Sasquatch broke his big foot yeti carries on. Abominably.

–For posterity, and for my mom.

A meh day word count wise, but in terms of the craft, something interesting happened.  I might talk about it tomorrow (it’ll be the post without LEO in the title.)  Assuming I can still do non-NaNoWriMo posts

Oh!  Also.  I got Day 8’s count wrong yesterday.  Surprise.  It was 15066.

Hey, don’t say no one cares. You never know.   One day that might be a trivia question.

First off, yesterday was 15223 something.  Don’t hold me to that, though.  Didn’t keep good track.

Anywho.  Two days ahead.  Don’t wanna gloat, but… Never been two days ahead before.

Don’t… don’t check the archives, okay?  Let us pretend I’m right, if just this once.

Each novel I done for NaNoWriMo I’ve liked more than the one before.  This one’s no exception.  I think having some of the ground work done ahead of time helped.

Of course, I’ve more or less abandoned the written outline/reached the end of the notes, and am now relying on the outline I’ve got in my head.

I have also fallen asleep and have forgotten to post this on time.  Well now.

Still working, but I wanted to note here that my first homage to The Venture Bros has died a painless death.  Not because of plot or assassination, but because he shuffled off the literary coil while I wasn’t looking.

He won’t be missed.

FUTURE CULLEN sez: Whoops, spoke too soon.  He’s back, but not as big as I thought he was.  In-ter-est-ing.

Hi ho.  We’re moving forward.  Trouble is, I don’t like the text as much as I like some of the stuff I plan to cut.

Oh well.  Chapter two moves forward.  And looks shorter than chapter one.

As I feared, the writing wheels are spinning like mad, but are getting no traction.  I know what I want to write, but getting it out’s a bear.  I’ll be happy if I hit 13336 today.

Yep.  Complaining about maybe not staying a day ahead.  Dunno about you, but I likes it.

MUCH better.

The best laid plans of mice and men, eh? At least I’m still ahead.

I’m hitting a rough patch in the novel.  The story jumps ten years ahead within a matter of pages, and we get the real protagonist.  (The woman we see in the excerpt is important, but doesn’t make the hard decisions in the story.)  It feels almost like starting the novel up again and I worry about another pause moment like at the start.

Good thing I have a buffer, right?  Heh heh heh.

What’s really bothering me is how long the story is looking.  By 10,000 words I’m still on the first chapter.  1/5 the novel on what amounts to the prologue.

What I’ve read recently about first novels is that books in the 160k + range are a hard sell, that something around hey there 50k to the unheard of heights of 80k.  I know what the book’s halfway mark (ish) is, or at least should be… and I think it should arrive at 80k at this rate.

Hi ho.

So I’ve thought about pruning off and on for the past few days.  While I want to keep that opening (it kind of sings), there’s some business after that which wouldn’t be missed if snipped.  Then there’s a bit after that which seems important (dealing with the blizzard), then a whole chunk of change that might be liquidated with prejudice.

Sadly, that last bit is the part I’m working on now.

Oh well.

Writing first.  Rewriting second.  Such a barbaric way of handling things, but that’s the way it must go, if I want to win this noncontest.

Tally ho!

]]> http://welltuncares.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/leo-day-5-late-update/feed/ 1 Cullen M. M. Waters NaNoWriMo 09 Status 005 http://welltuncares.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/leo-day-four-ii/ http://welltuncares.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/leo-day-four-ii/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:04:08 +0000 Cullen M. M. Waters http://welltuncares.wordpress.com/?p=3131 ]]>

Now there’s the Waters Magic a-flowin’.  We’re shooting for 10k tomorrow.  I need to do only 2520 more words, and that’s just 218 words more than today.

…

…

I’d like to tell you I whipped out the calculator for those stats.  Unfortunately I’ve been forced to learn how to type with the damn thing stuck in my clenching left hand.

I’m not going to post my count at NanoWriMo quite yet (Been doing it around nine PM) but I wanted to note I’m three words from hitting today’s goal of 6668.  The odd urge to rewrite the opening is now gone (though it needs to be; some wordies there can be cut with prejudice and not lose anything.)

As I’m at a meaty bit (the current Point of View character is in a bad way), I wanna get back to writing.  Which is what I am gonna do.