I'm ready for this. This'll be my third year attempting to write 50,000 words in a month. I always put a counter in my sig the last two years, I think I'll do that again this year.
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I'm ready for this. This'll be my third year attempting to write 50,000 words in a month. I always put a counter in my sig the last two years, I think I'll do that again this year.
No problem. :)
I mentioned this elsewhere, but I wanted to bring it up here, too. Anybody else here a fan of Podiobooks.com? I'm seriously considering, after NaNoWriMo is over, trying to submit this year's book as an audio novel. Would anyone listen to such a thing?
If it were any good, I would.
That's one. :)
It really all depends on how happy I am with the book when it's done...
The first is fast approaching!!! What genres are you going for? Whats the general gist of your story?
I'm going for fantasy, although its probably more fantasy/horror. Its about a young woman who had an imaginary friend as a child, that turns out not to be a figment of her imagination after all. Thats an extremely brief synopsis :lol: I'm trying not to think about it too much though as I just want to write and see what happens.
Mine is going to be a sort of fantasy/horror too. I'll give you the "high concept."
What if Dorothy came home from Oz, only to discover that while she was gone, Kansas had been overrun by the undead?
OMFG! I can't wait to read that Blake - thats cool :D
Me neither. :D
The firing gun went off at midnight.
The traditionalist in me wanted to stay up past midnight and start writing then and there, but the teacher in me that has to wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning couldn't afford to stay up that late. I hoped to get a little work done before I went to school this morning. As it turned out, I never made it -- woke up sick to my stomach and called in sick.
I slept until 10 o'clock, then when I woke up I was feeling better. I managed to get some writing done. I'm stopping for tonight at 2905 words. Not bad for a couple of hours.
I almost forgot about this. I wonder if I have time to write my words right now.... or at least write a little something.
I'm going to write some more when I've checked out the board - but heres what I've done so far...
I'd welcome amy comments, its the first time I've written in this way for a loooong time!Quote:
1.
You can call me B. They say theres power in knowing a person's name and they, for once, would be right. Just not in the way they might think.
I am aware that people think I am strange. Especially were they to meet me at a moment like this - scraping a dead rabbit off the road into a bin bag.
A girl at college thought I was using the entrails to divine the future. Thats ridiculous. I wasn't brought up to know things like that.
Bog, however is different. I feed Bog the entrails and he divines the future for me.
2.
I cycle the short distance home, the still warm lump in the bin bag banging against my leg as I pedal. Yes, it is gross. Its not how I'd chose to spend my time given the choice. I'd much rather be down the pub talking shite with my friends. But I have more pressing matters to attend these days. Its imperative I stay one step ahead of the game, knowing the future is a survival tactic.
I'm not being a drama queen, though I'd certainly forgive you for thinking it. It's just the way things are. You'll appreciate this in time.
We live in an old farmhouse, its not exactly the middle of nowhere - its inbetween a small town and a village, each about five miles away in opposite directions. We, being me, my Mum and my brother. My Dad is...well...lets just say he's not here for now. Oh and Bog lives, to some degree, "here" too - I'm coming to that.
My Mum works in town. She runs a small shop that sells "weird things for weird people" as my brother says. What he means is, its what you'd probably call a New Age shop - crystals, essential oils, tarot cards and general bric-a-brac. She's out most days 'til about six o clock, so the fact that I'm bunking off college and getting upto, well, mischief? Is not concerning her right now, being that shes oblivious to it.
My brother is at school. He's fourteen and as generally annoying and nosy as fourteen year old brothers are. He knows something is going on, but I've managed to keep him out of it thus far.
I stick my bike and the bin bag in the shed and walk in through the back door. I'm quite hungry, so I'm going to wash my hands and have a snack before I go anywhere near Bog. Its not his real name. His real name, or at least what he calls himself, is totally unpronounceable by the likes of you or me. As it is his English is quite archaic. I call him Bog because he stinks...like a bog! He's not too bad when he's in his dormant form - a smell thats a background scent easily covered by the incense sticks I burn. They also have the added effect of keeping my brother at bay as he can't stand them. But when Bog assumes his other form, which he must do to perform such tasks as I frequently ask of him, he smells of something wet and rotten and...i don't know, in a film I love theres a "Bog of Eternal Stench" and thats exactly what I think of when I smell this malodorous odor.
When I'm done I collect the rabbit. I don't need to prepare it in any way, Bog is not a fussy eater! I take it upstairs to my room, lock the door - its never a bad idea to take precautions - and waft the rabbit carcass around the underneath of my bed. Bog emerges.
In this form Bog looks like a small puddle of slime. You know that stuff you get in pots as a kid, you stick your fingers in and it makes an amusing fart noise. He looks like that, a greeny-brown blob of slime. He's the size of an avarage cat. He has a mouth and eyes that appear as no more than holes and a slit in the ooze. He's not entirely disgusting though, I don't mean to give you that impression. He's quite...no, I can't stretch to cute, but endearing in his own way.
I dangle the rabbit just above his head, and crude arms reach out of the blob that is Bog, and stuff it uncerimoniously into his gaping mouth...did I really call him endearing? He eats the flesh and fur alike, but spits out the bones onto the bare wooden floorboards. At this precise moment he begins to smoke. At this precise moment I rush to open the windows. He starts to smoke and a sizzling, bubbling noise can be heard. He begins to elongate, curving upwards like a cobra being charmed from its basket. its hard to see entirely what happens because of the smoke (which is also the source of the stench as far as I can tell) but this is the way it happens every time. And when it is done Bog is an entirely more impressive creature.
He looks like a Chinese dragon to me. His head is small and almost cartoon like, with fiercely intelligent eyes, brows fringed with tufts of golden hair. His snout is long in that almost equine way typical to illustrations of Chinese dragons, with flaring nostrils and a beard of that same golden hair, growing from the underside of his jaw. He is still greenish brown in colour, but now scaly rather than slimy. I am not sure whether this is Bog's true form, or just something he's assimilated from my imagination. I think this only because at times when I've been ill or drunk or otherwise distracted, he's shimmered and even shifted shape momentarily.
Bog studies the bones and then he speaks. He communicates to me telepathically. I gathered this two ways. Firstly and obviously, because his mouth does not move when he is talking. And secondly because I've known of instances when my brother has been right outside my door and hasn't heard him.
You may think it strange that I didn't instantly recognise that Bog was speaking to me in this way, but that is presumably because you've never experienced telepathy. If you are adept, or the person transmitting to you is adept, then the voice is as clear as if they were speaking out loud and standing infront of you. When I first encountered Bog, I was also encountering telepathy for the first time. Hence my confusion.
Today I landed on the white, sandy beaches of 4,735 words. Tomorrow's goal is gonna be 6,400.
A brief excerpt:
Quote:
Skip had never realized how sweet the air of Ezzix was until he accepted he was breathing it perhaps for the last time. It wasn’t sweet in a metaphorical sense, either, not in the way that his grandfather often talked about the sweetness in the town before the car factory came to town and started belching smoke into the air. Each breath of Ezzix air carried on it a different sweet fragrance – honeysuckle with one breath, then a hint of peppermint, then a warm cake baking in the oven. He stood by the familiar Wisdom Well, ready to ride down the bucket he was almost too big for, and he wondered once again how he had never noticed the changing aroma before. In a place of so much magic, this small one had somehow escaped him. He took one last breath – pumpkin pie with whipped cream – climbed into the bucket, and began his descent.
wheres storyslinger this sounds like his cup of tea
I was waiting til I finished what I was working on for it
Tougher today, both in writing and finding the time to write, but I ended at 16,684. Tomorrow I'll be shooting for 18,400.
Excerpt? Excerpt. S'alright? S'alright.
On the other side of the painting was an all-too familiar mountain, and spilling out of a cavern at its base, an army of Draugr. A general-type figure with a long, heavy beard that made Skip think of Glammir stood at the forefront of the army, a heavy two-handed broadsword held aloft in just one hand, pointed forward as if leading the charge. Behind him were thousands and thousands of Draugr, those noiseless soldiers that could almost pass for human if not for their mottled gray skin and dead eyes. They each had a weapon too – a few swords, but most of them wielded heavy axes, double-bladed, ready to chop an enemy whether they were swinging the axe forward or bringing it back again. Each of the Draugr warriors in the painting, Glammir included, had a shining pair of long-bladed steel scissors dangling from its belt.
Took me a long time to get started, but I finished at 20,374 tonight. I keep coming up with great story beats -- I've just got to make sure they all wind up fitting together.
Excerpt du jour:
Inside the chest, shambling up the slope of the tunnel, was a small creature that could pass for a common white mouse from Earth, were it not for the red sash around its side, the helmet it worse, and the opposable thumbs on all four paws. Its tail, three times longer than its body, was wrapped around a piece of parchment, which it held out towards Scott.
“Thanks,” Scott said, petting the Messenger Mouse on the head. It was customary to tip the carriers from the Royal House of Ezzix with a small portion of food, but he didn’t have anything in his room but a roll of increasingly fuzzy Lifesavers in his pocket. He popped a grape flavored candy from the roll and held it out to the Mouse, who took it gratefully.
I'm ending the day at 46,109 words, less than 4,000 shy of the 50k finish line. I feel good. Nothing short of having my hands chewed off by zombies will stop me from hitting the big 5-0-comma-0-0-0 on time. At the same time, though, it's very clear that this story will not be over in just 4,000 more words. I'm not entirely sure how long the book will be once I'm done -- probably between 60 and 70k, maybe a bit more. But however long it is, however long it takes me, I'll be sure to let you guys know when I get there.
Want an excerpt from today's work? Of course you do.
Skip was still making the same mistakes he made in practice, though – aiming at his opponent’s body rather than his blade. He wasn’t going to disarm them that way. Knick quickly wrested Petrus’s foil from his hands and raced past him into the sunlight. The referee blew his horn to signal another player eliminated from the game, but Knick wasn’t paying attention at this point. He dove into Skip’s fight, taking one of the two Gold Team players off his young charge. His plan was actually to dispatch his own opponent quickly and then help Skip take care of the last man standing, but no one was more astonished than he was when Skip easily flipped away the blade of a single opponent. By the time the trumpet blared, he had already covered half the distance to the gateway. The Gold Team member and Knick both looked back at the gate, both realizing instantly what was about to happen.
I won't tackle Nanowrimo till next year. I'm working on an entry for the Flannery O'Connor Award for Fiction--a collection of novellas in the Southern Gothic vein.
I'm on about 3000 words - totally lost my discipline. But on the other hand I really like my story, I'm getting new ideas for it all the time, so I will continue.
Good on ya! Keep it going! :)
On the NaNoWriMo site it says 175 page (50,000 word) but that math doesn't add up. Part one of my novel is 65 pages and is 36,618 words. It confuses me.
Might be a spacing issue. Check the guidelines, dude.
Tonight, I staggered wearily across the NaNoWriMo finish line of 50,000 words. In fact, I overshot it a bit -- my ending count tonight was 50,720 words. I made it again, that's three years in a row. But I'm not done yet. I've still got a good bit of story to go -- maybe about 10,000 words, maybe more. And in the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, "I'm not gonna stop 'till I get to the top." I'll keep you all appraised.