Getting down to the wire. 45,000 words written. Two more days to go. It's going to be tough, but I can do this. Here's something I posted on Facebook a while back that you might get a kick out of. Things that only happen to writers: Having to tell your villain he's being demoted. "Sorry, but I'm going to have to turn you into the assistant villain. One of the side characters has turned out more interesting than you and has more compelling reasons to do what she does." "Come on, give me another chance!" "I've tried, but I just can't make you anything but bland and unmotivated. The most interesting thing I can think of about you is that you don't play golf. You gotta admit that's prett
Well, here we go. I'm at 38,467 words, but here comes Thanksgiving to put a huge dent in my writing time. (Also, one of the drawbacks to this approach is that I keep hitting chapters I can't finish because they need editing, and that might bring down the word count.) Here are the next five chapter titles: 5. The Caged Hummingbird 6. Hiding in the Attack 7. The Golden Hour 8. Contact with the Enemy 9. Deluge And here's another snippet of Altered Seasons: Isabel was jarred awake by the sound of two hands clapping about a foot away from her left ear. She sat up abruptly, and was rewarded with a jolt of pain from the back of her neck as she pulled her head up from the pillow on her desk
With the month half over, the good news is that I’m more than halfway to my goal of 50,000 words. (Of course, there’s still going to be a substantial gap next week over the Thanksgiving holiday.) I’ve also completed the first four chapters. Here are the titles: 1. No Service 2. Meanwhile, a Hundred Years from Now 3. Just Because You’re Paranoid… 4. …Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Out to Get You I’ve also rewritten a couple of parts of Altered Seasons to reflect recent unexpected developments on the political scene. On the plus side, the one thing I’m not going to have to worry about is the book’s whole premise suddenly being forestalled by effective action on the international level. (Note to
NaNoWriMo is going well for a change. I've written 12,000 words already. The secret, I think, is having lots of writing buddies, some of whom are fans of your work. There's still going to be a gap in my writing time around Thanksgiving, and there's no way to avoid that (seriously, why November?) but in spite of it I think I'm going to succeed. As always, this means carrying a notebook and pencil around whenever I'm away from my computer (in the greenroom during a play, for instance) which makes me look even less sociable than usual. I've noticed that I'm a lot more sparing with words when I have to write them by hand. The surprising thing is that I've also found time to do a little more
