Over the past few weeks, as a gift to my lovely mother-in-law, I’ve been proofreading and gently editing some of her completed short stories. At first, it was supposed to be a surprise for her, but someone in the know inadvertently spilled the beans, so she knows all about it. Last night, I uploaded the seven stories I had to Blurb, where I have a gift certificate for $20. Turns out, I really didn’t need to use it. The softcover…
Well, I’m a hair over 45K in word count now. The story? I have no idea where it’s going. I have another murder, I killed another secondary character (brings the body count to three). Sherlock Holmes is a bad guy, so is Watson (unless he’s totally clueless in the Nigel Bruce fashion), Moriarty is at least Chaotic Neutral, and Henry Jekyll has yet to meet his Mr. Hyde. My main character’s boyfriend is having blood-tinged visions and the Door has…
Roughly 600 words to get to 30k, which is right on schedule. I had a bit of an epiphany about the characters in my story: this is not only a fictional world that my main character is visiting, it’s the mirror-verse of that world. So, the person she thinks is on the side of the angels–because that’s the way he’s portrayed in books–really isn’t. I’ve got to figure out why the Door gets stuck in this universe: I guess the…
So far, I’m keeping just above the daily word count goal. The story has developed a romantic turn, to an extent, and when this is through, I’m going to have a helluva lot of research to do! Right now, I’m just pantsing along as usual. We’ll see if it actually turns into something I want to publish, here or elsewhere. I did meet someone at our library write-in who is publishing his story to fictionpress as he writes it. Since…
I’ve been keeping up pretty well with the daily word count and am up to over 12K, which is higher than yesterday’s total. Today’s is 13,334, so I have a bit left to go to reach it. Mostly I’ve been reading and cooking and doing laundry while mulling over where the story is supposed to go next. I’ve already had a character do something unexpected. For those writers who are planners, this doesn’t happen. Even those who aren’t necessarily planners…
This is for use only at the NaNo site–I would commission a cover if/when this story ever sees print. I got a little input from the Girl about the background but the rest is all mine. I’m putting it under a cut because I think it’s kind of largish and I’m usually all about the neat when it comes to my site. ETA: I just realized that my statement “the rest is all mine” sounds like I took the pictures….
I’m ahead of the curve on word count and the story is beginning to shape up a bit, though a character did something inexplicable and sudden that I don’t understand yet. (Yes, characters can and have taken stories in different directions than originally thought–it’s the beauty of being a “pantser” during NaNo.) The chat room is hopping late at night and in less than two hours I got over 1700 words written. Not bad considering I spent the day either…
Here I am, sitting at my desk, waiting for the trick or treat crowds to arrive. We’re giving out glow-in-the-dark bracelets this year in hopes of keeping the kids out there visible to traffic. The day’s been cool and it’s finally getting dark outside. Two cats are pestering me simply by curling up on my desk: one under my halogen lamp and the other on my steno shelf. They want to be fed, but that doesn’t happen until the dog…
For me, anyway. I find the July session a lot less stressful than April’s; there’s not as much going on, though my husband works long hours as his co-workers take their vacations. My word count goal is 30K, which averages out to 968 words a day. Very attainable, I think. My main project is a sequel to The White Winds, one I’ve been chewing on for some time. Sneaking in some editing on completed or in-progress projects and adding to…
I’m trying out this new theme as it seems 2014 (even with the added child theme) is used a LOT around the Web. There’s a lot I like about this one: it’s already optimized for various devices, the menus and widgets are hidden until they’re needed, and the custom header has that sort of muted overlay. On the other hand, I don’t like the fact that all the headers seem to be uppercase, despite my specifying “Capitalized” on the theme…