***Dave writes stuff. Here's his world of (non-blog) writing.

Wow — as of today we’re on the tail end of the month — a downhill slide toward the final goal.

My word count continues healthy — I broke 33K today with a 1900+ word entry. That makes up for my taking Friday completely off, and being a bit short yesterday.

So here’s the interesting thing. I have very little idea of what comes next. I mean, I know what’s going on behind the scenes (mostly), and where I’m driving (so to speak) toward (sort of), and I have at least one flashback I can take advantage of …

But we’re now leaving the whole “Jill Intro” thing behind (which was about much more, of course, than just getting Jill into the story, though I am very pleased that I did, since clearly I do better when I can banter between characters than when I’m just narrating). Actually, it’s even a chapter break. So the question is — what next?

I suspect I’ll have at least one interlude before we get to Chicago. It might even be something that I’d actually originally planned for the opening scene of the novel. We’ll see.

At one point, I had a grand trilogy planned for this story. I even had three titles, of which “Mind and Matter” was the first (and actually made sense).

Alas, I didn’t write any of it down, which means I have no idea where (at that time) I was planning on taking the story to in this volume. Annoying.

Kitten didn’t have any words today. Again. In today’s case, she had the very legitimate excuse of a huge mass of homework dumped on her head. I need to figure out how to shoe-horn into her schedule somehow. Even if she just does five minutes, that’s five minutes more than nothing.

I have not been quoting from Doyce, or other purveyors of NaNoWriMo advice, of late. Work has been positively crappy, for reasons I can’t go into at the moment, and home has been just as busy. However, he is saying many things of value to the NaNoWriMoist, and while I plan to discuss them individually or in more detail eventually, I commend you to read them for yourself.

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I ended up getting to the Tattered Cover NaNoWriMo write-in today. In fact, the community rep was unable to attend, and I ended up being the guy that three different people came over and asked, “Are you the NaNoWriMo group?” — which was kind of odd, but there you go.

We ended up with six people while I was there (2:30-4:30). It was nice — we chatted a little bit and socialbly, but, really, everyone was there to work on their novel.

I ended up with another 2200 words, which pleased me well. Plus, I didn’t get to, let alone through, where I thought I was going to (quel surprise), so I have more to write tomorrow.

I am, of course, a horrible introvert, so the whole “gather together to write together” thing still feels unnatural (Goethe wrote, “Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude,” and I tend to believe him). But the write-ins have been enjoyable, and I find myself looking forward to the next.

I am surprised that the dialog today took as long as it did, and ran into a direction — how much has the protagonist been manipulated — that I had not considered before today.

It remains remarkable to me how the characters (or the brain manipulating the characters) goes beyond conscious thought.

I broke 30K today. Amazing. In some ways, this NaNoWriMo iteration is going far easier (thus far) than either of my previous endeavors. I’m not sure why that is, or how it will extend beyond the end of the month (as what I have planned almost certainly will, being almost half there), but it’s an interesting ride.

The write-in folks asked about how K was doing. Alas, we did not get any writing done (again) today. I need to take more responsibility to make sure that happens.

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So last night I ended with the scene I’d been aiming at for quite a while. Today’s follow-on (2400 word) was intersting in that something horrible happened:

I lost work.

I took Katherine’s laptop with me to her karate class, and typed up some stuff in Notepad. After about 40 minutes I did a save. A bit later I got a “battery running low” message. A few minutes later, the machine kicked into hibernate mode.

How wude.

When I got back home after karate, Margie had pugged in the machine and started it back up. And, for some reason, it hiccuped (probably the lovely Windows patching reboot annoyotron) and restarted … without saving what was in Notepad.

So I lost about 10 minutes worth of work, everything after the second paragraph of Chapter 5.

I hate rework with a passion. Not editing — I don’t care for that, but it has its moments — but recreating a creative effort that I’ve somehow lost is like slogging uphill in a swamp made of razor blades. Ugh.

In this case, I muddled through, though I recall enough to know the conversation ended up going in a different direction. Odd how that works sometimes.

Katherine got a bit of writing done while I was at my karate class — not a full day’s load, but she’s still way ahead of the game. We’ll do some catchup over the weekend …

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So I broke through the 25K barrier. Huzzah!

I didn’t write as much as I could have, but I got a late start tonight, nothing earlier in the day, and it’s been a bitch of a day, and I got my 1700+ words, so back off, man.

I am nowhere near half-way through the actual story, which I suppose is a good thing. That said, we’re reaching the end of the most recent stretch I’ve outlined beyond the Big Roman Numerals, so I need to think of where my protagonist’s tale will take him next. Though I have at least one more day’s worth of the current chapter to take me, as there’s a scene I’m aiming toward, even if it’s taking me multiple days to get there.

Action sequences this evening, though, as usual, I am less than satisfied. The witty dialog is almost certainly overdone, but that’s okay — it’s the clumsy blocking and difficulty in making things flow as well as they do in my mind that has me most irked.

There are some odd things that happen in today’s scene that may not make sense, but will in the long run when All Is Revealed. Alas, the problem with it being a rough draft and poorly done in too many places is that the “odd things” as likely come across as “yet another place where Dave’s dropped the ball.” Ah, well.

I’m still trying out the “empathy metaphored as smells” thing. It makes sense, but it’s not working as well as I’d like. That’s why it’s a first draft.

Fun times ahead.

Katherine, alas, did not get to any writing tonight, again. Various homework crises, plus a need to do cleaning before the cleaning people arrive tomorrow. I plan on not letting that stop us tomorrow, and she definitely wants to continue, so if it doesn’t happen, it’s my responsibility. She was head on word count, and still, in total, is, but it’s the habit of writing nightly that I want her to keep up with.

And she still broke half-way before I did.

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I struggled a bit today — I tried to do some writing at the office, and got interrupted  by a Very Annoying Email that I had to respond to, all tied up with some work drama far more irksome than anything my protagonist is going for.

I took my laptop to Katherine’s karate class, but was interrupted by a call from my boss, which took up a good half-hour.  Then the laptop started having technical difficulties.

Finally I got home and got my daily count up to 1800 or so, which puts me at right about 24K.  And it was a fun set of scenes, so that was nice.  Tomorrow — ACTION!

Katherine struggled more, having both karate and a very, very full homework schedule.  No words for her today, though I’ve encouraged her to do a five minute dictation stint in the morning.

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“I reached my goal for today — 2,000!” quoth Kitten.  Who hit 2,121 words today.  Woot!

And I did 2300 more words myself, hit a character I’m going to have a lot of fun with, and broke the 20K mark (to 22,052). Woot-too!

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After yesterday’s semi-disastrous Bad Action Scene, I realized I’d sort of painted myself into a corner.  I seem to do my best writing dialog, colloquy, chit-chat, but I’d very intentionally isolated Our Hero for pretty much the rest of the story.

So I came up with a cheap way to deal with that.  I wasn’t happy, though.

And then I had an epiphany.  At church, no less.  Good thing I had my little Writing Notebook with me, and could write it down.

Because I think I figured out how to get around the problem, but in a way that actually advances, complicates, and fits perfectly into the story.  Plus allows for a real knife-in-the-gut eventually. It had me capering about with glee (internally, since I was at church, and we’re not Charismatic or that sort of thing).

Of course, we won’t get to that for another day or two.  But I have the next few days plotted out, which probably means at least a week of material, given my logorrhea.  Such as my 2,562 words today, just to get to there.

Ironically (and without any cross-contamination), both Katherine and I included a dream sequence.  We also blew through our word counts — she had 616 words. Woot!

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