Doc Coleman's Blog, page 25

#NaNoWriMo, Day 9 – Washout

After grabbing a couple of hours of sleep, I was able to get up and get myself into work today, so a big chunk of my potential writing time was taken up with gainful employment (What Robert Heinlein used to refer to as "honest work". Something to be avoided at all costs.). My time after work was somewhat fragmented. First my wife and I had to go inspect a potential storage space in which to store the loot from our upcoming "viking raid" of Atlanta. Then, after we finally located a suitable space that we can actually afford, we grabbed a quick dinner and made our way home. We ate dinner and started to pack for our raiding party… and I passed out. Clean knock out, down for the entire count. no words written at all. So for NaNoWriMo, the day was a washout.

18293 / 50000

(36.59%)

Hopefully I do better on the 10th!

#NaNoWriMo, Day 8

I woke up sick this morning and ended up calling in to work. Then I slept in until something like 1 PM, soaked in sweat. Apparently I spiked a pretty high fever over night. It took me a while to get my brain in order to write, but you can't exactly call in sick to NaNoWriMo. It just moves on without you! When I finally sat down to write, my progress was slow. It wasn't until I got over my daily minimum that I started to get on a roll. By that time it was late enough that I wanted to find a place to stop, but each scene kept demanding to be finished. By the time I finally wound down, I had racked up another 2533 words, bringing my grand total up to 18293.

18293 / 50000

(36.59%)

Today's character tortures have been much less physical and much more personal. Well, except for the moment when he almost pees his pants while getting a "lift" across town. Then there is a moment of peace, followed by four lovely social gaffes in a row! When this character puts his foot in it, he really puts his foot in it!

Unfortunately, no more Killer Clockwork Budgies today. Maybe tomorrow.

I have considered posting small excerpts with these daily diaries. Would you folks like to see some? I'd like to give you a taste of the action without being all "best parts of the movie in the trailer".

NaNo, NaNo, folks. Or if you didn't make your word count, Shazbot!

I'm off to bed.

#NaNoWriMo, Day 7

Tough day of writing today. Did a full day of work, came home, exercised, showered, got very, very tired, then finally managed to begin writing. The going was slow, not because I didn't know what happened next, but because I had no energy. I hope I am not catching my wife's sore throat. I cannot really afford any more time off than necessary. But with my wife's help making dinner and a bit of dogged determination, I persevered. Final word count for the day was 2025, bringing my total count for my novel up to 15,760! It still feels weird to say "my novel".

The character torturing continues. My PoV character has finally been released from police custody, but now finds himself alone in an unknown district of a foreign city. The odd strangers he got blown up with have also been released and have offered him a ride, only to have the entire group set upon by the Killer Clockwork Budgies of Doom! (Doom! Doom!). They manage to survive the encounter and are wisked up into an airship! And that is about all for today.

Except I really like saying Killer Clockwork Budgies of Doom!

Happy NaNo, folks. Time for bed for me.

Phoenix Rising nominated for the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards!

All right. I admit it. I should have written this post earlier. My only excuse is the timing, seeing as this news came out just as I was getting into the swing of things for NaNoWriMo this year. It took this article from Tee Morris to remind me that I had been remiss in supporting my friends in their good fortune. So let me repair that now.

My friends Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris have had their first joint project, Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel, land on the official ballot of the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards in the Best Science Fiction category! And they are in among fierce competition, with names like Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Stephen King, John Scalzi, and China Mieville also in the running. Phoenix Rising also happens to be the only Steampunk work in this category. Tee and Pip are my friends, but they have also written a really spectacular book (as you can see from my review here). If you have a Goodreads account, you should vote! And if you choose to vote for Phoenix Rising, I'm sure that would make Tee and Pip happy.Right now we are in the opening round of voting, which lasts up until November 13th. During the Opening round, if you don't see a title you feel like voting for, you can write in a candidate (like say, my short story The Gift in a category like, oh, Paranormal Fantasy, maybe?) and vote for that instead.

On November 14th, the Semi-finals begin and the top 5 write in votes get made official nominees and the voting begins again.

On November 21st, the Final round begins and the field narrows to the top 10 books in each category, and you have one last chance to cast your vote for a winner.

So if you'd like to be part of this process, now is the time to dust off your Goodreads account, or to create one if you haven't yet discovered the wealth of books, authors, and book reviews on Goodreads.

#NaNoWriMo, Day 6

Strange day of writing today. Didn't really get any long periods of sitting down and just cranking out the words. Most of it seemed to be a few hundred words here and there while waiting between doing this errand and that errand. We got a lot done today, and somehow I manage to boost the word count. I didn't quite get caught up to where I wanted to be after missing most of my writing hours yesterday, but I did make good progress.Although, when you get down to it, today actually had the biggest word count to date with 3217 words written, bringing the total word found up to 13,735. In those three thousand plus words, my point of view character has been arrested, insulted, struck, left most of the evening in manacles, apologized to, interrogated, released, and abandoned. And I'm leaving off with him being attacked by killer birds. That should make things interesting for tomorrow, right?

And I note that Nathan Lowell has managed to crank out 45,852 words in six days of NaNoWriMo. He will pass 50,000 words tomorrow, and he says he is about 60% done with his story. I hope to someday be able to write like Nathan when I grow up.

Anyone recommend a site for generating progress bars? Or a good progress bard plug in for WordPress? I think I could use one.

#NaNoWriMo, Day 5

There is good news and bad news on today's writing. I had to go out to Baltimore to work a booth at a flea market for a friend of mine. I had thought that I would just be there as a relief person and that I'd have time to write during the show. Somehow it didn't work out that way. The space we had for the booth was a lot smaller than we expected, and I ended up running a lot more errands.

I did get some writing in. But I only racked up 200 some words for the day. Not the 2000 words that has been my daily target. That is the bad news. The good news is that my total word count so far is 10,518, which means that I have maintained an average word per day rate of 2103, which is better than my daily target. I didn't even need to write at all!

Of course, tomorrow, I am going to see if I can rack up 4 to 5 thousand words to "catch up" and make up for today's deficit. I have a trip and possible surgery later in the month, and I'd like to get ahead as much as possible while I can. For now, I should head to bed. After all, I have to get up and write later today.

#NaNoWriMo, Day 4

In yesterday's writing, I stopped in the middle of Chapter 4 so that my wife and I could go and get dinner. This turned out to be a good idea for my maternal bliss. And since yesterday's word count was just shy of 3000 words, not to shabby from a writing perspective.

Today, I finished Chapter 4, then went off to get my own dinner. That was another 1949 words for today. This makes it the first day that I've written under 2000 words. Well, we can't have that, can we?

So, on to Chapter 5! And another 600 some words before I decided to call it a night. Which it is, being just before midnight. So my grad total for today is 2562 words, bringing me up to 10297 words for my novel. So, in four days I've written 20% of my novel. Woot!

Of course, Nathan Lowell has already topped 25,000 words and is well on his way to hitting 50,000 words in the first week. Go Nathan! You bastard.

#NaNoWriMo, Day 3

Today was another good writing day. I got in another 2930 words on my novel. So far, my PoV character has been given an ultimatum, been late to his last chance to make a good impression, been thrust into the company any of strangers, been bored by opera, had a building dropped on him, and next I'm going to blow him up.

I think I am getting the hang of this thing. What do you think?

More words tomorrow!

#NaNoWriMo, Day 2

After a truly execrable morning, I managed to find some time this afternoon to sneak in a few words of writing. And I do mean sneak. The events of the morning had caused me to get to work quite late compared to my usual schedule, so I was still at work when my scheduled writing time came about. However, I had already completed about all the work I could reasonably do during the day, so barring someone getting back to me, I had already gotten in my daily production.

Once again it was difficult to get going on today's chapter of writing. I knew the action of the scene, but I wasn't quite sure how to work into it. Finally I just picked an approach and went with it. I can always change it later in editing, right?

About 500 words in I was beginning to wonder if I was going to hit my pace for the day. Things seemed to be dragging and it was hard to pull the sentence out. But then I got into the action of the scene. Once things started happening, my narrator's voice really came out and I was rolling out words almost faster than I could type them.

I rounded out the day with 2107 new words. So two days in I've got 4805 words towards my novel and I have completed three chapters. I even added today's writing to my novel info as the Excerpt. If you'd like to check it out, just go look at my NaNoWriMo Profile.

It is early yet, but I'm going to call it a day for now. Don't want to burn out. Besides, I've got words to write tomorrow, too.

#NaNoWriMo, Day 1

And so we begin my first day of NaNoWriMo. This has been a new experience for me. A lot of the other writers I know stayed up late last night so they could begin writing just after midnight. I couldn't do that. I carpool to work, and my carpoolers like to go in early to avoid the traffic. So I had to get up at 3:30 AM in order to meet up with them on time. No midnight writing for me.

In my case, I came home to find that a lot of them had got the jump on me and written up thousands of words. They were well ahead of the game and I'd just gotten home from work and had chores to do before I could start writing.

But just after 4 PM I did sit down to write. And despite some stumbles in the beginning (don't search for the perfect word, just put a correct word and make it perfect later!), once I got rolling the words just started to flow. I wrote for 2 1/2 hours, maybe a little more, and came out with 2698 words for my first day's writing. This puts me over 1000 words ahead, even after a late start.

Of course, I don't know how long this story is going to be. Right now I'm just shooting for the 50,000 words and a completed story. But the story could be longer before it is done. Still, it feels like a good start to things. I just have to keep up the momentum.