A 2004 NaNoWriMo Journal

Chapter 44: The End

2004-11-25T16:14:00.000-06:00

Awful and sneaky of me, mumbling to myself, chapter by chapter, then stopping, and now THIS!?!?!

Blogging just couldn't compete with Real Life and writing 50,000 words. Well (shuffles feet) it _could_ if I didn't keep taking those days off without writing a word. But it was what it was and now it's the 25th and 50,507 words later, for better or worse, "Archival Quality" is done for the moment.

At some point early next year I'll come back to it, and start the editing process to plump, trim, shape, revise and otherwise turn it into something if not salable, at least readable. Then it will form the first chunk of a set of volumes about my Thippah universe.

TTFN!

DaShlom

Chapter Twenty: Job Offer

2004-11-12T13:12:00.000-06:00

More characters are now in play, but right now they're not much more than physical descriptions and dialog partners. I think a few of those are keepers, and I'll see about working them in, in the meantime...

Chapter Twenty Two: It's Feeding Time!

2004-11-12T00:44:00.000-06:00

Ah, what the erotica hunters have been looking for. So fun, so frolicking, so 100% solid sex sex sex. Don't try this at home, folks, AIDS is a bad, bad thing.

Chapter Nineteen: Entering The Unreal World

2004-11-11T23:34:00.000-06:00

I've been safely ensconsing my characters in very controlled environments. Ship cabins are easy. Now they're moving out into more 'interesting' places. RW is still being directed, but not controlled per se.

Chapter Eighteen: Enter The Thippah'n

2004-11-08T22:19:00.000-06:00

Okay, the cat's out of the bag, and RW is getting his eyelids pasted open. The dialog, the camisoles... the 20,000 word mark! (Okay, so why should my characters have all the fun?) Things should start moving more quickly next chapter. More characters, more action, maybe a few little things like, I dunno, saving their asses from exposure?

We'll see. RW needs a new name, and it would be cool for Misty to show up at some point. He'll need to be placed in a herd at some point too, and that should be an interesting experience as a human who's in the know. I wonder who crews the ship, and how they handle feeding on board? It must either be a big ship, or have one hell of a harem deck .

This doesn't sound like it's making sense to an outsider. The heck with them all...

Chapter Seventeen: Starbucks admissions

2004-11-08T21:57:00.000-06:00

Finally, a change of scenery. A breezy white cabin on a new ship. Sunlight replacing the dour Russian coastline. Summer's color-coordinated her outfit as well. More breakfast, more exposition, RW's acting weird and he doesn't even realize it... I love it, but will the readers?

I'll let you know once it's done and edited.

I was talking with some folks at the Starbucks inside the Barnes & Noble and the subject of NaNoWriMo came up. When they asked the genre I answered erotic SF -- stunned silence on their end. I mean, this _is_ Texas. I didn't mean to shock them, but I was feeling so honest, so comfortable in my creativity, that I didn't think to censor myself.

NaNoWriMo has been most liberating so far...

Chapter Sixteen: Death by Sex

2004-11-08T21:45:00.000-06:00

Romping, glorious sex! Think about this honestly for a moment. If you had to die, wouldn't sex be your preferred method? A short chapter, and RW makes a glorious exit. Sort of.

Chapter Fifteen: It's About Choices, Stupid

2004-11-08T21:32:00.000-06:00

I gotta hand it to my characters: they are doing a much better job of writing this than I ever could. I'm still worried about flatness in the dialog, but if I stop to edit now I'll never finish this sucker by the end of November. Closing in on 20,000 words -- will make it tonight!

RW gets to make a choice in the story, for a change. Not a reactive one, but deciding whether he'd rather be killed or have someone killed to free him from his pursuers. Fits in very nicely with one of the Jewish ethical standards of not letting someone be killed instead of you. I wonder what he's decided?

Chapter Fourteen: Truth: Can I Handle It?

2004-11-08T21:03:00.000-06:00

I hate exposition qua exposition, so my characters tend to eat a lot. I mean, if you're sitting in a cabin on a ship at sea, and the two of you have stuff to say, tools need to be used. Breakfast is working well for me so far.

RW has had a few slips of memory, and I'm trying to get some foreshadowing in for the lapses, but it's difficult given that the narrator POV intrudes every now and then. Maybe I'll get rid of that in the edit stage.

In the meantime she's let slip the secret of her people, and about Misty's leaving him, and the hook is that, despite leaving him, she fought for him not to be killed outright. How sweet.

Chapter Thirteen: The Hook is in

2004-11-08T21:00:00.000-06:00

Wow, is RW screwed. Well, yes, he was, but now he's really up the creek. It's very odd to have the characters directing the plot. I mean, if they were any stronger, RW and Summer would be doing the typing. We are! No, you're not. Look DEEP into my eyes.

Okay, okay, maybe I am channeling imaginary characters. But they're doing a good job, so I'll just get the hell out of the way.

Writing some of the erotic scenes are difficult for me; I don't want this to turn into a boy's only thrill ride. I'll check some of it out with a writing group and see what they say.

Chapter 12: Oration

2004-11-07T15:17:00.000-06:00

A lot of exposition here. All this is an odd counterpoint to the older kids, who are back from their weekend camp and crashed around the house. Spouse is down for the depression count, with good reason. And I'm feeling trivial and silly that I'm writing this erotic SF novel when there's a perfectly good world out there waiting to be noticed. (Note to self: brick up the windows and door, they're getting to be too much of a distraction.)

For some reason dialog comes easy to me. What's hard is all the times I've had to go back and rewrite history to make the plot twists work, be foreshadowed, or to erase a telling line that pokes a bit of a hole in the story line. I'm learning a lot about the craft from this little effort, and I'm a bit bummed I didn't use this as an opportunity to write a non-fiction novel from some family stories. Well, there's always December for that. Shit, I have to do it in December; I'm presenting it in early January! Nuts! Well, good thing there's a Winter Break.

Chapter 11: Finally!!!

2004-11-07T01:58:00.000-06:00

Yeesh. Never thought I'd get to a nice erotic scene. Poor RW. He's played like a fine fiddle and loves every second of it. Cliffhanger here: Summer knows about Misty.

Whoa.

At least we can drop the charade, and rw can stop playing the role of the smug narrator.

Shit, I forgot to kill anyone lately. Nuts, I'll have to make up for that later on in the novel.

Oh, late breaking news! I have a working title!!!

Chapter 10: Tanning Beds and Blushing Redheads

2004-11-07T01:56:00.000-06:00

Wow, I never thought a trip to a tanning bed could be so hot. Summer's got RW wrapped around her finger, and it's clear that she doesn't want to keep him long at bay.

It's funny to feel excited as I write this: the characters are writing this, not me!

Chapter 9: The Joys of a Summer Lake

2004-11-06T22:12:00.000-06:00

Okay, the vixen's on board and making her moves, and poor RW is becoming just another bundle of hormonally firing nerves. Just the way I like 'em. I need to find an Australian woman, strap her down, and make her comment on dialog. Or just strap her down, if she's willing. Oh, the heck with the straps.

Gotta stop that. I get to writing erotica and all bets are off, even in the blog.

Tied in with all this was the death of one of my spouse's relatives. Okay, he was old. Okay, he was sick. Okay, it wasn't fun for his spouse of 30 years. But each death is a reminder of just how diminished we survivors are, and how much more we turn to depend on the generations that we've produced.

Boy am I screwed. (Just kidding, kids!)

Yesterday I got a whole lot of nothing done. Work, then family, then a good night's sleep. Didn't feel guilty, maybe because of the marathon session Thursday. But the pressure is on now, even though I'm safely over 12,000 words (12,118, to be exact) after finishing this chapter. And I want to get at least one juicy, revealing chapter done tonight just so I can get my handy dandy NaNoWriMo spreadsheet to show me finishing around the 16th. For giggles if nothing else; this novel can in now way be finished in 50,000 words. Maybe 150,000.

Chapter Eight: Dangerous Redheads

2004-11-04T20:29:00.000-06:00

My sinister plot to mess with RW's head unfolds, while occasionally chatting with fellow writers all plotting various endings for characters not yet fully developed. Except Fuscia and her short-necked giraffe. Worrisome, this crowd is.

Ah, writers!

Chapter Seven: A Clunch of NaNoWriMics

2004-11-04T19:40:00.000-06:00

Haven't figured out how to write in a group, and, if this evening's meeting at Flightpath is any indication of the mechanisms in place, writing and groups don't mesh. Talkers talk to anyone not plugged into music, and it seems like half the folks writing are scribing rather than typing. Wow, 50,000 words by hand. Sounds frightening to me, a guy who regularly scrolls to the top of a story to tear up the ending and change names and locations.

Anyway, world, meet Summer Lake, or at least the seeming of her. Here to torture then seduce RW, tearing the wrapping of Mr. Tariq from around his hairy little bod.

Chapter six (#2): Getting into the details

2004-11-04T18:56:00.000-06:00

I was hoping to avoid the mess of plots and progress. Now I’ve got to start developing these pesky characters. Or at least introduce a couple more, now that I’ve gone and killed off two of the four named ones so far. Need a larger cast of characters. Well, Ludlum didn’t, and he made money, right? Well, RW at least cleaned up for his new bunkmate. An Australian woman joining a freighter cruise at a small port city in Russia’s eastern coast? Sounds fishy to me. But I’ve always been suspicious of Australians. (Just kidding.)

I’m keeping the nerd content up in the story: no reason not to treat the reader like an intelligent human who can understand a little compuspeak. I just gotta make sure its not just the male pocket-protector varieties that end up reading this… Unless they like paying list price.

Chapter 6: Wrist Envy

2004-11-03T23:39:00.000-06:00

Got a terrific pain in the wrist this PM. Looking at all the young, sturdy, unscarred wrists here at the local Starbucks, freely writing hard with pencils and pens. Must. Get. Better. Body. Yeesh, looks like I’m channeling Star. Trek. Now.

Hey, assimilation sucks. But speaking of channels, it’s time to get RW back in tune with his real pursuers, and not these trivial little Interpol folks. Well, maybe first one, then the other. Nah, subterfuge is better.

Today was national procrastination day somewhere, apparently. Only up to 7,777 words, and SO & I escaped post-election (and NaNoWriMo) by going to see Ray. Jeez, what is it with wrists today!

Wasted a lot of the evening plotting the route of the freighter, even though poor fuzzy bunny won't ever get to stop #3, let alone the whole way across. It was a good exercise, though. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to count the number of days on the long leg across the Pacific. Did you know it's 8.08 days from San Fransisco to Anadyr at 20 knots? Good to know, I guess.

Chapter 5: Split Slogging

2004-11-03T23:37:00.000-06:00

Ran out of steam as the election news drilled on. Maybe it was just a lot of words in one day, but I’ve been pretty grumpy all morning. It’s a job It’s a job It’s a job It’s a job It’s a job It’s a job It’s a job It’s a job It’s a job It’s a job. Rinse, repeat.

Poor Ernst. He never had a chance, but hey, that’s what the folks in red shirts, and beautiful alien women are for: plot fodder.

Chapter 4: Grimly He Typed, State By State...

2004-11-02T21:13:00.000-06:00

Writing despite news that, while fitting my election prediction profiles, still doesn't bode for that landslide I was delusionally hoping for. Politicos have redistricted the concept of landslide our of our lexicon, and it's now a numbers (money and demographics) game.

At least RW made it out of the port alive. Now he's got to weather getting the ship out of port. It'll be easy, sort of. After a bit. He's nervous.

Chapter 3: Election Noise be Damned

2004-11-02T19:14:00.000-06:00

Foof. 10% down and my guy is still on a boat. Either I need a bad case of editing, or folks may fall asleep before Interpol analogs make their entrance. Or both. Or maybe it's a cool story, but I'm just looking for that poetic hook after 200 words. Silly me.

Now there's Russia, and Mona (whoever she is). I need to get that black book on paper, and figure out how RW manages to get past the port authorities if they are looking for him. And he's still lonely...

Meantime, here's what seas look like when they get the ship rolling:

The freighters I'm writing about are huge. None are up there in supertanker land, but they're a far cry from the tiny little freighters in all the old WW II movies.

The containers are not only stored in the well of the ship's hull, but also stacked up several stories (!!!) up aboveboard. That wing sticking out in front of the blue structure (you're looking at the ship from the stern looking forward) is the bridge. They built it that high so it could see over the stacks of 40' containers.

RW is living in a little cabin, must like the cabin shown at the left. I can tell you that for a geek it doesn't make much of a difference, but living with Ernst, even if he's mostly an absentee roomie, makes for cozy quarters.

Good thing his roomie is a quiet, harmless old guy...

Chapter 2: Vroom vroom

2004-11-02T13:42:00.000-06:00

4,314 and growing. Waking bright and early never appealed to me when I was younger. Now that sleep's less of a deal (and coffee works just dandy, thank you very much), creativity seems to flow well at this hour. At least so long as I can keep stringing the first part of my story along without too many characters plot tangles.

I'm fighting my poetic urges to write sparingly yet flaringly (sorry!). More description, more thinking, more fabric to the story without descending into infodump. I had my first experience trying to put in some Thippah'n language, and ended up just bracketing the sentence in English and figuring I'll come back to it later. It should work out to a similar word count.

I seem to have also decided to do a single chapter in a day, or at a sitting (I hope to write more before hitting the election news tonight). 2-3 thousand words a day seems to be about the right size for a chapter, at least until I start getting into the historical vignettes and other stuff.

Need to get more erotic juice into the thing; no Thippah on scene in Chapter Two. Definitely in Chapter Three, but I don't know whether Ch-hs ‘pat-h. (Sorry, slipping into Language again.)

I'm still wondering about my character's POV and tone. I'm okay with the flippant stuff, but I'm just not sure about the superior past tense. I guess it'll work itself out in the end.

Chapter 1: The Slog Begins

2004-11-01T20:08:00.000-06:00

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) will be my doing -- as in, not my undoing -- for writing. I can do this. I know I can do this. The voices in my head say I can do this. I can do this.

Okay, enough of the cheering section.

First day on the NaNoWriMo job. Managed to pump out 1,908 words, I think (left the file @ work today). Lunch 1/2-hours are great for this stuff.

I've been sitting on a set of vignettes this past fourteen months, all in the same universe. There are stories, the arc of a story line, specific incidents in history that time into the stories. There's a Babylon 5, a Star Trek and a Dawson's Creek all in there. Of course, it's rated somewhere between R and NC-17, but hey, if jeans buttons can hit the pubic bone, why can't great novels swim in the adult lanes of the pool. (Because they're harder to sell and the Cryst-ians go and burn 'em, that's why. But hopefully they buy before they burn, so what the hey!)

I spent maybe an hour on those first words. Weird, how characters appear, pull a milieu around them, and then go off and have a life. Octogenarian Merchant Marine retirees spending their last years sailing as passengers on freighters. Middle aged computer geeks with younger girlfriends that, ah, 'put' them in a coma then set the house on fire. Feds, fiends, Interpol imposters and helicopter raids on ships at sea can't be far behind.... Ain't it nice to be god?