A Very Happy NaNoWriMo Wrapup

In two minutes National Novel Writing Month draws to an end and checking out my friends list, congratulations to the following:

rosemilk (who wrote a positively astounding 111,888 words), squirrelgirl22 (61,767), infanttyrone (51,858), ivymere (50,526), reliantfc3 (50,022), oracleofdoom (50,009), and bandersnatch_02 (who was doing it on the sly, so much so that he didn't register his word count on the site, and last reported 50,003 - the last of which was "better").

Honorable mention to hollowpoint who fought the brilliant fight to the end and finished with a very respectable 40,270 words. I'm sure he's going to kick 50,000's ass next year!

I'm incredibly proud of all of you! Thank you for making November an enjoyable experience!

And of course I'll give myself a pat on the back for finishing with 53,229 words.

53,229 / 50,000 (106.5%)

Wow, 106.5. Sounds like the frequency on the FM dial that a really bad country station would be on. :) I guess it beats 88.5 or something which would have been good music but a sad word count percentage to finish at getting so close.

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It was good news all around in the little corner of NaNoWriMo that I'm the closest to. Team Chicago 2005 in our challenge with St. Louis ended up with 38 of our 47 team members completing their novels.

Yes, you read that right reliantfc3. That was 38 out of 47. :)

The final word count is still to be tallied by the MLs but I'm thinking that St. Louis' 23 winners aren't going to hold a candle to Chicago.

Overall, I finished 25th out of writers who list Chicago as their location. This includes some people from the suburbs (who listed Chicagoland as their location and the like) but I'm glad to finish on the first page again. Overall in Chicago proper, 130 writers of the 668 that are in the city (though that includes people who signed up in past year who didn't even participate this year) finished their 50,000 words.

I'm proud to be on the first page of such a prolific group for the second year in a row.

Go ChicagoWriMo! Overall Illinois::Chicago finished #8 in word count as a region!

Looks like the windy in our city also counts on the keyboards.

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The final sentence that I wrote in November 2005 was at about 3:30 p.m. this afternoon (I took the day off from work hoping to hit 60,000 but that just didn't happen). The final sentence of my November noveling was: "Don't worry, you'll get your fiancee back when this is all of this is over."

I think it's a pretty fitting final set of words even though I myself do not have a fiancee. So, the final two words I wrote for NaNoWriMo were is over. I like to count the final five words as it has a better ring to it, though, "all of this is over."

Not necessarily the end like they're theoretically supposed to be. But isn't "the end" derivative to the extreme anyhow? :)

I was a little bit worried stopping there since I figured that would see my word count and write 3,500 words this evening just to beat me. But, in the end it's good news there too as the final one v. one Chicago/St. Louis word war ended with the following results:

incendiarymind: 53,229 words
reliantfc3: 50,022 words

I hope we're both around for round #2 of the series next year!!!

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Tonight was my night of celebration. I went to Mama Desta's, an Ethiopian restaurant at Clark and Belmont (a pretty famous intersection here in Chicago) just south of Wrigleyville - of course that designation is a little misleading as both Clark and Belmont and Wrigley Field are both technically in the neighborhood of Lakeview and Wrigleyville is just a sub-neighborhood.

Ethiopian is my favorite cuisine on the planet (and tonight I finally decided after much consideration that Korean is my least favorite) so it was an absolutely wonderful treat.

But the night got even better as I went to see my favorite band of all time Dinosaur Jr. at Metro (which is in Wrigleyville proper). For those who remember my Lollapalooza rant, I was pretty upset at JayLouMurph for playing nothing off of "Green Mind" because Lou wasn't in the band at the time. Tonight they remedied that situation by playing "The Wagon."

The set was far from perfect but it was a good reward for finishing just the same.

I think I'll just have to top it for NaNoFiMo once I actually write "the end" as opposed to "all of this is over."

This Angry Letter Is Not To My Character

There's this evil rumor floating around that Chris Baty advised people in the last official NaNoWriMo podcast to stop writing on November 30 and not to continue into December or beyond.

There are a two schools of thought on this. The first is FUCK CHRIS BATY! And the second school is people who agree with him. In case you hadn't gotten the impression yet, I'm in the first camp. :)

See here's my counterargument to the argument that I haven't listened to yet (I am so far friggin' behind in podcasts). Baty apparently states that the support network won't be there in December and it will just get disheartening.

But maybe he stops checking the boards in December because they're still pretty active. They're less active but as someone who was writing last year until December 9, I can tell you that I was still floating around the "Character and Plot Realism Q&A" forums getting answers on things (and answering of course) all the way through mid-December and there were still a lot of other happenings. The boards were actually still getting some comments in September for goodness sakes (I checked it out once for craps and giggles, I wasn't still around).

Plus, in December, a lot of us crazier types do NaNoFiMo!

National Novel Finishing Month used to be nothing more than a thread in the forums but this year, pookel (who I have no idea where she finds as many things to post about on the NaNo forums as she does) has made it officially a separate month on par with NaNoEdMo in March with the site nanofimo.org.

The goal the site states in its FAQ is: "NaNoFiMo is a challenge to write at least 30,000 words on your unfinished novel draft and to reach a conclusion to the novel, between Dec. 1 and Dec. 31."

It doesn't have to be your NaNoWriMo novel that you finish during the month but it definitely dovetails into it well.

Plus, there is a threat on the nanowrimo.org forums called, "Never-ending Novel Club" to offer support.

So again, in conclusion, FUCK CHRIS BATY!

There's a little thing called momentum and if you stop writing at the end of November, you lose the whole thing. No one is as interested in seeing what happens to your characters right now as you are. If you stop for any reason, you're going to lose interest in your characters and won't want to see the story to conclusion.

Or worse, you'll lose the entire advantage of writing a novel in one month, remembering everything that's going on because you're immersed in it.

The human brain can, of course, retain facts over the course of years but no one can be expected to remember the little plot line intricacies that chances are you've come up with over the course of this month.

Even with careful note taking, you're not going to feel the story, just look at the words on the page to continue.

You know, Chris Baty does and says a lot of things right. He's got a lot of people through the month (and has since the beginning) but in this case he's dead wrong. The second that most people set their novels down on November 30, they're never going to pick them back up unless it's the first few days of December.

The support will still be there and, trust me, winning NaNoFiMo is twice as rewarding as winning NaNoWriMo. There are no two words of catharsis as good as "the end."

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It's really funny how life imitates art even when no one knows the art is happening. The events in Canada yesterday nearly exactly echo a subplot in my novel.

For those who don't follow the politics of our nearest neighbor, the Liberal Party headed by Paul Martin had two parties - the New Democrats and the Bloc Quebecois pull out of the governing coalition (the 135 seats that the Liberal Party controls was not enough to make up a governing majority in the 308 seat Parliament by itself) and the minor parties giving him the majority along with the official opposition Conservative Party banded together to force a vote of "no confidence" and call for new elections.

In my novel, the ruling Union Party (a centrist party sort of similar to the Liberal Party or New Labour or the Democratic Leadership Council) has their centre-right allies the Federalist Party leave the coalition, therefore losing their governing majority and forcing new Parliamentary elections.

The Liberal Coalition/Socialist potential voting bloc in the novel is looking to gain enough seats to take control of Parliament in my novel.

Now, in real life Canada, it's the right wing that's trying to gain a majority but other than that, the story's the same. In January, Canada's going to have new elections (everything they do makes more sense like one month campaigns) so the whole month of December is going to be spent on campaigning.

I'm going to be watching the Canadian campaign for two reasons. The first is because I'm a political junkie. And the second is because it will provide a lot of fodder for any potential rewrite.

Just putting this all in writing so no one can ever claim that my plot is derivitive. I had a plot of a dissolution of Parliament in my story before the situation in Canada exploded.

Though Chris Baty can still fuck off even if I do wait until January to truly craft my novel.

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2004 NaNoWriMo: 63,190 words
2005 NaNoWriMo: 50,213 words

incendiarymind: 50,213 words
reliantfc3: 50,022 words

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I didn't get any additional word count yesterday because I got caught up on here for hours (Canadian election and all). I had even planned on watching the movie "What's Cooking?" as a reward for "finishing" and didn't even do that. Tonight I will finally reward myself for finishing by watching a movie or two.

Though I do plan on doing a little writing. Though now those words kind of count against December. Not that I care if I make 30,000, I just want to finish!

Best of luck to everyone who wants to travel December with me to the real promised land of a finished rough draft.

I Think I Deserve A Nice Drink After All Of That

There's a thread on nanowrimo.org's "Polling Booth" boards called "Who you gonna call?" and while the primary answer was "Ghostbusters," (to be fair it was one of the choices) I knew what that question meant to me. I realized that I really couldn't call anyone. The only other person who would care whose number is in my cell phone is squirrelgirl22.

But I did provide the following answer to the question:

"I'm not going to call anyone since no one on my phone much cares that I'm doing NaNoWriMo. I will e-mail about five people and post in my LiveJournal the second I finish!"

I am a little bit of a lier but this is the fate's honest truth.

At 9:22 this evening I wrote my 50,000th words - respect.





Who knew that I could also write some poetry in the paragraph that contained my 50,000th word. I do have to admit that I cheated a little. The sentence was originially going to read, "Liam walked across the floor, clean for the day as opposed to its usual sticky consistency at night and took off the cap that he was wearing in a show of deference and respect."

50,213 / 50,000 (100.4%)

So my 50,000th word was almost "and." I'm sure I wouldn't be the first to have "and," "the," or "said" as the winning word and since I did type out the sentence count "and" as my winning word if you want, but I'm counting "respect" because that's the 50,000th word that was saved going into the first edit. :)





There was one thing that I did immediately after I finished up a couple of extra paragraphs just to make sure I didn't lose too many words (as happened to squirrelgirl22). I posted a message on the Illinois::Chicago regional board in the thread that rosemilk started called "I FINISHED!" which read the following.

"Add me to the list in exactly twice as long as my writing buddy rosemilk. Who knew what would be when we got our picture taken together typing out the challenge to St. Louis? I couldn't have asked for more inspiration than everybody who posted in this forum and the entirety of Illinois::Chicago.

May everyone else join the posters in this forum in the next couple of days!"





And I'm really serious. I doubt if I didn't have the Illinois::Chicago challenge to Missouri::St. Louis going on, I probably wouldn't have finished. There were so many times that I wanted to pack it in this month but I didn't want to let down the other 46 Chicago writers who were my teammates against the hated (sort of) southerners.

The funny thing about that word war though was that me and my own personal St. Louis word challenger reliantfc3 ended up finishing almost the exact same time.

There were only about 45 minutes between the time that she and I reached 50,000 (she hit it at 10:10 p.m.). So while the war is still going on for two more days, I at least crossed the winner's line first.

incendiarymind: 50,213 words
reliantfc3: 50,022 words

She turned out to be the best writing buddy that I've ever had since she would not write for four days and then kick out 5,000 words. I always felt I had to get as far ahead of her as possible to stop her from jumping me when she would next start writing.

Not that I'm stopping at 50,000 (well, technically 50,213) since I don't want to be one of the many who reach 50,000, accomplish the standard goal and call it quits (especially those people who cross it mid-month and stop). The bar is meaningless to me personally if I don't try to use the full month of November to get as close to the real end of my novel as possible.





So tomorrow it's right back at it trying to pull about 3,000 words a night for the final two nights and see if I can't end up on the first 15 pages or so of final word counts (right now I'm on about the 40th). And I can't stop writing when I've got three friends who are still trying to finish. I won't name names of two of them to jinx it, but I do just want to say.

Come on oracleofdoom, you're next! I have faith in you!

Plus there's still one last goal, beating the November word count of last year's novel. Though 16,000 more words in two days is going to be damn near impossible (65,653 was last year's final word count).

2004 NaNoWriMo: 63,190 words
2005 NaNoWriMo: 50,213 words

And in a final note, the complete set of NaNoWriMo victory screen shots are at http://home.ripway.com/2003-8/22463/nanowin/ if anyone wants to see the full winner's process to get more inspiration.

Good luck to all of my friends typing toward the 50,000 word count! Two days is a lot of time!

Developing Religion Over NaNoWriMo

Yesterday night with two beers from Gold Star in me (Brooklyn Sharon was in town this weekend) and fresh off watching the newest episode of "American Dad" where Steve Smith gets a novel published, I was inspired to write quite a bit yesterday night until 1:15 a.m. or so.

49,107 / 50,000 (98.2%)

I just love Seth MacFarlane since only he would run an episode on getting a novel published on the last weekend of NaNoWriMo. He's pretty atune to what's happening in the youth-based world and so I'm sure it wasn't accidental.

The best part of the episode was that Stan Smith had written over 200 novels that were never published. He used the excuse that he wasn't writing for the fame, he was just writing for the enjoyment of creating the story (of course his line of logic changed when Steve gets "Roger Is An Alien" published). And then the "camera" pans to a pile of rejection letters higher than the stack of manuscripts.

Since as I've said before I have no desire to actually publish this year's novel (besides the LuLu offer if it's out there) the episode and that scene really hit home. I can really picture myself one day having a stack of 30 NaNo novels all sitting in a room professionally bound by a print-on-demand services but never even edited.

Forget the rejection letters, I'm not even writing for that!

The weird thing about yesterday night's writing session was for the second year in a row, I ended up incorporating religion into the novel. Last year Emily ends up going to see a priest in Berlin and this year it gets even more religious.

Luke, it seems, when Liam confronts him in his room at a seedy motel in East Detroit (where he had fled for his life in fear of Charles Lexington) has taken up reading the bible. In particular, he confesses that he's become obsessed with the Judas passages.

If that's not tipping the suspicion scales on who the police informant is, I don't know what does - although it could just be a red herring. :)

Anyway, I found myself on bible study web sites (I guess it beats looking up the security procedures at Charles DeGaulle Airport like I did last year), in particular Judas (John 13:18-30) on bible.org.

Never figured I'd be on that site, especially during November. Well they say people get more religious at the end and I am nearing the end of this year's 50,000 words. :)

I just love that instead of having a character with a Jesus Complex, I'm developing one with a Judas Complex. Sure that literary trick has been used before but I'm getting quite a few words out of it. I'm not praying to get more, but it might seem that way.

2004 NaNoWriMo: 59,198 words
2005 NaNoWriMo: 49,107 words

incendiarymind: 49,107 words
reliantfc3: 46,006 words (though she stated on her LiveJournal that she's over 49k today also and just hasn't updated her official count)

One last interesting point about my word count. I have the highest word count of anyone in Chicago that is not over 50,000. But there are quite a few people right around the same area who will probably join me in the "Class of November 28." reliantfc3 will probably also be one of these so it's a good day to finish.

Not Quite The Entry That I Planned On Writing

So much for using the last weekend of NaNoWriMo to write a lot of words. I did write 1,404 words on the car ride home from Detroit but other than that I've spent the day trying to set up my laptop. There were more than a few surprises.

All day yesterday for 24 hours, I left my laptop off after letting it power down. Customer support for Toshiba promised this would increase its battery life from the paulty 1 hour and 50 minutes that it seemed to average with a full charge. They promised my father it would be nearly three hours.

47,213 / 50,000 (94.4%)

Well, in the end it did increase battery life - but only by about 20 minutes.

So, I wrote as long as I could in the car and ended up with almost the daily word count. Yesterday night, I not only beat my goal but ended up with 45.8k finishing up Chapter Sixteen. And I was on such a role that I started Chapter Seventeen where the body count of the story increases to two. I so enjoyed the killing off on the main skinhead, even if I did it "off-camera."

The only problem is that as I slide into 50,000 - which I hope to do tomorrow at the Lincoln Park Write-In and maybe get a picture of my typing the 50,000th word since there will be other people around - is I've fallen back into method writing. I'm just working more things that happen in my life into the story than I think I did last year where I wrote chapters that take place in internet cafes in internet cafes.

For example, in the latest chapter, I have Liam crossing into East Detroit (which is Windsor in the alternate history) to track down Luke with Colm. Yeah, I didn't cross into Detroit from Windsor yesterday or anything. :) That and there's plenty of family things from Thanksgiving. Who's the deciding voice in committee to condemn Charles Lexington? His cousin. And Matthew Starwood gives a big campaign speech on a holiday. It's not Thanksgiving (as in the alternate history this isn't celebrated, especially in October but Spanish-American Friendship Day.

I guess it's not that bad since the stuff I dragged into last year's novel are things that only I knew about. But I'm now trying to figure out what happens in East Detroit and does it stay in East Detroit?

Last night, besides doing a lot of writing, I came up with a list of questions that still need to be answered before the end of the novel. The amount of loose ends that need tying up has actually multiplied since I did my mid-month appraisal of what was happening.

I figure after 50,000, I should probably start trying to wrap things up. It consisted of 10 plotlines that I need to pick back up. The most important of which is Samuel Charlton, Liam's childhood friend who's now a police officer who hasn't appeared in the novel since he was mentioned by Emmie in chapter nine. In theory, he's the one who ends up creating the situation leading to the climax so I think the next chapter - the one where I hit 50,000 most likely - is as good as any to bring him back in.

Though I'm not going to try to make Charlton the 50,000th word. That would be entirely too much of trying to incorporate things into the novel that were happening in real life. :)

incendiarymind: 47,213 words
reliantfc3: 46,006 words

2004 NaNoWriMo: 55,725 words
2005 NaNoWriMo: 47,213 words

On This Day Last Year, Something Wonderful Happened

NOVI, MICHIGAN - At about this time last year I was celebrating my validation (or, well the ability to validate, I didn't actually validate on the 26th) of 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo. I could, if I hadn't been dicking around all weekend probably have done the same today (though I would have waited until Monday so I could post the blue bar before I posted the purple one).

2004 NaNoWriMo: 52,315 words
2005 NaNoWriMo: 44,044 words

As it stands, I'll just have to stare lovingly at the entry, "I'm Actually Thankful For At Least Getting A Chance To Reach 50,000 Words" (November 26, 2004) and hope I can write another little under 6,000 words in the next four days.

I know, I know that I should cry myself a river because there are people a lot further behind still trying to win.

44,044 / 50,000 (88.1%)

On that note, this year's infanttyrone award for never giving up goes hollowpoint who wrote 7,000 words today and is near the halfway point of 50,000 after being stalled at 6,400 words for half the month. My MC would be pissed that a Briton was having such a resurgance, but since I'm not Liam, huzzah to my Brighton LiveJournal friend!

I'm still going to attempt one more writing session tonight going into the wee hours of the morning. The goal is about 45,500 (which will still leave me behind reliantfc3 but it's worth a try.

reliantfc3: 46,006 words
incendiarymind: 44,044 words

The one really good thing about being home this weekend was that I was able to finally recover a copy of my 2004 NaNoWriMo report card. This whole month I've been comparing myself to it (as I remembered it) and though that I wasn't matching up very favorably to it. Wow, was I ever wrong. Here are some prime examples of my negativity in the first year I finished NaNoWriMo:

11/9/04: Morale (6) - The plot seems to be going too fast and I may run out of rising action too soon.

11/10/04: Morale (4) - The last few chapters seem thrown together. Need more information on Paris airport.

11/18/04: Morale (6) - Didn't get a chance to write on the first full day in New York, too busy working.

11/19/04: Morale (3) - The computer crashes so eight hours of doing nothing are wasted as I can't work on my novel offline.

11/20/04: Morale (2) - With yet another day passing, I'm worried about even making 50,000 with Thanksgiving coming up.

11/25/04: Morale (2) - Thanksgiving weekend plans to write have gone to crap. Going to have to really rush the ending.

11/26/04: Morale (4) - Starting to become resigned to the fact that I won't finish the story as I want it finished. Got off on a small rabbit trail which might or might not lead to Prague.

One day I might just publish the entire chart (which doesn't include the last few days of Novemeber 2004 since I didn't back it up after last year's Thanksgiving trip to Michigan) just for comedic value. If you want to see wild mood swings, there they were.

I seriously averaged a morale of five on a 10 point scale while writing over the amount of words required.

This year I'm averaging six and will barely crack the 50,000 mark. Though there's a little secret that I can't reveal about my writing time for fear that certain other people will use it to their advantage. :)

If I just finish this year, I think my morale will be higher than last year in November because my goals were different. Last year I actually wanted to finish the book in November (I did end up finishing in 30 days of writing) and this year I just want to finish. So I'm not setting my goals as high. That's alright, my writing level isn't as high either.

I'm letting my laptop recharge right now to really dig in on the way back to Chicago (I'm typing this on the computer in my dad's den) so maybe by the next time I write an entry I will be at 50,000. But chances are it will be more like 45,000 with how much I'm putting things off this year.

It's A Really Guilty Pleasures Friday This Day After Thanksgiving

NOVI, MICHIGAN - I waited out at Best Buy from 11:00 p.m. yesterday night to buy a new laptop. And I got it! #13 of 16!

Each store had at least 10 of the computers and the one on Haggerty Road in Novi has 16. Had my brother and I got there twenty minutes later, we would not have gotten them!

But victory is achieved and I've been playing with it all day in-between naps from being up for 24 hours straight! :)

I am never playing the Black Friday game again. I'm not sure that I'm appreciating the fact that I still can't entirely feel my toes. And the fact that my eyes hurt isn't necessarily appreciated.

But this laptop is entirely worth it since it feels like I've actually got my own computer at my parent's house. Not that it's helped my word count much since I'm not exactly thinking straight from a huge amount of brain freeze.

41,483 / 50,000 (83.0%)

I'm not exactly sure what I wrote in the last 1,000 or so words this evening. Through the haze of my mind from waiting out all night, I think I wrote a chapter about Luke and Liam having a confrontation over what Luke (who is the only sane, philosophical one left in the Cane and Candle group as opposed to the other thugs) knows about the Matthew Starwood campaign headquarters bombing.

Then I go on to discuss some other things that I won't print here since they give away a lot of the story.

But what's important is the whole chapter goes against the tone of the rest of the novel. First I have Luke explain the inner workings of the snakes gang out of the Pig and Coyote (which goes against everything I said a couple of years ago) and then I go into a narrator mode about things happening behind Liam's back. I really tried to avoid this but who knows, maybe it makes the book better!

2004 NaNoWriMo: 45,193 words
2005 NaNoWriMo: 41,483 words

reliantfc3: 46,006 words
incendiarymind: 41,483 words

That is, if these words stay in. I think I'm about to re-write the entire chapter. I mean, I've only got 8,500 words left in five days so that's doable. If I don't rewrite what just happened, the story could very well die.

Cutting off an appendage to save the whole.

I just thank goodness that's not what happened due to my quest for this laptop. Tomorrow I'll wake up, realize it isn't all a dream and really enjoy it!

It Might Be More Comfortable Sleeping On A New Laptop

NOVI, MICHIGAN - I decided as I heard eggs cracking and turkeys being dropped and that sort of thing that next year I was sleeping in a hotel. Well, not even a hotel since who knows what kind of financial position I'll be in so maybe just some fleabag Detroit motel further down Grand River Avenue.

I got to sleep at about 1:30 a.m. yesterday after fighting how tired I was from the seven hour drive home (it's really supposed to only be four-and-a-half but snow got in the way for the second year in a row), watching "Lost," and generally wasting time. In the end, I stopped right after 40,000 was caught and summarily executed and it's where I still stand now.

40,082 / 50,000 (80.2%)

If there's one thing that I know it's that chances are I'll be trying NaNoWriMo again next year. And my mother's computer is just not conducive to anything (I think it dates back to the 1990s when I was living at home after college). But I hope to correct at least that situation tomorrow.

In all of my years, I've never fought with Black Friday crowds but I'm going to this year - I need a laptop! I'm getting a laptop!

Best Buy, and there's one only about two miles away from my parent's house in Malltown, U.S.A., has laptops for $379.99!

My parents kept pointing out a similar laptop in the Wal-Mart circular but I kept trying to tell them that if I step into a Wal-Mart my skin will fester and I will vomit blood. And that's just the hypertension, leaving out my allergic reaction to exploitation since those symptoms make it even more disgusting.

Anyhow, the Best Buy laptop is a Toshiba (it's an HP at Wal-Mart), 256 MB, 40 gig hard drive, DVD/CD RW. And, hopefully it will be mine because it's ordinarily $749.99.

So at least tonight I'll get to sleep out in my sister's car as opposed to on this stupid air mattress.

I figure I'll just stay up writing after Thanksgiving dinner is over and then go to Best Buy instead of going to sleep. There will be no more trying to hunch over this computer in a hunch sitting on a chair borrowed from the kitchen table.

Next year at Thanksgiving, it's laptop time. On the ride home to Chicago, it's laptop time (well for part of it at least).

Happy Fucking Thanksgiving everyone! May your home experience (if that's where you are) be better than mine always is!

2004 NaNoWriMo: 42,284 words
2005 NaNoWriMo: 40,082 words

reliantfc3: 44,350 words
incendiarymind: 40,082 words

The Techniques I Learn From Blognoveling

Another day and another 2,000 words have passed without much more morale on my part. I like what I wrote for Matthew Starwood's speech before the John Harper Society and it's very short and to the point so here it is as an excerpt:

'This is where the courage of those of our cause is called into question,' Starwood began. 'For decades we have endured such as this from the British. Control through legal and extralegal means. It is not enough for them to control the system, they must try to intimidate us as well. However, I need tell no one in this room that in all probability this attack had nothing to do with the cause in this room. As such, I expect no support from this organization except of the moral kind.'

'However compatriots,' he continued, 'there is reason to believe on reliable sources that it may very well have been some connection to extremist right-wing groups. I know some of you are sympathizers with their cause. Despite our differences in politics on the outside, we are all here united in one common goal. I thank Ian for the leeway to broach this ordinarily taboo subject. I do not ask those in this room who support these groups that I find reprehensible to reconsider their views – each man must make his own decisions and each man is accountable only to himself or a higher power for these views. However, there is something more at stake here as we all know. If it is in our power to bring the perpetrators to justice without any further involvement of the apparatus of power we should seize this opportunity. I implore anyone with connections to these groups to use this connections to get as much information leading to the arrest of the assailants.'

'With that I thank you and I yield the floor.'"

With those words and some more on the media coverage of the Starwood Campaign Headquarters Bombing (a major device in my story is the spectrum of four Detroit newspapers belonging to four of the five major parties and how they cover various events), I did get back some of my urge to write - not all of it, but some of it.

37,882 / 50,000 (75.8%)

I hope people are enjoying the excepts and I apologize immensely for not posting the novel chapter by chapter as I go along. I feel I owe the people who actually want to read the novel an explanation. As I've stated before, I'm not one of those, "if I publish it as a blog, I can't publish it later."

Trust me, I'm at the point now where I know this novel is such a piece of crap that it's unpublishable anyway!

Right now, my writing inspiration is oscillating between just trying to get to 55,000 words or so (though this probably won't be enough to beat ) and completing the story so I can blog it chapter-by-chapter.

I plan on doing so in December, taking one chapter a day and proof reading it (not editing it, mind you just proof reading it) and then posting it. So be patient the three or four readers that I have from last year. :)

But be warned, I'm not sure if I would want to read my own novel this year (and last year this wasn't the case) so I don't know if any one of you will want to finish it.

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One thing that I have found positive and productive this year is using the "Prison Break Methodology." It's a term that I coined but I'm sure there's some official literary term for it.

Basically it refers to the fact that I'm writing without knowledge of the ending because I don't know if I'll get to tell the whole story so I'm making sure to drop little breadcrumbs that can be used later to make gingerbread houses (how's that for a mixed metaphor, should be find gingerbread houses based on the fable, right?) or they could just be bread crumbs.

I chose "Prison Break" the Monday night show on Fox (which, I think I've mentioned before, I love) because it's the best example of dropping subtle hints as scenery which may or may not be used later if the show is picked up. Though I understand "Lost" does an incredible job using the same sort of tool.

I swear that sometimes I get the impression with "Prison Break" that they add things as they go along - but always using things revealed in the past as asides - once they know there will be more episodes in the future. Perhaps when one views the entire season, they'll be able to catch how discombobulating it is but right now, episode by episode it just seems like "new revelations based on passing things."

The confirmed rumor is that the actors on the show only receive the scripts a couple of weeks in advance so they can't reveal any secrets. The rumor I want to spread is that the writers actually pen the scripts about a week ahead of that choosing to use what they want from past episodes. But it's not dropped storylines, per se, it's just random things that turn out to be meaningful in the end.

For example, the only thing that seems to be truly foreshadowed for the breakout was what Michael Scofield was wearing when he reported to prison. Sure he's got a lot of information in his tattoos but how much of it will actually be used (considering it appears they break out next episode). Right now it's just cool body art but the writers can use any of it to mean something.

In a way, a lot of the asides on history in my story are just cool body art. I like writing this part of the story immensely but some of it will be used later and some of it won't - though most gets used immediately so the reader will understand the chapter without the heavy handed tactic of having one character recite the history to another that doesn't have the same knowledge.

I hate that literary tool! It annoys me when I read it so I don't use it. I love Dan Brown but I want to punch him in the face when he has an archaeologist, historian, or whoever, explain to a layman or laywoman what a piece of art or architecture, or whatever means.

No, I'm just going to tell the reader straight out in the narrator voice why things are they way they are. If characters are all sharing a common history, what's the point of having them explain it to each other besides adding dialog words? Dialog is for conflict and character development not description.

The snakes, for example, started out as an aside on the bars on Woodward Avenue and have become a major part of the story. Had they not, it was just a cool lead-in to the Cane and Candle comparing and contrasting it to some of the seedier bars on Woodward.

One example of planting possible clues that might not turn out to be is the former kitchen in the Matthew Starwood Campaign Headquarters (it's a converted pizzaria). There's a gas pipe in there that used to lead to the ovens. Now I could use it to plant a police wire or it could just be part of the description of the room - I think it all depends on how the story is going. Either way the reader knows its there and I'm not just pulling things out of the air mid-story.

In the next few chapters, the credit card bill from the Boars Head Restaurant (where Liam took Mia and Emmie due to its secrecy) is going to arrive at the manor of Liam Hedley I (Liam's aristocrat father) outside of Birmingham, United Kingdom. I had no idea how Liam's father (who is mentioned quite a bit) actually gets involved in the story going in but a small thing like using a credit card to pay for a meal turned into a device to do so. What they ate (which by the way I didn't describe) is unimportant but had I described that I could use that too - if necessary.

The key is to not make these too obvious. They need to be blended in, much like the body art on Michael Scofield.

And this was a tool I picked up from blogging the novel. So anyone who refuses to blog, you're really missing out on that!

When you're blogging a novel, you can't go back and add things later to make the story make sense - people have already read that entry and they're never going back. It really does keep the rabbit trail tangents to a minimum since you can only use what you have in the past.

Well at least I know I'm renewed until 50,000 so now I'll go and write some more asides that could just be interesting prose (or terrible prose if it ends up like yesterday) or could mean something if the story is renewed to its full - I don't even know. Last year I estimated 75,000 and it ended up 95,000. So this could be a long run even after I start blogging it in December.

reliantfc3: 40,183 words
incendiarymind: 37,882 words

2004 NaNoWriMo: 37,913 words
2005 NaNoWriMo: 37,882 words

I've Hit The Bottow Prose-Wise So It's All Up From Here

I have yet to listen to the official NaNoWriMo Podcast that came out yesterday evening but I'm sure Chris Baty has something very uplifting to say and some catchy name for the week we're heading into today. But me, I like to call this "the week of really tough decisions."

Sure I agree with he who wrote the book (which, by the way, I've never read) that week two is the week you make the tough plot decisions - but this is the week where I find myself making tough life decisions.

For example, yesterday I had to make the decision at 11:15 p.m. if I wanted to continue writing and pass oracleofdoom's word count with 611 more words or if I wanted to get to sleep at a decent hour and have energy to write today.

36,113 / 50,000 (72.2%)

I decided on the latter since oracleofdoom and I are not word warring or anything. I just like keeping up with her since we're pretty much on the same pace and have been all month. She's my writing buddy that's the other "slow and steady" writer (even better than me since she's only missed one day while I've missed two) as opposed to some of the fits-and-starts writers on my list like squirrelgirl22 and reliantfc3.

Yes, my actual word count war compatriot has decided to re-emerge from the abyss and write 10k in the last two days (and I only would have needed 280 words to pass her so it was a really difficult decision not to write those).

reliantfc3: 36,393 words
incendiarymind: 36,113 words

So, naturally when I read the post on her LiveJournal today that said she was fighting insomnia and was going to push for 40,000 words today, I freaked out. There is no way I'm going to get near that tonight unless I forego the West Side Drinking Writing Group.

2004 NaNoWriMo: 36,304 words
2005 NaNoWriMo: 36,113 words

I could use the planning time for certain where I sit and drink and eat pizza but I'm not going to go if no one else is going to be there. I could just write the story and see what happens without planning.

Yesterday's writing, although productive, turned out some of the worst garbage I wrote this year.

Sometime I seriously look at my word count and say, "sure, if anyone was writing the way that I do, really sparce and just purely advancing the plot, they could have 36,000 too."

Some people reading this have read my novelling endeavors before and know that I usually have really rich characters acting in a vacuum. The scenery descriptions consist of "the tree rustled in the breeze behind the speaker's platform."

And that's only if the tree is important to the story. :)

While this serves me well and I hate overly descriptive scenes myself, I can only imagine those who stress over everything about the tree and write beautiful poetry about it in 1,500 words, while I've concluded the entire speech and am on to a confrontation under said tree (again, if I even bother mentioning the tree). I always picture these as the people who wrote 10,000 words and have since given up (or plan marathon writing sessions) but wrote a lot better prose in the process.

Yesterday this tendency of mine really pissed me off. So I wrote the nail bomb scene (actually I wrote and rewrote 400 words of the nailbomb scene completely because I didn't like where it was going) and I had one character who wasn't even minor to the story die - some random student volunteer at the Starwood campaign.

Many writers would relish the opportunity to write about a nailbomb exploding, spreading shrapnel all over an office where six people were working.

Me? I described the entire thing in exactly 761 words and that included a lot of dialog. The volunteers actually sound like pre-schoolers instead of University students and even pad my words.

The irony of the statement that he made was that it wasn't in the Traditionalist belt that Matthew Starwood’s interests were attacked on the night of September 28, it was in the heart of Detroit Central at his campaign office. Starwood was assisting some volunteers led by Liam with a set of mailings late on that night when the distinctive sound of a nail bomb, an explosion followed by the additional sounds of shrapnel tearing into everything around it, echoed through the premises followed by the squealing of tires but no one inside the office heard this second noise.

Due to the fact that the security gate that was necessary even in the nicest parts of Detroit still being up, the bomb crashed through the front window and rolled ten feet into the space before detonating. Intended only to shatter the window and spray tacks, jacks, and other small objects all over the Starwood office, instead the shrapnel found its way into huddled masses of soft tissue huddled behind the two desks in the back of the office.

"Is everyone alright?" Starwood screamed, "is everyone alright?"

The students removed their hands from their heads and looked up at the candidate, all at once. But one voice was missing.

Suddenly the realization hit the students who were still ambulatory that one of their number was not up and standing. A stream of blood trickled from beneath the desk as the candidate looked down and saw that one of his volunteers lay still with a nail sticking out of her neck, blood rushing out of her mouth. Another of the university students rushed over and took her pulse. There was nothing.

"Starwood," he screamed, "Melissa's..."

Starwood rushed over and repeated the student's action. Lightly slapping her cheeks, he looked up with a look that said the student was right.

"Somebody call an ambulance, right now," he screamed. Liam jumped into action without thinking and said, "but the police."

The candidate looked at him but not because he was giving away secrets but because he, at that moment, found him callous to a fault. "There are more important things than that right now."

Liam jumped at the phone and dialed emergency services. "There’s been a bombing, send an ambulance," he said to the operator at the other end. The gruff voice on the other end seemed to express shock and said, "are you putting me on?"

"Do I sound like I'm putting you on," Liam said angrily, "at the Starwood for Parliament Headquarters! A bombing."

"Is everyone alright?" the operator asked.

Liam was now slowly coming to terms with the initial shock of the situation. "No, everyone’s not alright, send an ambulance."

"Sir, I need you to calm down..." the voice began to say before Starwood snatched the phone away from Liam.

"This is Matthew Starwood," he said, "3000 North 14th Street. Please send assistance as soon as possible, medical and police."

The students had gathered around the prone form of Melissa whose pale hands were wrapped around her own neck as if she was attempting to pull the nail out herself when her strength gave out almost instantaneously. Liam walked over to the scene and looked down at the group and at Melissa. The nail seemed to have hit her directly in the windpipe as if it had laser guiding. Inches either way and she would have been standing with the rest of them.

A squad car pulled up alongside the ambulance in less than two minutes and Liam rushed to the front of the office along with Starwood. A paramedic rushed in and behind the desk. Two others quickly followed with a stretcher. The first whipped the stethoscope off of his neck and pressed its metal to Melissa's chest. There was nothing. The two others loaded her on the stretcher as they loaded her quickly in the ambulance. Its sirens wailed as it rushed away the few blocks to Detroit University’s hospital.

The attending paramedic who was left behind looked around at the other students. He took out his radio and said, "superficial wounds on the others." The radio cackled back, "rodger that." He walked around to the students one by one, calming them down and examining their wounds. On a couple of students he removed shards of metal from arms and chests. Liam looked down and notices that besides some minor cuts and scrapes, his flesh remained virtually unscathed.

Another ambulance roared up to take the remaining victims in to remove the shards of metal that were embedded beneath their skin.

So, anyone who's lagging in word count, you can write something like that if you won't hate yourself in the morning like I'm doing right now. Chapter 13, yeah, lucky chapter 13.

Sounds like something the 14-year old I proofread for wrote last year. :)

At least I have a nice speech to write where Matthew Starwood begs the John Harper Society to do something about the attack.

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I keep forgetting to mention this, but I posted a poll over on nanowrimo.org about how seriously people are taking their novels. The poll is available at:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=359035&topic_id=23400&forum=203#forumpost359035

But you can also find it on the first page of the The Polling Booth.

I'll analyze the numbers later (and explain my thoughts on the methodology) when I have some time either later today or tomorrow (depending if I'm drunk and writing or sober and writing). For now I just wanted to put it out there so there's more raw data.

Writing A Body Count Into My Novel Due To Real World Hate

I wrote quite a bit going into the late night yesterday. Up until 1:15 a.m., I wrote 2,157 words. Most of it was finishing off Chapter 12 with some nice new revelations - like the Legislative Assistant's, Hannah Hillsbrough's husband is in the John Harper Society and she's about to hire a private investigator to follow him which is going to cause a body count.

33,999 / 50,000 (68.0%)

But the really good news is that I started Chapter 13 which is where the second act begins. And it begins with a bang - literally. After a brief discussion of a 4-day campaign junket to the Traditionalist belt of western Michigan (some things barely change for the story) someone throws a nail bomb into the Matthew Starwood campaign headquarters.

Hooray act two!

I haven't decided what the carnage inflicted is going to be. It was almost all nameless campaign workers in the office at the time - it was late at night and they were preparing a mailing. So I could, in theory, kill off a couple of them. To only send one or two to the hospital with minor injuries seems to be wussing out. To kill too many would mean succumbing to NaNoInsanity.

Either way, this is where the heart of the plot really starts. The next big line I'm going to incorporate is:

"If they think that because we're pacifists, that we don't recognize a declaration of war, they've got another thing coming."

There are going to be a few slit throats in the next few chapters as the humble world of Detroit's anti-British contingent slips into chaos with the snakes and the John Harper Society (and hence Liam and Callum) coming to blows.

2005 NaNoWriMo: 33,999 words
2004 NaNoWriMo: 32,953 words

incendiarymind: 33,999 words
reliantfc3: 26,120 words