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I got a few new words yestersday, which puts the story up to 23,800 and NaNoWriMo count up to 13,500...

But what I got was a new twist in the relationships of the hero, which totally changes his motivations.  He basically does what he did before, but for totally different reasons, and with much greater passion, because it now really matters to him, rather than just following orders.

The problem is that I have to rethink all of the book up to this point before I can go on.  I'm not going to rewrite the beginning, but I have to rethink and make notes of what changes, so I can figure out what he's going to do next, based on all these new motivations.

Which is all a good thing, but means many backstory words, but not necessarily any new story words for today.

The end of last week was a bust.  I spent Thursday doing backstory for the story, Friday getting ready to teach, Saturday teaching, and Sunday sleeping and reading.

Yesterday was NaNoWriMo catch-up day.  #4-son had a 2-hour robotics meeting that I needed to take him to, which is in a junior high school that's in the finishing stages of being built.  He did his thing and I found a table and chair far away from the noise of all the kids and wrote.  Then came home and wrote more.

By the time I was done, I got ~4800 words for the day, so words for Thurs, Fri and Sat.  Which means: ~13,240 for NaNoWriMo, and ~23,500 for the book. 

But I still need NaNoWriMo words for Sun and Mon, so I'll put them on today's to-do list. (Read more)

About 2,600 new words on the 4th and about 1,700 words on the 3rd, so at the moment the rough total is: NaNoWriMo: 8,440, Book: 18,740

Jara has just sacrificed her happiness for the good of all, and the General is trying to deal with the decision he'd never thought he'd have to face: which is more important, his duty or a woman?

The writing is going good, and while I'm dreading how long it will take to type it all in, the long-hand is working really will with my muse. 

I sat down for breakfast yesterday morning with a friend and we "parallel played".  :-)  We both wrote, then every once in a while one would look up and ask a question and we'd brainstorm for a couple minutes, then go back to writing.  I got a whole bunch of backstory and world-building done that way.  Lots more questions that need to be answered, but I feel like I'm finally getting a hold of it. (Read more)

I sat down to write last night with no real idea what was happening next and no real hope of getting any words, and ended up with a nice little scene and my 1600 words for the day.

So NaNoWriMo total: 4100  Book total: 14,400

The big thing I did last night that I've never done before when writing a first draft is: skip a really big part of the scene, summarizing it down into a couple sentences.

I did this because I don't have a clue where this story is going, and yeah I could have done that scene and put all the stupid details in, but if I don't know what's going to be happening over the rest of the book, that really doesn't make much sense.

Gee!  I think I'm finally getting the hang of this rough-draft idea.  :-)

And I officially signed up on NaNoWriMo today.  Userid: jackiepowers

I'm not an official participant in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but I figured that since I have a story going, and I'm not that far into it... why not.  Why not see how far I can go with it this month.

Granted, the better part of a week is likely to be completely lost, given that kids and I are spending T'giving in Texas with family.  But I can see how far I get the rest of the month.

Last night I sat down with my notebook and pen, and ended with roughly 2500 new words, so total is up to 12,800. 

As I'm completely clueless as to how long this story is going to be, I can't say how far I'm into it.  But I know the black moment and the ending, so it's just a matter of how long it takes me to get there.

After last night's Windy City meeting, I wrote more on Jara's story.  Got about 1400 more words, and I ended with a surprise. 

I thought I knew most of the inter-relationships between people, but the last sentence of the scene was Jara telling Sharek something that I didn't know, which changes a whole slew of motivations.   Cool!  :-)  I love it when my characters know more than I do.  :-)  It keeps the writing interesting... always something new to discover.

I'm writing on a new story, one that hadn't hit the radar before the end of September.  Well, that's not exactly true.  The first scene of the story came to me the end of April, along with a title "Victory By Seduction", but I didn't write the first words until the end of September.

Last night I wrote almost 2,000 more words to it, which puts the total up to about 8,500 words, plus about that many words in backstory and plot outlines.

I've been trying to figure out why I'm writing this story rather than all the ones I'm supposed to be writing, the ones that make sense career-wise for me to be writing... like the 2nd book in the series of the book that sitting in the agent's desk. (Read more)

I've been swamped with non-writing stuff to do, but I've also been down-in-the-dumps because of the yucky weather.  Usually I'm a fan of autum, but not this year.  It's been cold and rainy and yucky.  We've had two nice days in the last month and that's it. 

All the rain makes it really hard to do simple things like rake the leaves, and the cold make it not only wet but miserable to work outside.  Not fun anyway I look at it.

I'm hoping that it clears up in the next few days so I can get the boys out to work on the leaves.  We'll see, I guess.

Over the last week, I've discovered www.hulu.com.  The thing that's great about it is the History Channel shows that I can't otherwise get because I don't have cable.  Putting on a Hulu show while I'm doing something mind-numbingly boring makes life life much more endurable.

Today I'm inserting a ton of stuff into an Excel database, one bit at a time.  Necessary stuff.  Boring, boring, boring job.

Thank goodness for Hulu... it's maintained my sanity today.  :-)

Ahhh... the smell of burning dust as I turn my furnace on for the first time since early May... fall is here.