11 posts tagged “nanowrimo”

I'm just past the 40,000 word mark, and not at all happy with this year's NaNo.

That'll teach me to start it with a plan and a plot and a world all pre-built.

It never went where I wanted it to go, and it sucks big time as a novel.  I can probably salvage a short story from this wreck.  I will go ahead and finish it up because, who knows, maybe somehere in the next 10,000 words, I'll find something to redeem this all.

There are good things in it.  I like a couple of the characters who just popped in and took control.  I like a few of the extras that crept in and decided they were permanent fixtures there - I didn't originally plan for the space port to be in orbit.  Nor did I orginally plan for some of the cities to be completely child-free cities, but I like those changes.  It made bits of the story more meaningful.

And the gnomes?  I like the back-story they are revealing.  I like that they are aliens to both Dexacla and Earth. 

I still like the world I built, even with the gnomes appearing as they did.

I am very unhappy that the 2 couples I planned to be the MCs aren't  One couple still hasn't made their appearance at all.  There are only 10,000 words to go.  They're late, and I really dislike tardiness.  The other couple isn't at all as I imagined them to be, as I pre-planned them to be.

Worst of all, this isn't the light-hearted romantic comedy I intended it to be.  Instead, it's much more serious, but not serious enough.  It can't decide if it will pan out to be a political treatise of some sort, a corporate bad-guy espionage novel, a murder mystery (although there's precious little mystery to the murder), or some heavy-handed morality play.  It is utterly not what I wanted.

Ah well.  10,000 more words, and I'll be done with it.  Then I can hide it in some corner and pretend I never wrote it.  In a couple of months or a year, I may sneak a peek at it and extract a short story from it, because I think that's all it can give.  Of course, it may well gestate into something better.

I can hope.

25,860

Word Count:  22,100

The gnomes are settling in to be an integral part of the novel now.  I've got a corporate take-over attempt, except the Earthers have no clue how the Dexaclans now run things, or that a spy is in their midst helping them out, or even that the issue was resolved on Earth and a new ship will be arriving any day now.

So, it's getting complicated and interesting.  Except, I haven't joined the trebuchet club yet, nor have I figured out how to get the two important main character couples together.  That's because I have only one main couple set of characters, the others are still off stage.

I've also gotten 2 new semi-main characters popping up, along with a couple of gnomes who are fleshing out very nicely.

This is what I love about NaNoWriMo - setting a day to start a novel with very little in place to support it - a few cardboard characters, some stage settings left over from some failed play or other, a couple of cliches, and a hackneyed plot.  Then, in a race to the end of 30 days, you've got to pull it all together into a novel somehow, with a minimum of 50,000 words.

I find myself "telling" more than "showing" when I do this, but when I go back to edit, I have a lot of icky bits to hack and weed out and a lot of really good things that need some serious "showing" with descriptions I've left out, conversations that need action to accompany them, and the glimmerings of some cool characters.

In one NaNovel I wrote, I have a core of three characters that still pop in to visit and make comments about what I'm currently writing, hinting I should mosey back to their novel and edit it into a finished piece.  There's Taya, the central character, her two consorts Kevyn and Dan, and a host of lesser characters.  Kevyn's a sweetie, young, eager, and passionate.  Dan is older, but not always wiser, definitely more experienced, and Taya is the talent that holds them together as a family.  Taya has a skill that protects her world, and Dan and Kevyn have the ability to support that skill and enhance it.  She couldn't do what she does alone.

And there's the other one with Zurr and Varg.  Varg's goal in life is to save Zurr, and Zurr's goal is to save her home planet while never setting foot there again.  Varg is caught between his dedication to Zurr and the demands of his family and his captain.  You'll have to read the book to find out if Varg finds a way to please everyone, or forges his own path to happiness, and if Zurr saves her world or not.  Or finds some other way.  There's always another way.

There's my pizza boy in space who saves Earth, the Solar System, the galaxy, and eventually the universe, discovering True Love and new pizza toppings along the way.  It's a thrill a page, with aliens, pepperonis, hydroponics, crusty asteriod miners, pirates, zooming space ships, college kids, space explosions, and lots of pizza.

There's the Science Fiction Convention that has the strangest things happen at it, with candy bar codes, the Order of St. Fantony, the GhuGhuists, the FooFooites, pocket universes, soap operas, aliens, purple hairy frogs, filkers, gamers, hallway vampires, hysterical maids, bellhops going crazy, published authors, rocket scientists, and the infamous crottled greeps.

There's my political novel, with a single young woman chosen to end a galactic war, representing the gods of her planet against the hive mind of the opposing force.  She collects a group of supporters along the way, we learn more than I ever wanted to know about internecine galactic politics, sneaky ambassadors, assassins, hive mind powers, divine interventions, and galactic ley lines.  I didn't even know those existed until I wrote about them.  The woman saves the galaxy from war, but there's a fifty-fifty chance she dies at the end.  I've written it both ways and like them both a lot.  I suppose, when I clean up all the typos, and get brave enough to send it out to a publisher, I'll find out which ending is the profitable one.  I want the one where she dies, because it is bittersweet and it provides a development for a secondary character who may or may not become an integral part of a sequel.

And now, there's this year's NaNovel, about the colony world and the tensions between it and Earth and the gnomes and the couples who discovering what it is to be couples.  I guess this could be called my ecology novel - or environmental novel, filled as it is with environmental scientists.  They spend a lot of time exploring the plaent, finding new plants and animals, discovering things they can export to Earth and other colonies.  There's lots to import, of course, Earth being what we know it to be.  What Dexacla mostly wants from Earth are scientific equipment and movies, since there are precious few resources to support a separate entertainment industry.  There are homegrown musicians and poets and storytellers - and Mintee is rapidly becoming a storyteller in his old age, and a few small theatrical groups, but no one who can dedicate their lives to being performers and making movies and all that industry entails.  So they export fruit juice, dried vegetables, exotic woods and furs, and a mineral that is very popular both with scientists and religionists called Dexalite.  I have barely even touched on the existence of Dexalite, and I should mention it more, because most of the technology of Dexacla is dependent upon the properties of Dexalite.

19005.

Still have those pesky gnomes.  No matter how I try to write them out, they keep coming back.

So, gnomes are in the novel to stay.

At least that obnoxious character was finally murdered.  She triggered every one of my "I can't stand you" buttons.  If you want to know me, you can learn a lot about me by learning who my villains are.

Is it a reverse Mary Sue, when you write characters who are your opposite?

16,780 words.  With gnomes.  Silly gnomes.

I have written over 11,000 owrds, and am 3,000 words behind my goal.  I will catch up tomorrow, when I'm not spending several hours at the mechanic's.

Yes, back at the mechanic's.  Now the starter is making unusual noises.  They said it was a dry bearing.  So many parts "dried out" while it was in for repair.  And I've had to pay to replace every one of them.  Well, the starter will just have to wait until another paycheck or two behind me.

And now, back to NaNo.  I had gnomes invade my novel.  Five-limbed gnomes. Underground dwelling, justice loving, nocturnal gnomes, who also apparently are real busybodies when it comes to interacting with the human settlers.

They claim that they sent a ship to Earth (hence their ability to speak the dialect the settlers spoke, which was a blend of German, English, and Esperanto), and have colonized other worlds.  There is little competition between human and gnome, as they use different resources.  There are still gnomes on Earth and those gnomes are in contact with the Dexaclan gnomes.

And the gnomes are not native to Dexacla, either.  Like the humans, they are colonists, adapting the planet to suit their needs.  The gnomes hint that humans aren't native to Earth, either, and their terraforming of Earth is what caused the Ice Ages and their descent into primitivism - something the gnomes never experienced themselves.

It's all kind of interesting, allowing a novel to take itself where it will.  I am continually surprised by what happens.  I never planned for the Earth ship that arrived at Dexacla to be from a rival comapny that wanted to gain control of Dexacla, nor did I plan for a spy from the Dexaclan Earth company to be hidden on board to warn the Dexaclans.  I certainly didn't plan for gnomes to pop in.

I did plan for the self-appointed leader of the new immigrants, and for the obnoxious woman who is murdered, and for the efficiency experts - and they are staying true to plan.

However, there is a follow-up ship on its way to Dexacla from the Dexaclan Earth Corporation, and it will carry some much needed goodies. 

And now, I have to get back to writing, to see what those crazy busybody gnomes are up to, and what Jaem the captain of Nediport will do with the first Earth ship currently under quarantine, and what is happening with Character 1B?

That's right, I haven't named my primary characters, and so far, they aren't acting too main characterish, haiving taken a back seat to Jaem and hte gnomes, but I have hopes of them regaining their MC status.  after all, they are among the oldest settlers, and have a great deal of experience that will be sorely needed as they cope with the false immigrants, and their new neighbors.

The Kick Off party was a great deal of fun.  We had some truly cool people show up.  One woman worked on finishing her outline.  I took pictures and posted them in the NaNoBoards - the Oklahoma Region, if you want to mosey over there and take a look.

The Official NaNo Swag this year was a temporary tattoo.  Some poor soul actually had this tattooed on for real, and offered to let Chris Baty use it for the NaNo Swag this year.  It says 50,000 words or bust on it.  That's cute for a temporary tattoo, but I don't think I'd have it permanently tatted onto my skin.  I can think of plenty of other things to tattoo on - so many that I haven't chosen which one will be the next one.  Now that tattooing is finally legal in Oklahoma, I don't have to travel to Texas for this anymore.  I probably will, because I trust Randy to do a good job.  He's tattooed me and all my kids.  It's a family thing.  Which has nothing at all to do with NaNo and the swag.

So back to the swag.  The tattoos are the official swag, but we had lots of unofficial swag, too.  Last year, clappers were extremely popular, so we added mini clappers for private cheering on.  An ML of another region suggested monster finger puppets to scare away the over-critical Inner Editor, so we added a collection of monster finger puppets to the cauldron of swag.  When we were shopping for the Inner Editor Eaters, we saw a bag full of little plastic ninjas, and had the joint thought of -Plot Ninjas!  To kick your plots into shape no matter far off the track they strayed.  Near the Plot Ninjas, we saw pirate finger puppets - perfect to repel the nefarious Forward Motion Plot Bunnies as they overwhelmed your plt and defeated the Plot Ninjas through speed breeding.  Forward Motion writer's Board came up with the concept of Plot Bunnies - little ideas that bred out of existing plots to grow into their own plots, overtaking the original plot.  One of the pirate finger puppets is a bird - it looks more like a Devil Duck than a parrot, but we've decided it's a Word Bird.  Parrots talk, right?  So when we need a word, we now have Word Birds.  We added nifty pencils and note pads to the NaNo Swag, and our very own Plot Pots.

Plot Pots are where we store all those Plot Bunnies and let them stew until we need some plot twist or suggestion to move our novel forward.  Everyone has ther own Plot Pot - or at least everyone who shows up at our NaNo meetings and write-ins has a Plot Pot.  These are small plastic cauldrons with the words "Plots" written on them in Obliterine.

Obliterine is the name folks in science fiction gave to white-out when it first came out because it obliterates our mistakes.  Obliterine is a wonderful substance.

Anyway, the party was a success, people got ots of nifty NaNo swag, and got to hear the stories behind all the props.  We shared some details of the stories we would be writing as soon as NaNoWriMo officially started, and we made plans for future meetings and write-ins.

It was a very successful Kick-Off party.

Then November 1st arrived and NaNoWriMo officially began.  I didn't start as soon as the midnight hour finished tolling because I was washing dishes from the Kick-Off party.  I don't use disposable dishes.  The party did remind me I needed to enhance my mug collection, I don't have near enough for everyone.  Then I went to bed and slept before going to work.

I didn't get to make the first keystroke on my novel until lunchtime.  During my lunch hour, I wrote just over a thousand words, and after work, I finished up the necesary word count for the day.  I still didn't have names for any of my characters - I was calling them Character 1A and 1B, Character 2A and 2B, Character 3 and 4 and 5.  Each time I added in a new character, they got the next number up.  So my first 8,000 words are rather confusing.  I will have to recitify that sometime today.  Being a day off from work, I should have time to devote to creating names appropriate for this world.

I did invent a juice, and being woefully ignorant about the work of gene splicing, I will have to gloss over the lab work Character 1A does. In re-write, I can spend hte time doing hte research needed to make that character a bit more believable.  I don't need to actually know about gene splicing work, whatever would pass in a newspaper article should be sufficient.

In the meantime, I did have to have a scene where Character 1A was working in his lab and I glossed over it rather heavily, relying on his feelings and thoughts more than on his actions.  I did get to slug in some details about the world, adn their philosophy.

Dexacla was discovered and settled by a group of scientists who own the world outright.  No single Earth country has any jurisdiction or territorial claim over it, and since there is no unified world government, Earth itself has no claim on Dexacla.  These scientists planned the terraforming of Dexacla to maximize compatibility between their own earth-based flora and fauna and the native Dexclan flora and fauna.  They bypassed several other potentially inhabitable worlds because the terraforming looked to be too complicated and too long-term to satisfy them.  Dexacla looked to be a possible world.  They filed claim, set out the settlement terms, and went about hteir business.

They had hte foresight, before they left, to create an international investment group and  business specifically to provide support to the colonists.  With the understanding that comminication would be sparse and widely spaced out - decades long in most cases - it was a model contract.

The best thing about Dexacla, other than the fact that humans could live on hte surface without anything more than the usual protections, was that it contained a beautiful mineral that would prove to be immensely popular on Earth.  The sales of this mineral would supplement substantially the support needed for the colony.  The mineral had intense piezoelectric qualities, making it a much better conductor than quartz crystals, even in its smallest shards.  A shard no bigger than a baby's thumbnail could hold anough data to make hte National Library of COngress look like a single child's personal library.  They could be programmed verbally, held up to "see" what was being recorded, or by rubbing the dexalite crystal over the data to be copied.  Transfering data was a simple matter of rubbing two Dexalite crystals together.  In addition to that, the spiritualist groups discovered a need for the mineral in their rituals.  A group of people could "impress" a Dexalite crystal and evoke a collective memory that would respond to them in an artificial intelligence sort of fashion - almost like a speaking crystal ball.  Other properties were attributed to the Dexalite, bit these were teh only real ones.

By the time the second ship arrived at Dexacla with the reports of the sales of hte mineral and a new supply of equipment, seeds, and fertilized eggs, the colonists had discovered new taste sensations that would also prove profitable to export to Earth - two vegetables and a fruit that were exotic-looking enough to prove popular for the novelty and tasty enough to encourage repeat sales.  Freeze-drying them did not alter their looks or flavor when reconstituted.  They had also discovered an herb that, when inhaled in steam, would dry out fluid-filled lungs in a very short time - ideal for near-drowning victims and people with pnuemonia or cystic fibrosis.  It would have to pass assorted earth drug testing procedures before being released for sale, but once it did, it would add to their income revenues.

The third ship saw no new foods, drugs, or discoveries, but the colony began exporting art made by the colonists - music, performance tapes, sculptures, paintings, and fabrics using native Dexaclan materials and compositions.  These proved wildly popular on earth - so much so that people wanted to immigrate to Dexacla.

The fourth ship sent word back on the type of person the colonists would accept and created a rigorous set of criteria for them.  New colonists were needed because with all its advantages, Dexacla was proving deadly - they could barely breed enough humans to maintain their population.  The fertilized human ova shipments they'd been receiving weren't always viable, and almost half of the ones that did produce viable babies produced damaged ones.  The ova were too fragile for the rigors of space travel, so living colonists would be welcomed - but only if they were willing to adhere to the standards of the initial and current colonists.

The fifth ship - arriving at the beginning of my NaNovel, contains the first group of immigrants.  Before the ship even lands, conflict begins.

Right now, I have 2 main characters who are older, male, and co-fathers to 19 children, 11 who died of deformities, disease, or accident.  The remaining 8 have survived to adulthood and many have already adopted babies from the labs.  Almost every adult has several children for whom they are responsible.  The children have an abbreviated childhood, safeguarded and protected as much as possible because Dexacla's apparent hospitality cloaks death in new and interesting forms.  Those children who survive their infancy and toddlerhood are then sent to creches where they are intensely educated.  Contact is maintained between children and parents - most of whom are foster parents to children born from fertilized ova grown in artificial wombs.  Each ship broght a supply of fertilized ova, and this fifth ship is no exception.

At the beginning of the novel, Characters 1a and 1B are looking forward to having earth neighbors, learning from them and teaching them the ropes around Dexacla, keeping them safe until they could fend for themselves.  Very quickly, this turns from eager anticipation to dread.  One single act by the ship turns the entire colony against them.

That's where I left my novel on the evening of the 1st.  On the second, I was delayed in writing dealing with car issues - the car broke down 43 days earlier and it was only just getting out of the shop.  There was some question about whether it would even be ready - I’d been told it was ready three times before only to have them say - Ops, sorry, not done yet.

It's actually still not done, because the long time the car spent with the engine removed and the normally protected parts exposed caused said parts to dry out and two of them to crack and leak and need replacing - further expense on my end.  I'm not sure I should have been held financially responsible for that damage because I feel it was negligence on the part of the mechanic that caused those parts to break, or for the problems the car still has.  The car was running fine until the oil pump just quit, and within minutes, the car didn't run anymore.  The engine needed to be rebuilt over that and a new oil pump put in - it shouldn't have taken much more than a week to do that, but it took 42 days.   Yes, I'm whining and complaining a bit, especially since it cost me a very hefty chunk of money - almost three times what I earned in those 43 days the car was in the shop.  Plumbers still have mechanics beat on expensiveness, though, so I guess I shouldn't complain too hard.

Anyway, back to NaNo - I wrote more on Friday, getting through the town meetings and the ship safely landed in Nediport, and I've reached the point where the new colonists begin disembarking and going through their quarantine.  The Dexaclans had originally done all they could to make the process as pleasant as possible.  They wouldn't change that comfort they provided, but they felt no need to be friendly about it.  There are some good interactions between the man who appointed himself leader of the ship colonists and the Dexaclans.  This is because Dexacla operates on a true democracy principle with participation and advance discussion and fact finding required before a vote was called for.  Each Dexaclan is connected in a social network and hte population is still small enough - even with the influx of Earthers to allow this sort of personal government.  There are few laws, and many peer pressure expectations.  It doesn't take long before the Earthers are convinced they are superior in every way to the Dexaclans, and the Dexaclans are confirmed - they think - in their dislike of the Earthers.  This is made even more apparent when the Dexaclans learn few of the colonists are scientists and virtually none share their philosophical ideology.  There is a representative of the Dexaclans Earth corporation - Scientific Exploratory Development Corporation (SEDCo) - who came along to explain what happened and how SEDCo had been taken in a political coup - and the welcome information that SEDCo primary assets had been saved and transferred to a new company upholding the original ideals - now named Scientists in Space Corporation (SISCo).  They are rival companies, and the real ship should be arriving any day.

Today's segment is a surprise waiting for my fingers to type it out.  Will the Earthers and Dexaclans make up?  Will the real ship arrive before murder and mayhem breakout - or will its arrival cause murder and mayhem?  Who will be Characters 1A and 1B's new neighbors? 

NaNoWriMo approaches all too rapidly.

It's not that I'm unprepared for the event itself.  After all, this year, I did a bit of pre-planning on the novel I will write.  I have names, characters, a setting and a background.  I have villains and evil characters, conflict and predictable plot twists.  At least, I think they're predictable - there are so many plot twists, and so few original ones.

That's way more than I've ever had going in to NaNo.

I don't know why other people do NaNo more then once.  After all, once should be enough.  It either proves you can write a novel in a month, and thereby launches your writing career, or it proves you can't write a novel in a month, and so you wander off to do something else.

It's not proving I can write a novel in a month.  That part's easy enough, and I've known for years that if I am given uninterrupted time, I can write a novel in a weekend - because I've done it before.

No, I do NaNo each year because I meet interesting people who like doing the same things I do.  Sure, there are the whiners and the quitters, and people who want to shut down the parade, but yanno - I feel sorry for them.  They don't understand the community that developes during NaNo.

We've managed to keep the local community writers going all year, and each year, we add one or two new people to the year 'round group.  That alone is reason enough to engage in NaNo.  And honestly, that's probably my primary reason for doing NaNo.

But I also do it because it's a once a year permission to write any piece of fiction I want.  I can even, if I choose, write the fan fiction I rerfain from doing the rest of the year for other, publishable, types of writing. It's a time to have fun with fiction.  I don't have to worry if it's well written, or if it will meet some demanding reader's standards.  I write it for myself, and if I am the only person who will ever read it, then so be it.  That's the glory of NaNo.

And if I happen to write something that is publishable, that's a bonus.  In the 5 previous years I've participated in NaNo, I think I've only generated 2 novels that have the potential to be publishable.  One of them is currently undergoing a very heavy re-write.  The other has to wait its turn, but I don't think the re-write will be as extensive.

In the meantime, I have donuts left over from work and Itzl needs to go outside to potty.

My daughter has volunteered to be the ML for NaNoWriMo this year - and volunteered my house for the Kick-Off party.  In preparation for that, we've borrowed a number of computers - far more than are normally here.  We also have to do some re-arranging of things so there will be room for the expected 30 plus people who will be here.

And since the Kick-Off party is on Halloween, we're doing it as a Come as Your MC (or some other character in your novel) and Potluck.

I'm making a Haunted Forest Relish Tray with a Swamp Dip.  For me, Halloween treats are all in the presentation.  This will look like a forest of broccoli, with veggie monsters, egg ghosts, and assorted weird bugs.  The Swamp Dip will be filled with "body parts" and have raisin and almond flies all about it.

It's That Time of Year again.  I will be doing NaNoWriMo again.  Last year's novel is shaping up very nicely.  If I don't have it re-written and edited by November 1st., I will put it on hiatus for the month of November.

This is the first year I've gone in to NaNo with an idea before November 2nd.  I wonder if it will pan out, or if I can only scribble out a novel if I start with a completely blank screen?

Anyway, I have a working title, even - Juxtaposies.  It's utterly meaningless to most folks, but it reminds me of what the novel is about.

If you're doing NaNo, I'm there under the name Kopiluwak.  Feel free to add me as a writing buddy.  If you want me to add you, tell me what name you're using at NaNo, and I will.