annietupek.com blog

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving.  I wrote the whole day, except for the three hours or so that I was at Geoff’s house enjoying a non-traditional meal of prime rib, taters, asparagus, and cornbread.  Did I mention that everything but the cornbread was wrapped in fabulous bacon?  Oh, it was a pork fat feast.  All I wanted to do when I got home was take a nap, but I had a ton of NaNo’ing to do.  Discipline is a bitch.

But I wrote almost six thousand words that day and about five thousand today and finished NaNoWriMo two days early.  WOO HOO!  November is exhausting.  50,000 words really burned me out, and the last 28 days have flown by.  I’m looking forward to revising this story, though there’s a lot of crap that needs to be pulled out.  I think I can cut it in half at least and it’ll probably end up as a novella instead of a proper novel.  Tomorrow I’m going to take a day off the writing and work on a query letter or two for another piece.

Really wanted to take the day off writing today.  It was dark, and cold, and even worse, the inspiration just wasn’t there.  But I took off Tuesday, which left me a day behind.  I can’t be two days behind, because then it’s next to impossible to catch up.

I sat on the floor with Dinah, the laptop in front of me, and stared at the screen for an hour while the end of Run, Fatboy, Run played on HBO.  I thought that the movie wouldn’t distract me from the writing, as I’d already seen it, and just had it on for the noise, but it wasn’t the case.  Can I blame Simon Pegg for failing to produce the word count for the day?  Probably not.  It wasn’t a viable excuse.

I buckled down and wrote two thousand uninspired and tedious words about Captain Tavaris and Nav Byrleigh and their exploration team deep in the caves of Borilun.  They’ve already passed through the cavern in which the previous team suffered great losses, and have no idea that something else, sinister and ancient, shares the caves with them.  My NaNo novel, nameless that it is, has definitely turned into a SF horror piece and despite the uninspired start, continues to be fun and entertaining to write.

My NaNo Novel is at about 20,000 words and the genre is now very apparent.  Somehow it turned into a futuristic horror story about space exploration.  Could it be my homicidal tendencies to kill off characters that caused the transition to horror?  Nobody has died yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

It’s been a fun story to write so far, and I think this mid-point revelation is a real turning point in the composition of the storyline.  I know where it’s going, I think I know how it’s going to end.  Now it’s just a matter of getting there.

I got my NaNo t-shirt in the mail yesterday, think I’ll wear it to the store tomorrow and boast about my mad NaNo’ing skills.  The important thing is to not fall behind, so I’m going to keep this entry short and get back to the writing.

I’m right on target for the end of week 1 of NaNo’ing.  It feels good.  I’ve gotten past several ‘Oh, shit, what happens next?’ moments, but I know there are still plenty more ahead.

Captain Tavaris and Nav Byrleigh are finally talking to each other (the two main characters did not start out on each other’s good side).  The entire explore team is about to go spelunking, returning to the same cave where half of the original team died, and the other half suffered major injuries, all in the name of resource collection for Rynori Industries.

We’ll see how they handle the emotional stresses of seeing their own blood on the rocks, as well as the return of the small, venomous, lizard-like creatures that wreaked havoc on them the last time they ventured underground.  Maybe I should kill some of this new explore team?  Only NaNo can tell what’s going to happen next…

For those of you who don’t know; NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, a challenge to writers everywhere to compose a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November.  Interested?  Sign up & donate at nanowrimo.org!

I’m about 5,000 words in, starting off right on target, but that’s because I got almost three thousand words written the first day, Sunday.  As the week wears on, my word count will fall behind, and then I’ll have to spend the weekend playing catch-up.

My as-of-yet untitled NaNovel is starting to feel a little space-operatic.  It’s taking place in the early exploratory stages of a solar system that is not our own.  Byrleigh is a researcher, comfortable in her desk-job aboard a space station, until she is sent to the planet’s surface as part of an exploratory team.  (Still need a name for the space station and the planet.  Any ideas?)  Not sure what’s going to happen next, it’s NaNoWriMo after all, and that’s the joy of working without an outline.  Anything can happen.  I just wish I knew what.