crowdog66

So today I'm busily plotting away on my NaNo project while I'm laying flats on HB, when suddenly my novel sucker-punches me in the gut.

The Great Novel-Writing Machine in my head, which is pretty much self-sustaining once it gets going, added a detail to the planned climax to the novel that makes sense from every point of view I've applied to it so far.

Unfortunately, it involves an issue that REALLY pushes all my buttons. And I can't see any way to write "around" it so that it comes out as a happy ending.

( Details behind the cut... seriously, it's disturbing. )

The thought makes me sick, but that might just be my immediate reaction (my period started today and I'm a bit "off" emotionally). I'm going to sit with it for at least a day and see if I can live with it then.

At the Write-In tonight I cracked 20k (20,267 to be precise).

Afterwards, when the writers sat down to a general chat, it was agreed that I was doing the best in terms of word count of those present. As a reward I got a rare sticker, apparently from last year, which is quite large and says in blue letters:

Hello
my novel is

[blank space]

I intend to fill it in to read:

Hello
my novel is

MA BITCH!!!

That way when my brain goes BREAK!!! at around the 27k mark I can change it to read:

Hello
my novel is

A BITCH!!!

and then when I rally and finish the damned thing by the 30th, I can alter it again to read:

Hello
my novel is

BITCHIN

I also got a cool writing rock, another sticker that says "Be nice to me or I'll put you in my novel", and a little yellow button that says: "I WRITE BOOKS".

The stickers are SO going on my laptop and the button is already on the lapel of my winter coat.

An excerpt:

Robles was a tall man who favored a brown trenchcoat over a dark suit and always looked vaguely rumpled; Tatiana’s mother had once called him “Columbo” in jest and Tatiana had needed to resort to an Internet search to get the joke. He had seen things in his time as DPNI liaison that would send most non-Manifesters screaming into the night as fast as they could run, but the most extreme reaction that Tatiana had ever seen out of him was the desire to smoke a cigarette afterwards.

“The story we’re giving the Sheriff is that this guy is a drug smuggler who got on the wrong side of his former colleagues.” Robles glanced around the almost leafless forest. “Told them there’s no car or other physical evidence they can sell at auction, so that’ll stop them asking too many questions.”

“So we’re DEA now?” Tatiana shook her head. She’d taken Narcotics Investigation as one of her courses at the Illinois State Police Academy; she supposed that she could pull off a DEA agent if she had to. Anderson, however...

“Yep.” Robles looked Anderson up and down. “No chip, eh?”

“No. It is against my faith.”

Robles nodded. “Better let her do the talking, then.”

EDITED TO ADD: A whole different (and much more interesting) excerpt is now up on my NaNo page, here:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/240900

Go to the "Novel Excerpt" tab. And please, let me know what you think.

I'm up to 17,779. That's just over 4200 words written in one day.

I am now 6110 words ahead of schedule.

*is ded from amazement*

I had horrible nightmares all last night and I'm still feeling the mental drag. Every so often the emotional climate of the dreams will come over me and I'll start shaking.

I'm drinking coffee, trying to wake up enough to get some work done. My MM editor has emailed me asking me to set a deadline for the material that I have. I haven't figured out what to tell him yet.

My NaNoWriMo word count hit 9661 yesterday, which puts me a pretty good chunk ahead of schedule. The minimum I could write per day, assuming I write the same amount ever day, would be 1667, which would make the average four-day count 6668.

I have a headache and a backache and a mindache from plot elements colliding and coalescing. If anybody wants to read an excerpt of my project, you can find it here:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/240900

If only I could sleep for about a hundred years...

As if anyone needed further proof that I am certifiably insane.



*wibbles*

I have NO idea where I'm going to find time to write 50,000 words between midnight tonight and midnight on November 30th, but I'm going to give it a darned good try.

Tomorrow night is the first Write-In, at the Millenium Library. Wish me luck!