crowdog66

When I pasted in an excerpt from "Micro Noir", my original NaNoWriMo novel from 2009...





And when I pasted in all 50k words from "Where Darkness Falls", my 2008 NaNo project...





Wahoo!

I've downloaded my winner's certificate and everything.

I AM MIGHTY! RAWR!

I just cracked 49k. Barring a sudden catastrophic case of H1N1, I'll finish tonight or tomorrow morning.

Help hatch this very stubborn little egg?

Wrote 5000 words yesterday for NaNo.

/ / /

Today is the first day I'll get a chance to write (later this evening), and I'm still torn.

So, a poll!

[Poll #1289886]

Or, perhaps, should I given NaNo a miss this year given the state of my health?

Thanks to everyone who lent a hand by voting in the Which NaNoWriMo plot should I go with this year? poll. It's still open, if anyone else would like to weigh in.

So far, "dystopian SF" is ahead by one vote. *nibbles on fingernails*

If I can't squeeze any actual work out of myself tonight, maybe I'll curl up on the couch with a cup of hot tea and start typing up some background notes on both universes to help me figure out which one I really want to spend 30 gruelling days exploring.

Lewis Black on the subject of writing a book:



How very, very true.

To those of you who have kindly volunteered to look over the first three chapters (plus prologue) of Where Darkness Falls -- thank you, thank you, thank you! I have to knock together a new Chapter 1, and then I'll email them out to you. Those of you who don't have email addresses on your profile (or whose email addies I don't already have) might want to email me and let me know where I can send the dog's breakfast deathless prose you've so graciously agreed to read.

anotheragentsmith at gmail dot com

In about an hour I'm off to the Red River Ex for the first time in almost twenty years. It's going to be a zoo -- the last Friday before the exhibition closes -- but I hope to have a good time nonetheless.

I'm about to open up the Z-Write document of my novel for the first time since November.

And I'm nervous about what I'm going to find. Will it be readable? Or just so much stinking crap?

*takes a deep breath and goes for it*

I was scheduled to get my annual flu shot today at 4 pm. Due to the bus schedule, I showed up at the clinic at 3:30 pm and checked in at the front desk. At 3:35 pm I was ushered into a room. Less than five minutes later my doctor showed up, gave me the shot, wrote me a prescription, and kvetched about how the brand new operating system they'd installed in the clinic computers this very day is teh massive suckage and keeps crashing. I was out of there by 3:45.

Afterwards I walked over to the Perkins Restaurant where my mother and I used to go after appointments at the clinic and the nearby Grace General Hospital. Their meatloaf dinner looked good, so I had that (with fresh fresh fresh mushrooms, mmm) and an illicit scoop of vanilla ice cream. It turned out to be a FREE vanilla ice cream, since when I noticed that it hadn't been included on my bill and pointed this out to the waiter, he smiled and said: "Never mind." I didn't ask twice.

A bus ride in the gathering gloom brought me to our local PharmaPlus to put in and pick up three prescriptions. It would have been four, but it turns out that ( Cut for a tiny little bit of TMI ) They were able to refer to me a couple of other pharmacies that might carry it, one of them all the way out on Scurfield Boulevard, the other one downtown... with any luck, the downtown one has it in stock, because if not I've got a looooooong bus ride in my near future (unless the Scurfield pharmacy delivers). ( Cut for snarkage )

After that I walked up to FoodFare, where I met George and we did a bit of shopping. Lately I've had a real hankering for toaster waffles, so we picked up some blueberry-flavored ones of the Eggo brand. Oh, the excitement.

My mood and energy levels have been up and down all day. Hopefully reintroducing Effexor into my med load this evening will help. The HB penciller/inker has really pooched the deadline at his end, so it looks like I might have to work all night to have even a hope of turning the job around by tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to try to do it, but I really don't want to risk the crash-and-burn that might follow if I work all the way through the night. There's very little that I find more depressing than being awake to see the sun come up.

My NaNoWriMo word count is sitting at 37,548. I think I'm actually going to make the "50k by November 30th" deadline this year. If I do, I'll be very pleased and proud. So what if the novel is really rough-hewn? The point of NaNo is to turn out a first draft, not the finished product. Depending on when I finish laying HB flats, I might try to do something tonight, or I might just leave it until tomorrow evening, at which point I'll have to do 4000 words to stay on my own personal schedule.

... glancing ahead in the MTS digital TV schedule, I am astounded that considering how many channels we're subscribed to, it looks like there will be absolutely NOTHING on come 3 or 4 am. :-P

I have found an actor and an actress who pretty closely resemble my vision of my MCs.

EDITED TO ADD: I changed the actor for Jeremy Anderson because George came up with an even better suggestion for him. :-)

( Pictures behind the cut )

Also, last night I finished writing the scene where Emmie dies. It was incredibly hard but I think it's going to punch readers in the gut and make the climax more powerful.

Off to work on HB flats.