Paul Briggs's Blog - Posts Tagged "nanowrimo"

NaNoWriMo 2016

I’ve made a lot of progress on Altered Seasons over the past month. I’ve finished Year 3 and given a lot of shape to the remaining sections of the novel. I’ve also wiped Anchorage and Pyongyang off the map. I’ll put them right back, I swear.

But now it’s time to temporarily part company with Isabel Bradshaw, Carolyn Camberg, Jerome Ross, Holbrooke Morgan, Sandra Symcox, Walter Yuschak, Henry Pratt, Jae-oh Ahn, Muhammad al-Harrak and the rest of the inhabitants of that troubled near future. For the month of November, I’m going to be trying to bring Locksmith’s War 50,000 words closer to completion. I didn’t quite succeed last year, but I got enough done on Locksmith’s Journeys that I was able to finish the book and publish it this year.

I think people are going to like Locksmith’s War. It’s going to be much more action-oriented than the other two books of the series, full of paranoid situations, complicated plots and impossible odds. My reluctant hero is going to outdo himself in terms of the things he does and the dangers he faces. Locksmith will break the awesometer, and then he’ll break the replacement awesometer. He will be so metal they’ll have to seat him at the periodic table.

I’ve made a schedule for myself so I can balance National Novel Writing Month, my own ghostwriting duties and various other things I need to do. I’ve decided to try to write 2,000 or more words on a certain number of days, so as to balance out the inevitable days when I fall short.

I just hope the sea ice doesn't disappear from the Arctic Ocean before I can return to Altered Seasons. That would be annoying.
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Published on October 31, 2016 20:57 Tags: nanowrimo

NaNoWriMo: The First Week

NaNoWriMo is going well for a change. I've written 12,000 words already. The secret, I think, is having lots of writing buddies, some of whom are fans of your work. There's still going to be a gap in my writing time around Thanksgiving, and there's no way to avoid that (seriously, why November?) but in spite of it I think I'm going to succeed.

As always, this means carrying a notebook and pencil around whenever I'm away from my computer (in the greenroom during a play, for instance) which makes me look even less sociable than usual. I've noticed that I'm a lot more sparing with words when I have to write them by hand.

The surprising thing is that I've also found time to do a little more work on Altered Seasons. And that the publisher who asked me to write it hasn't given up hope after all this time.

While you're all waiting for me to finish some of these books, here's an announcement from Debbie Manber Kupfer, author of P.A.W.S., which I swear I'll get around to writing a review of when I have the time. (Hint: It's good.)


It's here - the brand new cover for Argentum!

Created by the always awesome Rachel Bostwick.

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And there's more - I'll be rereleasing Argentum on December 1st and you can

preorder today.

Argentum is the threat that binds all magic …
The silver of Miri’s cat charm passed on through the generations.
The silver of Jessamyn’s scepter, the source of her illusions.
The silver of Quentin’s scrying bowl, forged by Merlin.
All intertwine in Argentum.

With Alistair gone a measure of peace returns to P.A.W.S., but Miri is tormented by nightmares. The silver charm that had recently hung around Alistair’s neck is now in Miri’s possession and seems to have taken on a life of its own. And then it mysteriously disappears.
Jessamyn seeks help from Quentin, who claims to have repented his past association with Alistair, but can he be trusted?
And what of Jenna? The young girl rescued from Alistair’s pack house holds a terrible secret. One that could determine the future of P.A.W.S.

Coming soon - a brand new paperback. Stay tuned for details.

argentum2-paperbackwraplowres
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Published on November 07, 2016 09:41 Tags: nanowrimo

NaNoWriMo: The Third Week

Well, here we go. I'm at 38,467 words, but here comes Thanksgiving to put a huge dent in my writing time. (Also, one of the drawbacks to this approach is that I keep hitting chapters I can't finish because they need editing, and that might bring down the word count.)

Here are the next five chapter titles:
5. The Caged Hummingbird
6. Hiding in the Attack
7. The Golden Hour
8. Contact with the Enemy
9. Deluge

And here's another snippet of Altered Seasons:

Isabel was jarred awake by the sound of two hands clapping about a foot away from her left ear.
She sat up abruptly, and was rewarded with a jolt of pain from the back of her neck as she pulled her head up from the pillow on her desk. The thin, bestubbled face of Luke Roth, her supervisor for the morning shift, was looming over her.
“Sleeping on the job?”
Isabel did a triple-take. First she was horribly embarrassed at having in fact been caught sleeping on the job. One second later, while her face was still halfway done turning red, she thought I sleep at my desk because I can’t leave my damn post! HOW DARE HE and then she noticed the look in his eye and realized he was kidding. Figuring that witty banter was called for at this point, Isabel tried to think of some.
“I could sleep a lot better if they hadn’t taken the beds out,” was the best she could come up with. She gestured toward the end of the RV where the beds had been replaced by extra hard drives, giving her computer more storage space. For a moment, Isabel glared out the window at yet another beautiful, sunny Louisiana morning which had come to mock her for having to spend yet another day cooped up in this air-conditioned veal pen. Then she turned back to her computer and sent a file to Roth’s smartphone.
“Here’s the latest projections,” said Isabel. “They’re not good. We’re looking at a flow rate well over 2.5 million cubic feet per second. There’s a 96.2 percent chance the river crests over the top of the ORCS after midnight tonight, and a 62.5 percent chance the structure fails completely. That’s up from 96.0 and 61.4 from the 1 a.m. data. Have you heard if they’re going to open the Morganza the rest of the way?”
“Haven’t heard a thing.” At this point, the little microwave at the end of the table turned itself on, the light inside showing a single cup. Roth glanced at it.
“I set it to start at six minutes before seven,” Isabel said. “When it’s done, the alarm app goes off and wakes me up. That gives me five minutes to drink the chyq and get my brain back in gear before the data comes in.”
“That’s efficient.” Roth glanced under the desk, where there was a wastebasket with a dozen energy-bar wrappers in it. “Have you been living on those things this whole time?”
“Since Brian left. Speaking of Brian, when’s that replacement going to come?”
“It’s hard finding a qualified candidate. If we’re still here on Monday — which isn’t looking too likely right at the moment — and if Brian isn’t back by then, we’ll try to bring somebody in.”
Isabel was really starting to think it had been a mistake for her to accept this job. To the task of helping the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers keep the Old River Control Structure standing, Eveland-Blades Consulting, Inc., had brought half a ton of computer hardware, two engineers, three supervisors and their in-house “social/interpersonal networking specialist,” a man whose job description consisted entirely of schmoozing with Lieutenant General J.L. Martineau and any other important decision-makers who happened to be in the area. On Monday, Brian Dalrymple (the other engineer) had taken a leave of absence so he could go back to Michigan and help his mother evacuate. He was supposed to have been replaced, but the teams in Greenville, Baton Rouge and New Orleans swore they couldn’t spare anybody. Which had left Isabel subsisting on chyq, meal replacement bars and about three hours of sleep a night in 30-to-45-minute servings.
She glared out the window again. The skies were still clear and cloudless. You would never imagine that six hundred miles to the north (and nine hundred miles, and twelve hundred miles) such torrential downpours were taking place that all her efforts here were probably futile.
“Has anybody told the general about the problem with the simulation?”
“What prob— oh. That thing you keep mentioning in your e-mails. Look, Martineau knows this structure better than anyone alive. He knows how much it can take. I wouldn’t worry about it.” Which wasn’t an answer… which was an answer. “You know, Isabel, you’re really being a trooper about all this.”
“Thank you,” said Isabel, not sure if Roth was being sincere or if he was trying to convey please don’t blow it by turning whistleblower on us.
“I mean it,” he said. “I kind of wish we had a provision for overtime pay, just so we could give you time and a half.”
“So do I,” said Isabel. The microwave’s alarm app started ringing.


If you enjoyed that, here's another snippet which has been on my mind a lot lately for some reason.
Politicians Talk Shop
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Published on November 22, 2016 15:25 Tags: clifi, nanowrimo

NaNoWriMo: To the Finish Line

Getting down to the wire. 45,000 words written. Two more days to go. It's going to be tough, but I can do this.

Here's something I posted on Facebook a while back that you might get a kick out of.

Things that only happen to writers: Having to tell your villain he's being demoted.

"Sorry, but I'm going to have to turn you into the assistant villain. One of the side characters has turned out more interesting than you and has more compelling reasons to do what she does."

"Come on, give me another chance!"

"I've tried, but I just can't make you anything but bland and unmotivated. The most interesting thing I can think of about you is that you don't play golf. You gotta admit that's pretty weak sauce. You're like an evil Commander Chakotay."

"Weren't you going to give me an old war wound or something?"

"Yeah, but somebody else already had one of those and I didn't want to create a situation like in the first season of Legend of Korra where it seemed like everybody's parents were killed by firebenders."

"You realize this means three of your main characters and the villain are all female? This is turning into chick lit. Do you even know how to write chick lit?"

"That's just how it turned out, okay? I'm not going to throw in a bunch of random dudes just to maintain the gender balance."
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Published on November 28, 2016 16:41 Tags: nanowrimo

NaNoWriMo: I Did It

This is the fourth year I've done National Novel Writing Month, but the first year I actually succeeded. (Unfortunately, I can't personalize the certificate with my computer stuck in safe mode.)

Certificate

What I can do is the things you can't do when you're writing at a blinding pace, like edit chapters in a way that might shorten them, or plan out the parts of the book you're still a little vague on. Not that I'm going to be completely inactive — I also plan to finish Year Four of Altered Seasons by the end of this year, and there's a large "Dead Skunk" post I have to finish as well.

I have two more things to share with you. First, a short story, Brenner's Christmas Tree Farm, the first of the Reenie the Giant Christmas stories. It's very short — just over a thousand words long, as Reenie looks back on a little job she once had.

Second, an announcement from a fellow author. Gina Azzi has revealed the cover of her forthcoming book All the While , Book 3 of the Senior Semester Series, coming January 17.

Consumed with grief for her twin brother Adrian’s death, Maura Rodriguez is spinning out of control. To cope with Adrian’s loss, she numbs her pain with bottles of vodka and sex with random men.
Harboring guilt over his best friend Adrian’s death, Zack Huntington is yearning for a past that no longer exists. Reaching out to the familiarity and comfort an ex-girlfriend offers, Zack aims to recreate what once was but can never be again.
When their worlds collide while running on the trails along Boathouse Row, Maura and Zack find comfort in each other and in the memory of their shared connection—Adrian.
An unlikely friendship brimming with undeniable attraction blossoms into an unexpected romance. While Maura and Zack struggle to heal, to forgive, to accept, they also learn how to let go and allow themselves to fall in love, a truth they’ve both known but resisted all the while.


Cover of All the While
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Published on December 04, 2016 23:04 Tags: nanowrimo