Endgame Viable

Okay so I’m a little bit ahead in writing today, so I thought I would finally sit down and watch the first episode of Walking Dead Season 2 on Netflix. I thought the first season was “okay” but I didn’t see where it deserved all the nerd praise it got. I guess it’s a generational thing. Zombies are “cool” with the kids and whatnot. But since Walking Dead is now in it’s third season and everyone is still raving about it, I thought I should give it another chance. (651 words.)

You may notice some changes in Airworld’s writing style now that NaNoWriMo is starting up. Until now, I have made some small efforts to write grammatically correct sentences, avoid too much repetition within a paragraph, find the right words to describe things, put events in the right sequence, etc. With the start of NaNoWriMo, all of that is going out the window. I will need to roughly double my daily output, so I will have to go into a more stream-of-consciousness sort of a writing mode and discard all filters. I will at least try to keep the story in order, although I can’t guarantee I won’t put in a “flashback” chapter to events in Rorco, if I find myself stuck. And I will try to avoid writing parts that have nothing to do with anything, like a unicorn charging in from nowhere and stabbing people, or a squad of WWII bombers flying overhead, or a hole dropping the characters into an alternate universe. (164 words.)

Consider this contemporary engraving of a woman by Wenceslaus Hollar, from around the mid-1700s: From here, btw. Sadly, I am a complete moron when it comes to clothing. If I look at that picture, I see a woman wearing an old-timey dress thingy, with a hat thingy on her head. But for some reason, that description wouldn’t go over very well in a published work of fiction. So, what the heck are these things called? (219 words.)

Drumroll, please! I have decided to go Rebel for NaNoWriMo this year and continue my current WiP, instead of starting a new one. Possibly as many as 2 people could like this news. I finally decided to drop my previous story idea (which I had sort of dubbed Mixtime - for mixing up people from different times.. get it?). I just couldn’t think of a goal for these disparate characters from different times to work toward once they were together. Every plot idea I wrote down sounded ridiculous, so I would have been writing 50k of pointless nonsense. (128 words.)

I have re-published my first novel Lute of the Sparrow on Amazon and CreateSpace. I disabled it a while back because … well, I don’t actually remember why. Possibly because I thought it might hurt my “career” as an author (such as it is). Perhaps I thought that if I ever did submit that novel to a publisher, they might Google it, find it on Amazon, see that only four people have read it, and drop my manuscript in the trash. However the odds of me submitting that manuscript to a publisher without significant alterations is pretty slim. (169 words.)

NaNoWriMo is flying closer with every second, and I’m terribly unprepared. Last year, I spent months worldbuilding beforehand (and then used almost none of it). This year, I have a story seed that’s been in my head for quite some time, but I’m starting to have second thoughts about it. Mainly because this “seed” is not much of a story. It’s just a collection of ill-defined characters and the barest thread of an excuse for them to come together. It doesn’t feel “ready.” (281 words.)

Is it: She thought it must be stuck, a problem that was not uncommon in her own Orderhouse. Or: She thought it must be stuck, a problem which was not uncommon in her own Orderhouse. Grammar Girl is not helping me. I think it is “that” instead of “which.” UPDATE: Looking at this post on 7/25/2013, I now think it should be “which” instead of “that.” (66 words.)

I’m sure you’ve been wondering what I’m reading. After The Cavern of Black Ice I wanted to read something a little less heavy, so I went back to Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. Previously I wrote such scintillating endorsements as “it’s not growing on me” and “I got bored.” Well, the book *did* eventually grow on me. In the second half, I was glad to be reading it. The author did some very interesting things with the narrative voice. Normally, books tend to have a single voice throughout, but Abercrombie was able to change the narrative voice depending on the POV character. For example, the chapters from The Dogman used very down-home, earthy style, like you might hear from a southerner. Whereas the chapters from Jezel, a cultured city-dweller, used more grammatically-correct language. Only the chapters from Glokta had self-dialog, the italicized talking-to-oneself kind of text. I found those things interesting, at least from a behind-the-scenes perspective. (355 words.)

I just totally cheated and wrote the first paragraph of my NaNoWriMo novel. I couldn’t take the chance that I would forget it before November 1st! First there were sounds. Indistinct, without description. From far away. Then there were shapes, shadows on shadow, fluid. But something familiar about the shapes. Some took on forms that were recognizable. A tree. A house. A home? My home? A face, lips moving, speaking words just out of reach. Mother? Sister? All so strange, so far away. Who am I? What is that feeling? Coldness in the air, clutching his skin, shivering his bones. I am dreaming. I am a he. I have a name, and I am waking. Why should that seem so strange? (150 words.)

Looking at my schedule, which is really a virtual schedule, in that there is nothing to physically look at, I see that October has just begun, and I’m currently a little over 15k into Airworld, and writing at what I estimate to be a slothful rate of 500 words a day. NaNoWriMo begins on November 1 and runs through November 30. Naobi still has to have an adventure in Sarin Morn, some kind of discovery or adventure in Leavon, and, assuming nothing else happens, she still needs to deal with the Council. Which does not even consider events going on back in Motiva. Basically what I’m saying is that there is very little chance I’m going to be done with Airworld by the end of October, unless I miraculously begin writing closer to 2000 words a day. (162 words.)