NaNo 2007 - Success!

I have reached the 50k mark in Duty's Tomb! Do you want to read it? But you don't have enough time for all 50,000 words? Don't worry! Microsoft Word can narrow it down to just ten sentences!

Duty's Tomb

“Cal. “Kesia.” “Kesia! Kesia, right?”
Ronat. Kesia nodded. “Ronat?”
Kesia smiled. Kesia?”
“Ronat.”

Wow! Microsoft Word has captured it perfectly!

Now as some of you have caught on, 50,000 words is a win for NaNo, but only half a novel for me. I'm going to keep writing this. I hope to have the rough draft done within a couple months, and while I do that I 'm considering giving some people a copy of Piper's Debt to look for character and plot errors. They would have about a month to read it before I will begin working on the rewrite. And these people would be among the first to read the rewrite. Unless I chicken out and decide to rewrite before anyone sees it at all. I'm still thinking about that. And maybe I'll auto-summarize that too! Exciting!

Gobble Gobble

It is almost Turkey Day. That means it is almost four day weekend time! Whoo!

I will spend most of my long weekend hanging out with family, eating, catching up on my writing, eating, playing lotro, and eating.

Thursday will be fun. We're having Thanksgiving at my brother's house this year, and he is going to be making the turkey. There will also be fudge, and sweet potatos and cranberries, and stuffing, and mmm mmm mmmm!

And what better way to continue the celebration of Thanksgiving than by playing a hobbit in lotro? Why, if my #%$& hobbit was still named Smeagal. Yeah, that's right, I was reported. I had to change my name, so now I am Vicia. I was going to ask to be The Hobbit Formally Known as Smeagal, but doubted they'd go for that.

Since my hobbit is almost level 20, I have been browsing the forums to learn more about my class. I never did this in WoW because I had people like Jimmy and my brother to tell me what to do. Now I am a the lone burglar in our current kinship and must seek out burglar knowledge...

Which eventually led me to the hobbit forum. Let me tell you, there are a lot of threads there about hobbit feet. Some people don't realize you can go into the options and hide your shoes to reveal your lovely hobbit feet. This means many people are in an outrage at being forced to have their hobbits wearing shoes! It's hilarious, really.

Meanwhile, I'm still ahead in NaNo land. Either today or tomorrow I will hit the 40k mark. I'm hoping to get 50k before the 25th so that I can have a purple bar as soon as possible. (A purple bar in NaNo land is how they show that you're a winner.)

And that's all the news that I want to spout out right now. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Three Day Weekend! Squee!

I'm at a bit of a snag right now, which really shouldn't surprise me, but it does. I'm at 21,000 words. I haven't written anything today, and doubt I'll get out much. At 21,000 words Something Big should happen. Things should begin to Go Somewhere. I don't know where though. I'll try to figure it out this weekend

Other things I've been up to (in list form!)

*Teaching two students. I'm not taking anymore students at the moment because I'd like to keep my evenings relatively free. If I ever need the supplemental income again it'll be easy enough to build back up.

*Playing in a community band. It's a lot of fun, though I'm looking into joining up somewhere else. This band has spirit but the music isn't very challenging. The Christmas program has a lot of fun things in it, though, so I'm enjoying that.

*Taking horse back riding lessons. I used to take lessons as a kid, and it's one of those things I really missed along with roller skating. I recently took this back up and have been riding for about two months now. Most of the time I'm sure my horse is laughing at me.

*Lord of the Rings Online. Quit WoW and started this up about a week ago. I'm a burglar named Smeagal. For realz. The graphics are beautiful and I'm addicted to these pie delivery quests.

And that's about it! Plenty of things to keep me out of trouble. I'm very excited about the upcoming weekend since it contains three whole days and all I have planned so far is to celebrate some old fogey's birthday. Otherwise I'll be playing LotRO and working on my NaNo. Hopefully I'll overcome this snag in the story and get out plenty of words. Last year it took me until August to actually finish the book that began as a NaNo. Which, I admit, is better than the three years it took to finish the one before that. This time I hope to finish the rough draft by January at the latest. Then I can return to Piper's Debt and do a rewrite so that people can be reading it by the summer. How exciting!

That was a long post. I've been trying to make more short ones since I know a lot of people don't like reading through stuff like this. But I can't help myself sometimes. It's shameful.

NaNo - Day Five Progress Report

15,000 words out of 50,000 done. Pretty good or the first five days, right? Right.

And depsite all this output I still have no idea where this story is going. Every day I sit down in front of my computer and think, "Okay, now what?" Only one night has passed in story time, and I think the pacing is going fairly well, but where am I plodding to? I really hope it's somewhere good. I'm grasping onto my general idea and hope that knowing the ending will help.

Twenty-five more days to go, and I'm ahead of schedule. Other than wondering where the plot is heading, all is good.

Here we go!

NaNo is officially underway! I wrote my first 3000 words today. In that 3000 words is a small journal entry and two chapters. The journal entry is a little out there and the first chapter is very introspective, so they don't work well as excerpts. The second chapter suits that purpose better, so I posted a wee excerpt from there. It is here. Enjoy!