November 29th

Today's message is brought to you by the number 50,064.

Yup, I made it.  There's still more story to go, but for now, I'm a happy guy.

November 26th

My bit of wisdom for the day: carrying home a Christmas tree can in fact make it impossible to move one's arms enough to type.

Fortunately I regained mobility and all I'm going to say is:

45,568 words down.  4,432 words to go.  I can't believe I'm almost there.

November 24th

I have a feeling the next week is going to fly right by.

I'm finding it hard to believe it's Wednesday (ok, ok, technically it's Thursday morning), but the good news is that I'm still on pace, fulfilling my daily quota every day.  I surpassed the 40,000 word mark today, and it would be hard to describe the feeling.  The anxiety is still there, somewhere in the background, as I look at my plot outline, and try to gauge the number of steps it will take me to flesh it out on this first pass.  Gradually, though, it's been replaced by something else.

I'm almost there.  40,921 words down, 9,079 to go.

November 22nd

If I had a reasonable bedtime (*see previous blog entry on sleeping habits for context), I could say I squeaked in just in the nick of time tonight.

But!  I don't, and I also went ~600 words over quota, so that wouldn't be a very accurate description of tonight's session.  It felt like I squeaked in just in the nick of time, but that's just because of the way my process (yes, I apparently have a process now) works.  The shorthand version of which is: try to force something out for 30-45 minutes, then get out of my own way and write a bunch of words until realizing I've gone beyond my self-imposed word count total.

It seems to work, though.  Another three days, another several thousand words.  My total is at 36,322 to date, leaving me only 13,678 words away from the goal.

November 19th

All right, ok, I'm fudging things a little with the date today.  I'll ask you to indulge your semi-delirious sleep deprived narrator, and accept my rationalization that even though it's ridiculous o'clock in the morning, I haven't slept yet and therefore, on some figurative if not quite technical level, it is still Friday.

Why am I posting at ridiculous o'clock?  I felt it important to note that I've plugged in five straight days at 2,200 plus words this week, managing to stay with the program.  Yes, but why this late Friday/early Saturday, you might ask?  Well, today's session started late because I had an older, much more revered rite that needed my attention: attending opening night of a new Harry Potter movie with my wife (and a number of her friends...and yes that's part of the ritual).  We got home just after midnight, and I wanted to get my writing done for the day, so here I am at...holy cow, it really is late, isn't it?

Anyway, my current tally is at 28,688.  21,312 to go.

November 17th

Hello again.  It's me, your humble narrator.  Though perhaps "humbled narrator" would be more appropriate.  I've said it before and chances are you will hear it again in at least one of the ... five? ... remaining word count updates, this is turning out to be one heck of a grueling process.

My news for today is modest, but I think important nonetheless.  I have managed to stick to my revised word count for the third day running.  After the inconsistency of my output over the first two weeks, this finally feels like i'm accomplishing something.

Current count: 23,774 words.  26,226 to go.

November 15th

First I should apologize for missing Friday's post.  I was able to add to my word count on Thursday but didn't put down anything more on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday again (needing to rest on the weekends seems to be a theme).

At any rate, I've recalculated my daily quota.  It's still in the realm of the feasible, but I need to be careful.  I hit my target today, which made me happy.  Fortunately, though my prose has not been a shining example of genius at work, it's still ... functional ... on a base level.  My goal is to build up the momentum this week and carry it through the weekend somehow.  If I can do that I think I'll have a working rough draft rather than a series of loosely connected ramblings that would only deserve to be scrapped.

So, where do I sit?  19,039 words, 30,961 left to go.  See you in a couple days.

November 10th

Yesterday was tough, but I managed to put down almost 1,900 words.  Today was much better, with a smidge over 3,200 words.  I think for the time being, since I'm not ready to post the stuff flying out of my fingers, I'll settle for status updates on Mon-Wed-Fri.

I've been getting periodic pep-talk e-mails from the organizers, a lot of the usual rah-rah stuff you'd expect (so not always that helpful), but the one I got today I found heartening.  It basically described the last four or five days. Week Two, as they call it.  Notice the capitalization.  It made my struggles over the last couple days seem normal and somehow manageable.

So, even though I'm behind where I would have liked to be, I've been able to make up a good amount of ground, so if I can just keep at it, I should be back ahead again in no time.

For those of you keeping track at home, I hit 14,756 today, leaving me 35, 244 from my goal.

November 8th

Ok, so taking three days off may not have been the wisest course of action.

I figured, hopefully not incorrectly, that with this week off work and dedicated to writing, I'd be able to crank words out at a good pace.  This assumption led to my taking a break on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  As a result, I was about 4,000 words behind pace going into today.

Thankfully, after an afternoon and evening during which the importance of regularly exercising one's wordsmithing became painfully apparent, I was able to crank out over 2,500 words to claw back a bit of my deficit.  Let me say, the inertia was out in full force.  It took about three hours for the words to stop tripping over themselves this afternoon before I was able to hit my stride.  Repeating the "quantity not quality" mantra helps considerably.  The ideas are there and will wait for me to come back to them regardless of how poorly I formulate them on the first pass.

In other good news, I'm no longer afraid the story I chose for NANOWRIMO wouldn't have enough words in it to carry me past the 50,000 word mark.  I mean, I could have invoked my inner Robert Jordan, and expended 15,000 words on how the protagonist stubbed his toe on his way to his car to get coffee in preparation for his meeting later that afternoon, if I needed to (a skill I believe is inherited from my father).  Fortunately, I don't think I'll need to overburden my plot with unnecessary word count just for the sake of hitting my goal.

All of this to say, 9,607 down, 40,393 to go.

November 4th

OK, so honestly my NaNo stuff still isn't ready to see the light of day.  It's been a heck of a week.  The first day I raced out of the gate and managed to put down just over 3,000 words.  It hasn't been as easy since then.

Well, no, that's not entirely true.  The work part of my day, on account of my not being completely over the top obsessed about writing, like I was on Monday - that part has been easier.  This is good because I had no idea how I was going to make it through the whole month like that.  On the other hand, I seem to have traded being neurotic about writing while at the office (and apparently able to belt it out at home Monday night) for being neurotic about writing at home, when I should be writing.

The good news is that I'm still ahead of quota. I'm capable of turning off that part of my brain that cries out for me to spend 15 minutes agonizing over word choice.  As it stands, with a week of vacation next week, I have no reason to believe I will fail in my first objective: 50,000 words.

What that leaves, for good or ill, is the question...well, The Question, really.  Can I write something others will want to read?

November 2nd

Not ready to post any of my NaNoWriMo text yet.  Rather than work on any revisions tonight, I decided to plunk down another good chunk of ideas on paper.

Apparently slacking off and not writing anything until after the hockey game = 2,066 more words for today.

I've got all the major bits sorted out in my head and once I figure out how to tie some of the smaller bits together (I need to get to know some of my characters better to understand their motivations) I think I'll have a pretty solid base to work on.

Mental note if I decide to do this again: creating plot outlines and character sketches before November starts isn't against the rules, so I should take some time to develop those ahead of time in the future.

November 1st

So, day one of National Novel Writing Month is over.  (No, it's not actually over, there are still two hours left, but I've written 3153 words so far so I'm taking the rest of the night off).

Yeah, you read that right, 3153 words, nearly double my daily quota.  It's not fit for human consumption yet, but I think I've got enough time to make ok-ish prose out of it, so over the next couple days I'll post my progress and start posting the ongoing story.

Stay tuned!

xxx - Day 30 – One last moment, in great detail

I heard his footsteps as they came up behind me, the heels of his shoes reverberating in the empty office space.  I was seated at his workstation, sifting through the files on his workstation.   There was a simulation of his planned flightpath playing on the screen when he finally stopped behind me.

"Vincent?"  I turned in the seat, looked up at him, and then I stood, looking him over.  He was older, and somehow, different, though his eyes were still the same.  They didn't register the slightest amount of recognition.  "My god you have changed.  Has it been so long you don't recognize your own brother?"

He eyed me suspiciously and asked, "Are we brothers?"  He was diffident, clearly unhappy with my presence.

Unsure of how to proceed, I stalled for time.  He hadn't bolted for the door yet, there must be something he felt he needed to prove.  "Our parents both died thinking they outlived you...  I had my doubts."  Some part of me was glad to see him, even under these circumstances.  It was never his fault - who he was - though it had torn my parents up, right to the end, the decision they made, and then all those years later having him leave the way he did.

"What are you doing here, Anton?"