The Saga Continuums

CWC: **57326** words. It's as if they're breeding.

I keep returning, it's as simple as that. After a near-month of writing this story, prefaced by a couple of months' worth of planning, plot outlining, character constructing et cetera (anything not actually considered writing the story), I can't simply consign it to a shallow grave on the hard drive.
Oops, I think I used that expression before. D*mn. Oh well. Never mind

So the story goes:
LLD has learned of MMC's affair with SMC. I'm not sure what her exact reaction is, so far that remains a plothole. It's certain, however, that she's mad as hell.
As a consequence MMC has more or less broken up with SMC. SMC then decided to get out of his skull in the spirit of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, but is rescued by a True Friend before his brain is turned to mush. TF talks some sense into him, leading him to realise that MMC is the love of his life and he needs to patch things up before it's too late.
This leads to the first face-to-face between SMC and LLD, over the dead body of one of LLD's schoolmates...

Ah, drama.

Coverage

Inspired by one of the more creative procrastination tips to be found on the NaNo forums, I've decided to create the following cover for my future publication:
Cool, huh?
PS: Not my real name, a made up one.
PPS: Still writing, word count now at **52863**

Milestone!

Okay, I've now done it: the Word Count now stands at (drum roll, please):

***50434***

Oh my.

Status Report

CWC: now rocking my personal casbah at **47234**

I'm beginning to write slightly disjointed chapters; will join them up soonest. Or maybe it's just me coming apart at the seams...

Need. Coffee. Now.

Word Count

God I hate those Welsh!
(the ones in my own head, that is - I don't know any real-life Welshpeople, so if any should happen to read this blog please don't take offense - it's only imaginary Welsh I have a down on :-))
I still can't get them integrated into the story. I'm guessing a major reason for this is that at this point I haven't really moved the story to the point where they might be needed. For purely procrastinative purposes I'm still working on the love story aspect though I strongly suspect I shall have to switch focus shortly.

I am actually feeling optimistic enough to think I can reach the 50000 word marker within the next twenty-four hours. Things have been getting more complex than I thought; let's just hope that I'm not taking thirty pages to describe something that could have been done in three paragraphs. Sometimes I think I do; but at the same time I can't seem to see where I might trim the script for a more streamlined story.

I am going to have to keep writing. My word count seems to be skyrocketing, but I'm nowhere near having told the entire story. Once November is over motivation will be hard to come by, I know, but on the other hand I've invested so much effort into this year's novel that I can't just consign it to the shallow grave of my hard drive without at least trying to finish it. Even though the final word count will be a good deal higher than the 50000 that is the goal line of NaNoWriMo.

CWC: **45543**

Wish me luck.

Good Karma, Bad Karma

Current word count: **40230**

Five thousand or so words in twenty-eight hours.
How the h*ll did that happen?

All I can say is that for some reason I've been inspired today. I still haven't got the Welsh separatists going, but I've overcome one obstacle (minor, but isn't that always the way?): I've given them a name. They are now, officially, the Rhyddid Cymraeg, pronounced something like 'Rithid Kimreg' (that's supposed to be Welsh Freedom or Welsh Liberty). No guarantees that it's grammatically correct, but I'm pretty sure it's close, thanks to a couple of other NaNoWriMo'ers.

So, I've been writing like crazy, linking up a few chapters and paragraphs that were dangling, and moving the story forward quite a bit. And feeling immensely proud of myself.

And then - oh horror! oh woe! - my %&/$# office suite decided to crash on me...

I was lucky. I had saved my work very shortly before; all I lost was about fifteen lines of text, and since it was all freshly written I could pretty much recreate it the way it had been. But, let me tell you, I did experience some very nasty moments there...
Lesson: Never underestimate the importance of frequent saves. Or of backup copies (I think I have five or six, all carefully backed up on line just in case my computer decided to take early retirement).

It only goes to show, you can never be too careful.
Oh well.

Advancing the Plot

Right now, those Welsh separatists are giving me grief.

They're supposed to be pursuing a deal with an English right-wing populist party (the Free England Party, or FEP) which is rather in favour of allowing Wales to secede, provided this means all the English immigrants will be run out of their picturesque holiday homes in Wales and forced to repatriate in England, bringing their lovely tax pounds with them. The Welsh, for their part, want that second wave of colonists gone so that they might have a shot at reestablishing their own language and culture.

So far so froody.

Trouble is, I'm having difficulty relating that to the surveillance dystopia I'm trying to create, which is supposed to be a main feature of the GNOOT.

The LLD is also being rather difficult, though this is not an unusual trait in a fifteen-year-old. And she's pivotal to the story so I can't simply ditch her - the plan is that one of her schoolmates is the daughter of a sleazy politician who is a member of the aforementioned FEP, and the schoolmate is to be found dead under mysterious circs in the living room of LLD's house. LLD has an alibi of course, but her father, the MMC, does not. And has seemingly done a runner.

The plot is either thickening or falling apart, I can't quite decide which...

On the plus side: My CWC is at **35032** words now, so still on track :-)

Ungotten Goat

Still writing...

Word count update: **30938**
Like I said, my goat will not be got.

So, nearly 1000 new words added. Achieved mainly by filling a few holes left earlier. Still, a word is a word...

Moving the story forward is the next challenge. I have a Welsh separatist movement waiting in the wings.

Funny thing: Shortly after writing my previous post, I checked my email and found the NaNoWriMo Week Three pep talk - this time by Neil Gaiman. I have greatly enjoyed several of his novels and actually have two-and-a-half of them on my shelves ('American Gods', 'Neverwhere' and 'Good Omens', which he co-authored with Terry Pratchett - hence the half), and another one or two on my personal wish list. And funnily enough, it would seem that he - a man whose work I greatly admire and whose imaginative powers make me absolutely green with envy - experiences much the same when he's working on a novel - after a flying start and before the final downhill roll towards the coveted words 'The End', he too hits that dreary, rocky, wading-through-molasses stage that I find myself at right now.

Given that misery loves company, I must say that cheered me up a great deal.

Potholes or Plotholes?

So I haven't been updating.

In fact, I've been having trouble writing at all.

That's the main problem with writing a story, I find; inside my head it all hangs together and I know exactly how I want my characters to speak, think, act; but getting it down on the screen so that it still hangs together can be pure agony.

It's the sort of thing that makes me wish for Bobbi Anderson's mind-reading typewriter in Stephen King's The Tommyknockers; and I'm probably not the only one to engage in wishful thinking along those lines. Especially during the month of November; there are, literally, thousands of people worldwide going crazy over novel ideas (in either sense) these days.

But the important thing is: I am still writing. Moreover, I'm keeping up with the average daily output; I am right now just over 200 words shy of the 30000-word milestone I need to reach today in order to remain on track. And I'll get them too. This book isn't going to get my goat!

CWC: **29797** to be exact.

Title consideration: The working title of my Greatest Novel Of Our Time (2007 edition) has so far been 'Cross' - for no particular reason. I'm now going to rename it, though; henceforth, the GNOOT shall be forever (or until I change my mind again) known as:

CRASH

Because I say so.

So What's It All About, Anyway?

Belatedly I've realised that I should perhaps state my preliminary plan for this novel:

It's a near-future tale (mid-21st century) which, hopefully, will involve: civil liberties (or lack thereof), a generation gap, a sleazy politician, a virtual-reality operating system, and a gay love story.
Oh, and party drugs. And paint.
(I'm also considering a journalist, but I don't really know what to do with her yet.)
And it's pretty much all over the place, and I haven't really figured out the full plot yet...
So it should be fun to write, even if no bugger ever reads it ;-)

Crash

For the past few days I've been working on a chapter titled 'Crash'. The problem, it now seems, is that it's turned out far longer than any of the other chapters so far. It is the sixth chapter on my list; but it accounts for over a third of my current word count. Of course some of the other chapters remain unfinished (I tend to hop back and forth along the storyline).

Brief synopsis: While the MFC (main female character) (she who is also known as the LLD, or long-lost daughter) and her friends are crashing a party, my SMC crashes his bicycle, which leads to the MMC crashing at his place for the night (to observe him for any signs of concussion, natch), which leads to... well, let's just say it ain't PG13. And leave it at that.

Something tells me I'll never be able to show this to my mother!

CWC (current word count): **20920**

OK, OK. Time to go easy on the TLAs.

BTW: Will be off line until Sunday, so don't expect updates, all you folks who await the latest instalment with bated breath! (oh come on, there must be somebody...)

Grindin' time

So, yesterday I gave myself a mental health day from the
(drum roll please...)
***Greatest Novel Of Our Time***
... hence no blog entry, either.

Of course, really that simply means that instead of playing [insert deity of your choice] with my characters, I instead played the procrastination game. Which, let me tell you, has been brought along immensely by the advent of the Personal Computer. It doesn't matter how seriously you take your work, a quick game of Minesweeper can easily last three hours and counting. Good job I decided to suspend my WoW account...

But today it was back to the ol' grindstone. My MMC is now on the verge of being introduced to the daughter he never suspected he had - at the same time my SMC is beginning to make it obvious that his interest in MMC is more than just casual. Sadly MMC is really thick sometimes, so I think SMC will have to drop hints, anvils and sixteen-ton weights at great length to get his attention... but not too great a length, I'd like the end result to be a little shorter at least than Lord of the Rings (it probably won't sell as many copies, either :-P)

For the record: Now cruising at **13080** words. w00t!

Landmark

Fast update: Word count is now at, read it and weep, **10137** words!

Trouble is I don't feel as if I've told a fifth of the story... :-P

Who's Your Daddy?

Okay.
Enter the long-lost daughter.

The idea is that in the future, DNA profiles gathered in any legal connection are kept in a national register, regardless of whether the person whose DNA it is has done anything illegal. Ever. Something for the civil libertarians.
At any rate, the mother of the girl never revealed the father's identity, and since she was able to raise her daughter on her own nobody could force her. Now Mummy is dead, so the courts have ordered a full register search-and-match to find the father. Ain't no escapin'...

Word count: **8122**
I love seeing the word count status bar on my NaNoWriMo profile gradually fill up with blue...

The Best Laid Plans...

Okay.
So the daily posting I was so adamant about has failed to occur.
And in truth, I can't even blame anyone but myself. So there.

This does not mean I'm not writing. Hard at work, that's me, and on a daily basis too. In proof, I give you my current word count: **5595**
(Okay, you'll have to take my word for it.)

Another thing: As so often before I've underestimated my own ability to spin a scene. Thus, I'm just barely finishing the first chapter still, and the long-lost daughter has yet to make an appearance. She's on her way, though. My MMC (main male character) is about to arrive home after work to find a letter from Social Services informing him that a nearly-forgotten affair in his student days has left a more permanent memory with the young lady involved than it did with him. Now, however, the wench is dead and the time has come for him to assume responsibility...

The Off

So.
1761 words in session one.
I'm off to a good start, even if I do say so myself.

To summarize:
A Monday morning. A personnel meeting. Hell on Earth.

Chapter 1: Introduce the main characters. In my case, a 38-year-old programmer/developer with a software house based in England, circa 2045. A 33-year-old graphic artist/designer working for the same company. More about them later.

Planned for next session: Introduce the long-lost daughter. You gotta have a long-lost relative, right?