The Story So Far

We're half way through Week One (I know, right?! Where'd it all go?!?) & I'm a bit behind. I'm also not tremendously worried about being behind. NaNo is, after all, a marathon, not a sprint. But just what the heck is my problem? Well, it's like this, I quite stupidly started with no characters & no plot. Which is pretty thin, even for a total pantser like me. What i did have was a picture in my head, so I started with that, just describing what I saw & branching out from there. And, at least to my mind, it's some pretty interesting stuff. I've got my main character intro'ed, along with a couple of secondaries &, though he hasn't made a physical appearance just yet I've referenced heavily on another char.

Part of my problem, besides having to pull every little thing from the ether, is new worlds. Every job or title or gadget has to be named & described because I just made it up. And then once it's in the book & still fresh in my mind, it has to go in my Notes file so 15 or 20 pages down the road I remember what everything did/was called/etc. It's interesting making stuff up from scratch, but it takes a minute.

I'm also considering doing a few illustrations to go with; my main, her with her brother, at least one of the ships, a few of the locations & gadgets. We'll have to see what my imagination & skills can come up with.

TIll then, True Believers...

Night One

Ok, made it to 1291. I'll finish to at least 1667 after a proper, non sugar based snack & some nap time. My brain's toast.

G'night world.

Words

In *glances at the clock* 45 minutes I'm going to start my new book. I say 'new' because I write one, or at least part of one, every year & have since '03. I, and at last count a couple hundred thousand other people, subject ourselves to this peculiar insanity ever November by trying to write a whole novel before the month is out.

The official target is 50,000 words. And if you think that sounds crazy or impossible, know that you're not alone. Every year people from supporters to bloggers to even the participants themselves think NaNoWrriMo (The National Novel Writing Month, nanowrimo.org) is insurmountable. It certainly sounded that way to me when, all those years ago, my friend IMed me, frantic, a 9:30 Halloween night going "OMG! I just agreed to do this thing & you have to do it with me!!" I'd never heard of NaNo (which was in its third or forth year, I think, by that point) & had never written, even collectively, 50k words. I didn't think I'd ever be able to finish, and as it happened, I was right...that year. My first NaNo novel was about 13k & change. Nowhere near the mark, but more than I'd ever written on anything in my life & I was amazed I'd managed it. Since then I've had varying degrees of success each go 'round (I skipped '07 entirely, I just blanked so hard!). Thus far I have two wins to my name, but even on years I didn't I always meet someone new, I always learn something I hadn't known before & I always get, at least part of, a whole new book. And so long as those three things keep happening, I'll keep coming back every year, win or lose.

So why am I telling you all of this? Well, for one, I have *glances again at the clock* another half an our before Kickoff in my timezone & I've got a bit of nervous energy to burn. For another, I just like words. I think they're important. Linguistics, the very study of language, is a branch of philosophy. Words aren't just random sounds & shapes that happen together, they're the iconography of thought. We, as a species, are communicative. Storytelling's in our blood.

Language, it seems, has been getting the bum's rush of late. Soundbites, TXTspeak & life in under 140 characters is becoming the way of things. It doesn't have to be like that. Words have power, they're living, evolving things. Don't believe me? Every year a group of words is deemed archaic enough to be pulled from the dictionary, while new ones, and indeed new meanings to old ones, replace them. When was the last time someone said something that totally made your day? When was the last time a word hurt? They say sticks & stones may break bones, but words will never hurt you, I think they have that backwards. Physicality comes & goes, but the marks from words can last forever.

So, in honor of NaNoWriMo, choose your words with a little more care, write something longer than a tweet, fatten up your vocabulary. You can do it. You may not know it, but you're a born storyteller.

Another Year, Another Book

Is it just me, or did Kickoff Night come up out of nowhere this year?? Yes, logically I knew it was always there on the horizon. I tend to start mulling my next novel over just after my birthday in August every year, but for some reason this year's just went from a hazy shape in the distance to standing there staring me in the face in, seemingly, nothing flat.

So from my timezone Kickoff's just under three hours away. I have only the vaguest inkling of what my book's about this year, but that's not at all unusual for me. This year it's less about the words in my head than it is a picture that's been parked in my mind's eye for a couple of weeks now. I have this image of a girl looking out from the front of a boat & as the scene pulls back you see it's a flying ship & back further still that it's part of a fleet of flying ships cruising over a steampunkish cityscape. So, I'm going to start with the girl. She's clearest, then hopefully working on her a bit will help me find who this flying navy is & where they're going. Wish me luck. Till then, I have a couple hours left (and am feeling surprisingly calm considering I have a basically blank slate, lol) & there's a few things I have left to do before I start.

See ya after ;)