanishes altogether, because, did I mention the implicit violence? It's one of those situations that has its own internal logic, but keeping track of what each character is reacting to second by second, and getting that down on paper correctly, without making the scene so long and overdrawn as to collapse under its own weight...well, this writing business is HARD. But then one of the points of doing this NaNoWriMo exercises is to place myself in this situation -- I write a lot of reviews taking potshots at various authors for their sloppy writing, so it is important to walk a mile in their shoes once in a while to be a little more sympathetic for just how hard this all is.

Day 15

Good productivity today, 2406 words. I also spent (wasted?) a lot of the morning revising what I wrote yesterday. This appears to be a necessary step for me to get back into the story, but the end result is that I am fairly satisfied with what I have so far.

I have taken Line Noise's advice, which was that whenever one runs into a block on one storyline, switch to another. I am now working on an SF novel I started outlining, according to my records, in 1975. But the last outline was 2000, with a scene written in 2002. I am not counting any of the existing scenes (not that there was much more than a couple of short fragments) for my NaNoWriMo word count. of course, but the existence of an outline seems to be helping my forward motion considerably. I probably should have started this novel at the outset to see if I could finish it, but I didn't learn of NaNoWriMo until too late to get organized, so had to start with the short story then at hand. So I have two and a half linked stories completed, with two or three ideas for follow ups if those turn out to be successful. And if I continue on with this novel, I should have a considerable chunk of it done by the end. That would be way cool. Perhaps the momentum will continue into the new year.

Current SF novel is straight-forward adventure novel, so relatively straight-forward to write. No redeeming literary values to worry about at this point, no complicated artistic structures, no unsellable pretensions. just action adventure. Well, given the strictures of NaNoWriMo, that's still aiming high.

Day 14

Back on track today. Running total hit 16,257 or 32.5% (1/3) of the way to the target. With 46% of the time gone. So still behind, but catching up. I have to make 2108 words a day on average from now.

Day 12

No progress on Saturday or Sunday; today was also a holiday, but I was able to sneak in a few minutes, 631 words. That brings my total up to 13,431, so now quite behind.

Day 10

No progress at all yesterday; family responsibilities on weekend pretty much preclude any chance of writing. What free time Mary and I were able to generate went to Mary's working on a tight publishers deadline -- a paying contract with a tight deadline has to take precedent over spec writing every time.

Plus, I only have the next half scene worked out in my head -- not sure where the story goes after that. The trouble with writing mystery is that after working out the characters, setting, set up, on-going conflicts and snarky dialog, I still don't have an actual crime for my heroine to solve yet.

Got an email from Sue Grafton this morning. Okay, probably all the NaNoWriMo writers who listed their genre as 'mystery' got the same email, but even so, Way COOL!

But somebody explain to me how I, a guy who has been reading and writing nothing but SF for over 40 years, suddenly finds himself writing a mystery? And with a retired housecleaner as my heroine?

Even stranger, this stuff is flowing out pretty well -- no real writer's block, no real obsession with revision, just steady progress getting stuff down. I always nag my students to "write what you know" and so far, that advice is working well for me. The completed stories are based on a guy I knew, an anecdote Karl told me, aan incident I observed at an SF con, and two guys/incidents that have annoyed me lately. Great catharsis, if not great literature. I guess the setting and the heroine are based on the fact that Mary and I have spent a lot of time lately in assisted living facilities -- but still, odd that its coming out this way rather than something more like my usual SF reading/daydreaming.

Spanish Lessons

Last night Kasia was -- as very night -- resisting bedtime, and blurted, "I hate you!"

I adopted a hurt expression and told her that 'hate' was a strong word, that it hurt my feelings, and it wasn't appropriate to say she hated me just because I was the bearer of the bad news that it was bed time. And proceded to put her to bed regardless.

After the usual stalls ("I need a glass of water"; "I need my other pillow"; "I need my other blanket"; "I need more water"; Can I have a kleenex?"; "I need to go to the bathroom"; "I don't want a blanket, I'm too hot"; "Where did you put my blanket, I'm cold"; "Can I have more water?"; "Where is my good pillow, I don't want this pillow any more;" "I am sleeping Dad, *snore* *snore*) I kissed her a final goodnight and told her I loved her.

There as a long pause and then, "I love you too, Dad."

"Oh great, because you said earlier that you hated me."

Kasia sits up in bed. "Dad! I think you completely misunderstood me. When I said I hated you, I was speaking Spanish! 'Hate' is Spanish for 'Love'. So when I said I hated you, I was speaking Spanish! I love you Dad!"

What could I say to that? Another kiss, "Okay!" and "Goodnight".

And out of the room as fast as possible before bursting into laughter....
-----
That was a new one on me, but the last month or so I've been getting, "When I said I hated you, I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to Doego! Doego was bugging me. Did you think I was talking to you?" Doego being her imaginary friend. So disclaimers, but no actual apologies or taking responsibility for her temper.

Kasia, coming up on her fourth Birthday, does not approve of anyone saying the word 'no' to her. I have never come across anyone so single-minded. We could always distract Tigana and get her to choose a different option, but if Kasia has decided to, say, stick her fingers into a toaster, you have to practically sit on her to stop her from doing it. Then her feelings are hurt (which we always studiously ignore so as not to reinforce) and only eventually will she come back and say, "I'm happy now", for which she is duly acknowledged and we can move on. But we have to put the toaster out of reach, or she'll simply wait until we are not around.

But it is getting slowly better -- I take Kasia's making excuses as at least an implicit acknowledgement that she gets when her behaviour was unacceptable, and we do get the occasional spontaneous apology from time to time if she thinks she hurt our feelings. I figure she will make the final transition to taking responsibility and being polite about the time Tigana moves into her final 'bitch teenager' stage (we're already well into the pre-teen 'attitude' stage), to maintain the household karmatic balance.

Day 9

Made 1921 words on story #3 today, plus some minor edits on the end of #2. Total so far is 12,801.

I am unlikely to be able to get anything done on the long weekend. And tuesday is my daughter Kasia's Birthday, so probably nothing much again until Wednesday. But still hopeful can make the quota in the end.

Hanging with the Simpsons