WIP

Just remembered that the Nov 25 deadline has passed and it was time to upload my entire NANO novel on the NANOWRIMO site to get my Winning count.

I get to brag...



54,600 words - at least according to my computer. I'm not sure how but the NANO official counter added a couple hundred extra words to my total. Er, which I'll take. :)

Rah!

Fwiw - I still like last year's banner the best. This year's banner seemed a little blah compared to the past two years. Just saying. <- And that might just be my dazed and confused swaying inflato head talking.

*waves*

I'm still in nanoville over here.

15,000 words written. Which means I'm 30% into the game. Plenty more time to get the remaining 70%.

70% <<- Urk. So intimidating. Especially considering that last week I was at 90% to go. Unless I'm opening my Word doc and actually checking out the three chapters completed, it doesn't really look like I've done much. :)

Writing inspirations:

While reading the news this morning, I came across the one story about the guy in Colorado who woke early in the morning (Saturday or Sunday) to the sound of his dog barking. He went outside and found a dead body on his front yard. The body was that of somebody who had lived nearby.

That is a mystery waiting to be written. There is always a mundane explanation - the guy 's corpse got dropped off at the wrong house. The killer just randomly threw the body out of his truck/car/bike* and amscrayed.

*Yes, I'm mostly kidding about the bike, but you never know.

Where the imagination comes in is trying to figure out an out of the ordinary explanation for the body. Like maybe it was deliberately planted on that guy's property. You never know. I have neighbors who keep getting pranked by people who don't like them. They get dead deer or parts of a deer dropped off on their yard every once in a while. As the corpses appear to be several days if not months old, the neighbors assume they're getting planted.

Other story recently in the news which is a bit darker and... well, thought provoking is the one down in Ohio. That would be with the guy who had been living with 11 (if not more) dead bodies all over his house and property.

What an author can take from this story is the character details - learning how to create a perfect villain without falling into the cartoony "he did this evil thing because he is evil and likes to do evil things for the heck of it".

Looking at vids of the guy in court, I felt almost a bit sorry for him. I know that sounds BAD and I'm by no means excusing anything he did. It's revolting, horrific, terrible... monstrous. But that guy is clearly mentally ill. You can tell by the look on his face in the videos and pictures. I know people like that. They generally live in an alternate reality, and get all obsessive about imagined wrongs or perceptions.

One guy I know snapped suddenly in his mid-twenties. Suddenly he started talking about a relationship he had with a neighborhood girl who had died ten years before. A completely fictitous relationship that we knew couldn't possibly have happened. But he was convinced it had. He was convinced the girl was haunting him and he hated her passionately. And he was convinced regular girls he saw at the stores or elsewhere looked like her or were her. There was another neighbor, a boy this time, who this guy had a similar reaction to. According to the crazy guy's alternate reality, they were friends who played basketball together, but this guy betrayed him horribly, so the crazy guy hated him passionately and kept trying to get out and throw rocks and dirt at his house. That crazy guy had the same look in his eyes as that guy down in Ohio. As he got worse in his head, the more violent and obsessive he got about those people he hated. There is no telling what the crazy guy I know would have done if his family were not involved and keeping him under control.

The thing that bothers me the most about the case down in Ohio is the feeling like this sort of thing has happened before throughout history. If you read up on Jack the Ripper, it was basically the same deal. The unwanteds in society were preyed on and murdered. If anyone got away from the guy, they were afraid to go to the police because they had their own problems with the law. The local police were slow-moving or nonresponsive, because they had no real interest in that portion of society - because they were the common rabble and petty criminals.

It's just really sad and sickening how the worth of some humans can be less than others. Even now, the public reaction is mesmerized, but there isn't the same level of instant HORROR and OUTRAGE that happens when a single person of higher ranking in society is murdered.

Anyway - If you are a writer and trying to build a believable villain, consider cases like the guy down in Ohio and build the layers.

I'm going to be posting less this month thanks to NANO work. I will still try to post regular stuff as it occurs to me and I'll still be checking in on people during the day, but expect that production may be hampered as I'm distracted.

I may post random weekend progress notes on the NANO blogsite. Those will be on Sundays, just before the start of the work week.

*nudges blogsite thoughtfully, it doesn't wiggle back like jello which seems to be good, I think*

... but when people misspell things (consistently) and/or misuse words, it gets under my skin.

And I'm not exactly a fussy (1) type person who snickets about little weird things that other people scarcely notice or care about.

Yep. I'm guilty of typing whole passages (stories or comment) really fast, misspelling a few words and leaving other important words out. Or I phrase things wrong or backwards (because my brain works weird sometimes). But I try to correct as fast as I can, because little errors rattle my cage.

The funny (or sad) note about the story I published recently is I was terrified about what I was going to see when I clicked on the magazine and read my story as published. This has happened to me before, because not all online magazines edit the things they publish. They probably should, but sometimes minor typos sneak through. It's like with your local newspaper too, sometimes typos slip past all the editing staffs' eagle eyes. With online magazines slipped-past typos are all the more prevalent, because the mags have a smaller staff.

When I clicked on my story, you can bet I immediately spotted two errors that still bug me. I pointed them out to my sister (my writing and reading buddy for forever) and she laughed at me. Even though she is exactly the same way! Hfff.

Do other people feel the same way? Or are they ambivalent to their errors until somebody else spots them? Or do they just not care?

While browsing the forums on NANO (they are alive and stirring in anticipation of the month ahead), I noticed various posts with various blatant typos. These are the type of typos that are excusable if a child under ten makes them (my niece has the most endearing typos ever), but they get a little embarrassing the older you get.

I don't really like people who are correct all the time and put on airs. Everybody needs to remember that where they might have strengths, they still have weaknesses elsewhere. That isn't the point.

I'm just saying that if you practice good grammar in speech and good spelling/grammar in writing, it gets to the point where you instinctively spell and write things the right way the first time without relying on your spellcheck and critters for editing. And of course, you don't have to worrying about paying $ for editing services just to make your novel readable for critters.

I'm saying you should practice good spelling and grammar all the time, not just when you are officially writing. Good habits save time.

The other thing that bugged me is the misuse of words - and this quibble was triggered when I spotted somebody saying they were 'humbled' to receive an award. PEOPLE PLEASE STOP SAYING YOU ARE HUMBLED WHEN YOU MEAN HONORED OR PROUD. THANK YOU.(2) The proper use of 'humbled' would be in those cases when you realize how far you have to go to measure up to the greatness of others. I am humbled every time I read a great book and realize how much I need to improve my writing.


Random notes that may or may not have something to do with writing:



*Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote a sequel to the Phantom of the Opera (POTO). I'm not 100% sure of the title, but technically is "The Phantom of Coney Island". In the story, Eric has given up on Le Parisian life and moved to New York (or New Jersey) where he became the founder of the Jersey Boys. No, I'm kidding. He becomes the owner or something at a Coney Island (which apparently is some kind of park?!) . The story is all about him wishing he could hook up with Christine again. Something we know isn't going to happen, because we all saw the tombstone in the movie where she was the wife of Raul and mother of his offspring. I haven't the faintest idea WHY you'd want to see this. Even if the music is good (my sister has been listening to snippets on Youtube time and again, and vouches for the goodness). Phantom of Coney Island? That just brings up mental images of coney dogs and striped uniforms. Also, greasy coney island diners. Never!

*NANO is officially next week. Saturday. Midnight. Thanks to DST, it means I can stay up an hour later without worrying about being a zombie the next morning. YAY. I'm planning on getting my first 1000 words done. Tempted to cheat and begin at 11PM, claiming that in my house the clocks are switched before bedtime, not at 2AM. I'll behave though.

*We are having a real fall after all! Went for walk with doglet and friend, and it was warm and golden outside. I'm pleased. We have odd birds lingering in the area - possibly stopping in for the nice weather before they continue their travels south. Heard a bird call that made my heart twist up. It sounded like a hurt puppy. I almost thought it was a hurt puppy and would have gone trompsing rudely into somebody's backyard to check. It moved very quickly and silently almost a city block distance while still making that weird call. Very likely an owl or night hawk. This means I'll be sitting on bird id trying to find the exact same call.

*While looking up owls on "What Bird", discovered that a group of owls is called a "bazaar", "glaring", "parliament", "stooping", and "wisdom" of owls. Why do those terms crack me up? Particularly the "glaring". Can you imagine announcing to the world, "World, I just saw a glaring of owls." Haha.

(1) Said fussy, simply because I hate using the word 'anal', even if that other word would probably fit better.

(2) Yes, I screamed that, and it was necessary.

I'm definitely planning to take a break from the daily grind, and I guess I see NANO as an opportunity to practice your writing and hone your plotting and plodding skills.

By the end of the month, I usually think about that part from Blue Castle (LM Montgomery) when the guy went on a trip for the first time in his marriage to the main character (I haven't read the book in ages, so I'm drawing a blank on the names atm). When he came back and saw the houselights burning and the chimney smoking, and his wife waiting for him, he felt a surge of emotion from the revelation that he was HOME and she (Valancy! I remembered ONE of the character's names, too lazy to hunt through my book stacks for the one little paperback. His name started with a T, I think) was a huge part of that. I don't know if he discovered that he loved her yet (it was a marriage of pity on his side, she thought she was going to die and proposed to the guy she loved, making sure he knew that she wasn't going to live longer than a few months anyway and it would be one last lark before she dropped dead from an aneurysm). He didn't mentally acknowledge his love for her until much later when she almost got hit by a train.

BUT I DIGRESS!

My point here is that taking a month off to suffer through the angsts of working on an all new strange and often problematically annoying plot gives me enough time away to fully appreciate how clear and fully set up the old WIPS (that have already been through multiple drafts and revisions) are.

In more basic terms - it's like slipping on my old comfy shoes after wearing brand new heels all day at work.

THE CONFLICT

All summer, I knew exactly what I was going to write for NANO. It's a super secret idea that I came up with last year when joking around with friends. I still want to do it, but now I'm wondering if I should broaden the plot a little bit. Give myself room to emote over some of the stuff that I'm going through in real life. Or I can do the OTHER thing instead.

The other thing is a contemporary coming of age story, as seen through the eyes of a pained older sister, who sees her life getting turned into a Jane Austin novel, but without the heroes swooping in to fix things. Something like - "In real life, Elizabeth would have had to do a bit more to help save her sister besides sitting next to the mail box waiting for letters from her aunt."

The conflict comes in at the point that I'm REALLY having a hard time trying to take my 'Jane Austin Novel, for Realz' idea and turning it into an urban fantasy. Unless I go the newfangled version of Sense and Sensibility route and turn an important character into a sea monster (I still feel sorry for poor Col Brandon).

Going with the new idea alone - I basically wasted all of the secretive NANO research and brainstorming I did earlier in the year. And I still want to work on that super secret project dang it!

The main reason why I want to work on the other novel right now is because my emotions on the matter are still close to the surface and would aid in the writing. It would be good therapy too - especially since as an author, I am in full control of the outcome of the situation.

Is a puzzlement...

*sighs thinking about happier days and launches into a random confession*

As kids, we loved playing out movies we watched - which fortunately were just musicals like the King and I and Sound of Music. My oldest sister would always play the King, because she had Yul Brenner's facial expressions down pat. She solved the baldness problem by wrapping a towel around her head and hiding away her long thick hair.

My baby sister and brother played *all* of the Siamese children. And they did a fairly good job. Was hilarious.



Back to NANO this is going to be my third year. Two wins so far.

Writing 50,000 words = easy.

Writing 50,000 words that make sense = er???