Pookel's writing blog

2005-07-09T00:32:00.000-05:00

I'm still alive ...

Not writing at the moment though. Had my baby 3/20/05. Keeping personal notes on my livejournal now, so anyone who's actually reading this can check there for updates.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/pookel/

2004-12-07T22:54:00.000-06:00

62180.

My average is dropping steadily. I don't know if there's any way I'll finish by the end of December. The plot is getting more complex and thus more difficult to write.

I wonder if I could call in to work sick tomorrow because I'm too depressed to go?

I probably shouldn't. I need to save my sick days for the birth, if I'll be able to use them then.

2004-12-05T23:05:00.000-06:00

61314. That's 1256 words for the day, the first time I've written since NaNo ended. Not great, but OK. And I have a list of everything that needs to happen by the end of the book.

The bad news is, there's a LOT of stuff that needs to happen by the end of the plot. I'm not sure if I can finish this in 90K or not. Last book, I had a relatively small amount of plot to fit in among leisurely character development and descriptive color. This time, it's escape-conspiracy-battle-assassination-conspiracy-execution-escape-battle ... I'm afraid its going to end up being terribly quick and badly described.

But at least I'm still writing it.

2004-12-04T14:17:00.000-06:00

Still taking a short break from writing.

Over on Making Light, Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog, there was a discussion recently about recommended books for a bright 9-year-old who's already read Harry Potter, Narnia, and several other commonly recommended series. I've compiled and alphabetized a list of all the books that were mentioned. I removed a few that were criticized by other posters or that came with comments like "might not be right for that age ..." because I wanted the list to hold up without explanation.

Here's the list:

Joan Aiken: Wolves of Willoughby Chase and sequels
Lloyd Alexander: Prydain series, Westmark series
Isaac Asimov: Fantastic Voyage
Clive Barker: The Thief of Always, Abarat and sequels
John Barnes: One for the Morning Glory
L. Frank Baum: Oz series
John Bellairs: The House with a Clock in its Walls, The Face in the Frost
Lucy Maria Boston: Children of Green Knowe, Treasure of Green Knowe
Frances Hodgson Burnett: A Little Princess, The Secret Garden
Oliver Butterworth: The Enormous Egg
Eleanor Cameron: Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, Stowaway to the MP, Mr. Bass' Planetoid
Suzy McKee Charnas: The Bronze King
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Eoin Colfer: Artemis Fowl series
Susan Cooper: Dark is Rising series, Seaward
Helen Cresswell: Bagthorpe series
Kara Dalkey: Little Sister, The Heavenward Path
Peter Dickinson: Changes trilogy; Tulku; King and Joker; Time and the Clockmice, Etc.
Ann Downer: Hatching Magic
Diane Duane: Young Wizard series, Cat series
Edward Eager:Magic series
Elizabeth Enright: Gone-Away Lake, Return to Gone-Away, Melendy family series
Nancy Farmer: House of the Scorpion
Penelope Farmer: The Ear, the Eye and the Arm
Louise Fitzhugh: Harriet the Spy
Cornelia Funke: The Thief Lord, Inkheart
Monica Furlong: Wise Child, Juniper
Neil Gaiman: Stardust, Coraline
Doris Gates: Blue Willow, Little Vic
Alan Garner: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath, Elidor
William Goldman: The Princess Bride
Harry Harrison: Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
Robert Heinlein: The Rolling Stones, Red Planet, Starman Jones, The Star Beast, Between Planets, Time for the Stars
Frances Mary Hendry: Quest for a Maid
Eleanor Hoffman: Mischief in Fez
Tove Jansson: Finn Family Moomintroll, and sequels and prequels
Norton Juster: The Phantom Tollbooth
Karen Kushman: Catherine, Called Birdie; The Midwife's Apprentice
E.L. Konigsburg: From the Mixed of Files, The Second Mrs. Giaconda, and others
Evelyn Sibley Lampman: The City Under the Back Steps
Madeleine L’Engle: A Wrinkle in Time series, Vicky Austin series
Ursula Le Guin: Earthsea trilogy
Gail Levine: Ella Enchanted
C.S. Lewis: Chronicles of Narnia
Hilda Lewis: The Ship That Flew
Astrid Lindgren: Bill Bergson series; Ronia, the Robber's Daughter; The Brothers Lionheart
Dave Luckett: Rhianna series
George MacDonald: The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie
Michelle Magorian: Good Night Mr. Tom
John Masefield: The Box of Delights, or When the Wolves were Running
William Mayne: The Grass Rope, A Swarm in May
Patricia McKillip: Riddlemaster of Hed, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
Robin McKinley: The Hero and the Crown, The Blue Sword, Beauty
Sheila Moon: Knee-Deep in Thunder
E. Nesbit: Five Children and It, Phoenix and the Carpet, Story of the Amulet
Garth Nix: Old Kingdom series (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen), The Keys to the Kingdom series
Pat O'Shea: The Hounds of the Morrigan
Daniel Pinkwater: Lizard Music, Snarkout Boys adventures, and others
Terry Pratchett: The Bromeliad trilogy, the Johnny Maxwell trilogy, and some Discworld books
Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials trilogy, Clockwork
Arthur Ransome: Swallows and Amazons, and others
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: The Yearling
J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter series
Sherwood Smith: Wren to the Rescue and others in series
Lemony Snickett: A Series of Unfortunate Events
Zilpha Keatley Snyder: Black and Blue Magic, Season of Ponies, The Headless Cupid, Witches of Worm
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit
Patricia Wrede: Enchanted Forest books, Mairelon the Magician, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot
Patricia Wrightson: The Nargun and the Stars, Nancy Cato, Nin and the Scribblies
Diana Wynne-Jones: Dogsbody, Archer's Goon, Chrestomanci series, Howl's Moving Castle

And here's a list of graphic novels that were recommended for an 11-year-old girl in the same discussion.

Mark Crilley: Akiko
Phil & Kaja Foglio: Girl Genius
Larry Gonick: Cartoon History of the Universe
Jay Hosler: Clan Apis, The Sandwalk Adventures
Linda Medley: Castle Waiting
Meridian
Ted Naifeh: Courtney Crumrin
James Robinson: Leave it to Chance
Stan Sakai: Usagi Yojimbo
Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis I
Skeleton Key
Jeff Smith: Bone

2004-12-02T23:19:00.000-06:00

Burnout vs. need for speed ...

I finished NaNo at 60,058 after spending half the last week not writing at all and getting depressed about it. I'm still feeling blah about my plot and my characters and am sort of burned out about writing this book in general. I ended up with 3K more than I got last year, but since I hit 50K a full week earlier, it should have been higher, shouldn't it?

Still, this year I have the excuse of pregnancy, plus I didn't have the advantage of being at home with my parents (where I always have a lot of time to myself after they go to bed early). So I guess I did all right.

My NaNoFiMo idea seems to have taken off somewhat, as I'm now seeing threads on NaNo about it that weren't even started by me. Looks like a few dozen people are going to be finishing in December, at least. I want to do it again this year because I promised myself I would, but I don't want to force myself so hard that the burnout gets worse. So I think I will take the rest of this workweek off, which means today through Saturday, and then restart on Sunday. That'll still give me 27 or so days to write about 30K, which is a lot easier than NaNo.

On a different note, and because I just promised everyone in FM chat I'd share, here is the recipe for the best cookies I've ever had. We ran a bunch of reader-submitted recipes in the newspaper, and when our photographer took pictures of one woman baking her cookies, she sent him back to the newsroom with a plate. They were amazing! Here's her recipe:

Chocolate Crinkles
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoon vanilla
4 (1 ounce each) squares unsweetened baking chocolate, melted in microwave and cooled
4 eggs
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup powdered sugar, to roll in

Mix the sugar, oil, vanilla and cooled melted chocolate in a large mixing bowl. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt. Cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours. Shape into balls and roll in powdered sugar and bake on a greased baking sheet at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes, until almost no indentation remains when touched slightly in the center. Makes 6 dozen cookies.

-- Judy Kutzer, Bismarck , ND

---

Edit to note: It sounded wrong to me to roll the balls in powdered sugar before cooking, but I tested it and that is indeed the way it works. Make sure to grease the pan very thoroughly before cooking; Pam isn't good enough. The powdered sugar really makes them stick. They're excellent, though.

2004-11-22T01:09:00.000-06:00

Green bar!!!

I didn't do much over the last couple of days, at least not considering that I wasn't working. So this morning I got up and randomly decided to hit 50K today.

This morning I was at 43259. I'm now at 50210. Woohoo!

This is the latest I've written (and this was the end of the day when my quality control was shot to hell):

Cara had stopped at a table covered with leather purses and belts, and she started to hand the vendor a newspaper, but when she looked up, she realized she recognized him. It was a young black man with an AK-47 strapped to his back and a serious look on his face. When he saw her, though, he grinned. It was Darius, the leader of the Black Wolves.
She stepped back, and then paused to look at him. "You're not in your territory."
"No, I'm not. So I won't shoot you today. Do you want to buy a purse?"
"No," she said. "I want to give you a newspaper."
"You're joking," he said. "What would we do with old newspapers?"
"Not old newspapers. New ones. We printed them up this morning." Cara handed him one of the papers and he stared at it, amazed.
"You're doing this?"
"Some of my friends and I, yeah. I didn't write any of this, I'm just handing out the papers."
Darius began reading the story about the Dreamers, oblivious to other customers approaching his table. "Holy shit," he said. He tapped the photo of the mass graves. "This shit is for real?"
"I was there and I saw it myself," Cara said. "It's real, all right."
"You were down there in Oklahoma?"
"We came to Chicago to get away from those people."
"Damn." Darius set the paper down and looked at Cara. "This is what you people are doing up here?"
"Yeah," Cara said. "That's why we were new in your territory."
"That's impressive," he said. He dug in his pocket for a moment and then his hand came out with a gold-toned chain and a gold ring. "I kept these separate from the rest," he said. "I kind of felt bad about keeping it after what you said about your mother." He handed the ring back to her.
Cara took the ring wordlessly and bit her lip. "Thank you," she said at last.
Bailey came up behind her. "Are you still handing out papers?"
"No, I was just stopping for a minute to talk," Cara said without turning around.
"Who the hell are you?" Darius asked.
Bailey paused, then held out his hand. "I'm the president of the United States."

2004-11-17T23:31:00.000-06:00

I love the NaNo Character and Plot Realism Q&A forum. You can get answers to some of the most bizarre questions imaginable.

I've been compiling a list of the funniest or strangest thread titles. The web site isn't currently loading, so I'll post what I have so far and edit more in later.

What's the best sports equipment to bash a shadow with?
Ingredients needed for modern day anti-magic potion
What fruit would be easiest to break someone's nose with?
Goats on a wagon train journey?
Strangulation: How long?
Herding the people
Killing a werewolf - what gun should I use?
would you have sex with an alien?
How to derail a train
What would an adult male have in bedside drawer?
How would you spend 16 million pounds?
nickname for woman with huge hair
Laws on Cannibalism in Massachusetts
killing a god
Illicit drugs and their prices
what a dominatrix might wear?
Need someone poisoned, but don't know how? Come here!
Behaviour of a Male Courtesan?
How to humanely kill a baby?
What's the name of the "oven" or "table" where people are burned during cremation?
How do breasts feel?
How much damage can 1.5" do?
Cats; The good, the bad, and the ones that look they chased a wall.
What would be different if America had been settled by Pagans instead of Puritans?
Funniest thing you've done/heard/seen/other wise experienced during an orgasm ?
Do you know what a gazebo is? Do your kids?
What is S&M?

2004-11-17T01:25:00.000-06:00

34491. Not a great pace these last couple of days, since I've been working, but I got good counts on the weekend. I've having some difficulties getting the subplots to work the way I want them to, but I think I just got past a hurdle - figuring out how to convince the vice president to help them.

Excerpt from a few days ago:

"After a while, you stop caring." Abby lay down on her bed and propped her knees up. "It was like that in Tulsa. They burned the city down for no reason and then they went around and killed people in the streets. Not just organized gangs like it is here, but everyone. Like everyone went crazy. I saw girls younger than me having sex in the back alleys with anyone who would give them food or a place to sleep for the night. And it was better for them, because at least they were willing."

"I'm sorry," Cara said.

"Don't be. It was just like that there. You stopped caring about anything. Did I tell you I killed a guy out there once?"

"One of the guys who raped you?" Cara regretted being so blunt as soon as she'd said it, but Abby didn't react.

"No, this other guy who stole a box of canned tuna from me in the winter when I was hungry. I mean, that was really important. There wasn't enough food. I guess I thought it would be like that everywhere. I didn't know there would be places where people still lived in houses and had friends and always had enough to eat."

"And you say you aren't tough."

"I'm not. I don't want to be. I killed this guy with a butcher knife because I caught him stealing the box out of the basement I was sleeping in, and it was horrible. There was blood all over the place, but I didn't have anywhere else to go, so I just dragged his body into the street and left it there, and I left the blood on the stairs where I'd killed him because I didn't have anything to clean it up with. In the morning, when I went out and looked at the body, I saw he was about my age. Maybe fourteen years old."

2004-11-14T01:15:00.000-06:00

30294. I keep having bad days but managing to make it up at night anyway.

This is a difficult part of the plot, because the subplots have all been kicked off and all the major scenes I'd planned for the beginning are over with, and now I have about 30,000 words of "stuff happens in the middle that leads toward the climax."

Here's some of what I wrote yesterday:

"Traitors?" Maia sat down on the cot. "Are you the government? Is that how you see this?"

"You're from California, I see. I know that things are different out there, that it's every man for himself, that there's no one in charge. Out here, we've brought order to society. We've been rebuilding towns and schools, we've given people hope. And so we've ended up in charge. Yes, I suppose you could say we're the government. It's not so formal an arrangement as governments were before the plague came, but we keep order here, and in order to do so, we have to enforce laws."

"But I haven't done anything wrong, and you've arrested me and brought me here. How do you justify that, if you're supposed to be the good guys?"

"Our methods aren't always easy. They're not easy for people to understand, and they're not easy for me to carry out. But it's what we have to do." The Prophet sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of Maia's cell; there were no chairs in the hallway. Even now that he was sitting below her eye level, he still showed no sign of self-consciousness or weakness. "I apologize, personally, for using you in this manner. We're holding you as a way to draw your father out of hiding. We assume that he will be willing to turn himself in as an exchange for your safety and freedom. Until he does so, you have my personal guarantee that you will not be harmed or mistreated in any way."

"You're using me as a bargaining chip," Maia said. "As if I were a piece of property."

"We do nothing unless it must be done. I would rather not involve you at all, but your father is doing continuous harm to my work as long as he is free, and it's urgent for us to find him and stop him. So far, we'd been unable to track him down, but now that you're here, I'm sure he will give himself up to us, and then you will be free to go."

"And what will you do to him?"

"I won't lie to you," the Prophet said. "The crimes he will be charged with are serious. If he is found guilty of treason, he may be executed."

Maia's eyes burned and she bit her tongue to keep her expression under control. "I don't want any part of this."

"I'm sorry, Maia." The Prophet stood and held the newspaper clipping out to her through the bars. "This is yours; would you like to keep it?"

She sat unmoving on the prison cot. "I'd rather die than watch my father sacrifice himself for me."

"That isn't your choice to make." He let go of the yellowing paper and walked away from the cell. The clipping fluttered gently to the floor of the cell as his footsteps faded behind him.

Maia sat still until he was gone, and then she buried her face in her hands and cried.

2004-11-12T01:02:00.000-06:00

25083.

That is all.

2004-11-11T02:19:00.000-06:00

P.S. I forgot to mention, I had an ultrasound and they think the baby is a boy! He's started kicking me, too. A lot.

2004-11-11T01:18:00.000-06:00

OK, scratch that. Apparently Blogger just isn't working in Opera. Thanks, guys.

I'm at 21K-something now. Going OK. The main characters are in Chicago, I wrote a couple of scenes about Owen even though I'm sick of him, and I'm about to spend more scenes with Cliff, whom I really like.

Excerpt:

He took a last forlorn look at his hand and dropped it facedown on the table. "Fold." He stood and turned to face Jodie and Cara as the other men continued the game. "Was there something you wanted, ladies?"

"Mr. Bailey --" Jodie started.

"Damn. Spotted again. What is it this time?"

Jodie got right to the point. "Do you know who the Prophet is?"

"I know he's a crypto-fascist psychopath, why?"

"Not exactly crypto, but otherwise accurate," Jodie said.

"He came up here and spouted gibberish to the crowds a few months ago. Didn't seem to be that effective here, from my vantage point. He's a strange little man."

"Do you know what his people are doing?"

Bailey shrugged. "They're promising the people a brave new world, they're dressing up in black uniforms, and they're probably killing people who oppose them. Seems about par for the course for their sort, to me. I'm sorry, but there's not much I can do about it from here. If that's the sort of leadership people want down South, leave them to it, as far as I'm concerned." He was maintaining a steady pose, graceful even, but Cara could smell alcohol on him from several feet away.

Cara stepped forward. "Did you know they're taking people out to the middle of nowhere by the truckload, shooting them, and burying them in mass graves?"

"Unfortunately, that too is par for the course for their sort."

"And they're burning books."

"Of course they're burning books," Bailey said. "That's what people like that do. I'd be surprised if they weren't burning books."

2004-11-10T19:12:00.000-06:00

I was going to post here this morning with an excerpt, but Blogger refused to let me in. It sat there trying to load the page for 35 minutes and never got anywhere. Very annoying.

I passed 20K at lunch break today with a scene that wasn't very exciting. But what I wrote last night was a lot of fun. I finally got to introduce my politician, and he was appropriately cynical and drunk, and he failed to be impressed by the main characters' tales of fascist oppression.

I'll try to post an excerpt from that bit later.

2004-11-06T13:28:00.000-06:00

12558 as of last night, and aiming to hit 15K today. Should be doable if I don't get distracted.

"Is there enough to share?" asked a voice from the doorway.

Roger froze in mid-ladle and Aurelio stood to face the visitor. It was a young man with blue hair and a spiked collar around his neck. His jeans were torn and dirty, and his shirt was black and had a picture of something with blood and spikes on it, but his voice was friendly.

Jodie spoke first. "I'm sorry, do you live here? We're just stopping for the night."
He waved the suggestion off with a broad, jerky wave of his hand. "No no, not my house, I'm just passing through too. But if you have enough, I'd love to share. I haven't had hot food in a long time. I don't really cook." He seemed unnaturally energetic.

Aurelio folded his arms and stood in front of the visitor. "Are there more of you?"
The young man blinked. "Huh? No no, just the one of me. Unless you're seeing double, but you look sober to me."

"We have enough for one more," Roger said. He handed the visitor a bowl of hot stew and a spoon.

"Thanks," the blue-haired man said, with a wary glance at Aurelio. He sat down at the edge of the patio and rested his feet in the grass. He was wearing black boots with no laces, Cara noticed, and he seemed to have a hard time not tripping over his feet.

"So if you're not living here, where do you live?" Jodie asked.

"Here and there." He took a long, slurping mouthful of stew. "Mostly in the city, sometimes out here in the suburbs."

"What's it like in the city?" Jodie asked.

He shrugged. "What you'd expect in any city this size, I guess. Riots, burned buildings, bodies all over the place that are starting to skeletonize. You know, the usual."

2004-11-04T01:21:00.000-06:00

9085. Not that bad for the day after all, although below what I hoped for originally.

"I was at a monastery in California when the plague came," Than Toby said. "I suppose I should have known better, but I thought we might escape it, as isolated as we were. We had a small monastery up on top of a mountain, miles away from the nearest town. We weren't even on the grid; we had solar power and a cell phone to keep in touch with our families. But it came anyway."

"Both of you were there?" Cara asked.

"No, no, I wasn't," Mark said. "I met him afterwards."

"I was the youngest monk there," Toby said. "I had only ordained the summer before, and I was just getting used to the monastery. Then we heard rumors about the plague, from some of the local Thai community who used to come by with food for the alms round."

Cara was confused. "Alms round?"

"In the mornings, they go out and beg for food, and the local people give them rice and other food," Mark said. "They don't get their own food. At least, that's how he's explained it to me."

Toby nodded. "But I thought we were safe, and if we weren't ..." He shrugged. "Death is nothing to be afraid of. Everything dies. It's part of the natural order of things. But I was sad to think that my family might die, and that the rest of the world might lose the knowledge that civilization had built up over all these years."

He adjusted the shoulder of his robe. Up close, Cara wasn't sure if he was as young as she had thought. His head and eyebrows were shaved, and it gave him an ageless look. "Than Ajaan was the first to get sick," he said. "Ajaan means teacher, he's like an abbot in a Christian monastery. He was getting old, and his health was poor, so we weren't sure immediately. But when he started coughing up blood, we knew that was it. Then the rest of us started getting sick, too. I had accepted that. What I didn't expect was that I would recover and find that everyone else was already dead."

2004-11-03T14:50:00.000-06:00

Really unpleasant political discussions on the NaNo forums. Lack of moderation means no one will do anything about the troll who suggested I give my baby up for adoption. And I'm thoroughly depressed about the election.

I can't seem to make myself come up with a reason for writing. Someone please tell me it's worthwhile to keep going, because right now I don't feel like it is.

Edit to add:
And we didn't even get decent pizza on Election Night! Pizza is the highlight of a newsroom Election Night. It is one of the things that makes it fun. We ordered from the crappy local place instead of Papa John's, and there were only two decent meat pizzas in the bunch, and so we had cold greasy taco pizza instead of real food.

And then I couldn't even go home and drink away my sorrows. It's all the baby's fault.

2004-11-02T13:45:00.000-06:00

One scene done for the day, total word count up to 7187. Not quite what I'd hoped for, but maybe I'll fit in another 1,000 or so at word during downtime, waiting for election stuff to happen.

And I need to figure out what the next scene is going to be before I can write it ... :-p

2004-11-02T01:00:00.000-06:00

Stopping at 6000. Not quite my goal, but thoroughly respectable for the first day. Got through a scene I thought would be easy, but wasn't ... I think I'm starting to burn out for the day. Hopefully I'll have time to get the next couple of scenes done tomorrow morning before work. Once the election crunch starts, I won't have much time to get anything done.

2004-11-01T18:26:00.000-06:00

5180.

Not stopping for the day yet, but taking a break to celebrate passing 5K on the first day. W00t!

I expected this day to be a fluke, but I'm starting to wonder whether it wouldn't be reasonable to hit 4K-5K on my weekend days on a regular basis, because it hasn't been that hard today. It's barely 6:30 and I've only been up since 11:30, and not even writing the whole time.

At any rate, this will keep me going even if working election night tomorrow slows me down.

Philip was awake, waiting for them. "What happened? Did you find Owen?" he asked as soon as they got in the truck. The thin Asian boy had cared for Owen almost as much as Cara had, spending endless hours teaching him and playing games with him.

Cara shook her head. "There's no getting into the school, the way they have it set up."

"They have armed guards at all hours and a lighted security fence," Aurelio said. "We're not going to be able to break him out directly."

Philip's face fell. "So what can we do?"

"Right now, we have to go to Chicago." Cara rummaged through a box of supplies as the truck's engine started and Roger drove them back toward their destination. "And I need to not be recognized if we get stopped again."

She found what she was looking for: a pair of scissors. She reached behind her head and held the base of her braid carefully in her left hand as she sawed at it with the scissors. It was done in a few seconds; her braid came free in her hand, and she dropped it on the floor. The ragged ends of her hair came to just below her chin.

2004-11-01T01:55:00.000-06:00

1573 and quitting for the night. I could go on, but it's the end of the first scene and I'm looking forward to writing the next one tomorrow.

St. Louis loomed ahead of them. The scattered suburbs were growing closer together now, and the ruined hulks of taller buildings were gray and menacing in the early dawn light. They hadn't seen any sign yet that the buildings they were passing were inhabited.

"Take your glasses off," Aurelio told Cara. "It'll make you look younger."

He looked strange in a black Enforcer uniform, with his hair combed down over his forehead to cover his distinctive scar. Cara wondered if he was as nervous as she was. She took her glasses off and tucked them away in a pocket of the backpack at her feet.

"Do you think they'll really buy it?" she asked.

"Roger said it would go quickly at the first roadblock. And the papers we worked up are all in order."

2004-10-31T16:51:00.000-06:00

Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.

OK, so it's Oct. 31, and I haven't edited past page 180 of my 270-page manuscript of last year's NaNo. It is now officially Too Late to finish that. So now I have to switch over to doing this year's NaNo without being completely sure what I'm changing in the first one. And I haven't plotted this one out as much as I'd like because I thought I would have more time to do that before Nov. 1, but, well, here we are.

I have character sketches for about 20 people who are all going to be main characters. This is another complication. That's far too many characters, but they all seem to be necessary.

And I have to set my first scene in St. Louis, but I haven't yet gotten around to researching the city. And it seems to be Too Late for that now. So I will just have to wing it. Gah.

Why did I decide to host a Halloween party last night and schedule myself to work today? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Next time I post I should have a word count. Here goes nothing.

2004-10-29T20:22:00.000-05:00

I'm now more than halfway done with the Aftermath edit. I did 70 pages of a 270-some-page manuscript yesterday and another 40 so far today. I'm at page 180 now and I'm still hoping to get it done by Sunday. It may not work out that way, though, because we're hosting a Halloween party Saturday night and I'm working on Sunday. And Sunday at midnight is NaNo time, so I'll have to drop Aftermath and plunge into Aftermath II.

Here's a list of writing tips I've compiled, with some suggestions from other people at NaNo:

1. Introduce only one new major character at a time.
2. Keep active scenes and narration passages separate.
3. Have conflict in each scene.
4. Have a goal for each scene.
5. If it's boring the writer, it will bore the reader, so skip it.
6. Just jump to a new scene when you need to, don't fiddle around trying to get there gradually.
7. Don't describe every motion a character makes. Just the important ones.
8. Avoid coincidence. Instead have a logical setup for those incidents to coincide.
9. Avoid infodumps. When it comes to technical details, geography, how magic works, whatever, tell the reader only what it's absolutely necessary for him/her to know.
10. Space out backstory. Don't give away everything at once; wait until the reader needs to know it.
11. Use the thesaurus sparingly. Don't use big, fancy words when a simple one will get the job done.
12. And the classic, "Don't have a gun over the mantel in act one unless you plan to fire it in act two."
13. Beware of adverbs.
14. Never have your characters "start to" do something. Just do it.
15. Beware of participial phrases! (e.g. "He went inside, looking around the room.")
16. Skip excessive dialogue tags.
17. Don't let your characters stare at each other. Or even look at each other. Or look away, or look down, or any looking whatsoever. Unless it's really important.
18. You only get to use 14 exclamation marks, not just in this, but ever.
19. Keep the overall story in mind, and just keep pushing through. Even when you think every word you write sucks hard. Eventually you'll break free, have a burst of productivity, and you know you'll want to go back and fix what you didn't like later.
20. Anything written during Nano SUCKS. Don't worry about style, don't worry about well rounded characters, just pile word upon word.

2004-10-27T02:14:00.000-05:00

Printed Aftermath out to hard copy and have been editing. Removed 1400 words out of 2600 in the first chapter. At this rate, the book will be getting shorter again. Adding a couple of scenes, though, where I now see they're needed. Reducing the unimportant ones, highlighting the major conflict.

I don't know if I can finish this before Nov. 1 though ...

2004-10-21T11:26:00.000-05:00

I just signed up for NaNoBlogMo, and I hope they include me even though I'm not posting the actual novel here. I'm going to be posting my progress regularly throughout November, and I'll probably be posting some excerpts, too.

This is my general writing blog, and not just for NaNo, but right now NaNo is all I'm doing. I started the blog this summer as a way of posting word counts and excerpts for my mid-year project, The Academy, but that sort of fizzled out. OK, I actually hit 47K, which is not that bad, but I still haven't finished.

Aftermath II (working title), my 2004 NaNo, is the sequel to last year's NaNo, Aftermath, in which a 13-year-old girl survived a viral apocalypse, camped out at the library, saved a guy's life, adopted a kid, discovered that the guy whose life she saved was becoming a fascist dictator of a spreading cult, helped some journalists get information about him, and then fled the area after finding out some nasty stuff about the cult and revealing it to the world.

In Aftermath II, Cara's going to try to rescue the kid, whom the cult kidnapped, and end up going to Chicago to find the former vice president and try to convince him to lead an army against the cult. And this time I have the plot basically figured out in advance.

This will eventually be a trilogy, and after all three books are done and edited a few times, I'm going to start submitting them to agents and/or publishers.

2004-10-12T18:29:00.000-05:00

No Plot? No Problem!

Chris Baty's book arrived today from Amazon.com, and I give it a big thumbs-up. Nice work. I love the section about making a list of things you like in books and things you dislike. It gave me an excuse to list some of the things I like: Power struggles, politics, fascism, revolution, conspiracies, secrets, murder, mysteries, smart children, snow, mountains, artifacts, ancient history, and harsh landscapes, among others. But anyone who read Aftermath probably figured that out already.

I know what the first sentence of my 2004 NaNo is going to be. Is it cheating if I write it down already? I guess I will resist ...

2004-10-11T13:28:00.000-05:00

I have a plot!

It has a beginning, a middle, an end, and everything. There will be psychological manipulation, an escape from a school, and a siege of a city. There will be executions and noble sacrifices. There will be a jaded politician fighting for the side of good and an earnest young believer fighting on the side of evil. There may even be a love triangle. It will be brilliant!

I really should do this sort of thing more often.

2004-10-05T19:39:00.000-05:00

I think my plot is starting to take shape. I've figured out how they can get to Chicago without rescuing Owen first (I think), and I have an idea for the ending. The main thing I'm worried about now is whether it won't be as easy to write to a more detailed outline. It seems like last year, it was very easy for me to write for NaNo, and not so easy to write in May when I had a firmer outline done in advance. But I don't know if that was because of the outline or just a coincidence. Maybe it's just that this storyline is more fun. Still, I think I'll try to keep the outline firm but not too detailed. I'll have the broad structure decided and know for sure how it will end, but I won't have every scene planned out.

In other news, I've gotten my husband to sign up! He hasn't actually registered yet, but I reminded him of an old idea he had and we've been brainstorming and expanding on it, and he's going to try to write it for November. Don't know how well that will work, since he says he's a slower writer than I am.

2004-10-03T18:27:00.000-05:00

It's NaNo season again! The boards have restarted and are full of activity. I haven't written a damn thing since my last post, so my Academy project is officially stalled at 47K and I'll have to finish it later.

For NaNo, I'll be doing the sequel to my effort from last year, Aftermath. In Aftermath II (working title), Owen will face brainwashing attempts in his school, Cara and Philip and the journalists will go to Chicago, a long-lost daughter will turn up, Julian will have to deal with dissent in the ranks, the vice president will be an important character, and there will be a subplot with a Buddhist monk in it, as a nod to my brother and his monastery.

First-trimester symptoms are going away, and the baby has a heartbeat, so all is well in Pregnancyland. I am now going to attempt to ignore the pregnancy for two months so I can get some writing done.

Wish me luck!

2004-09-03T13:51:00.000-05:00

So, I didn't exactly keep my word count updated over the last couple of weeks ... but I did get some writing in. I participated in Forward Motion's Unfinished Business challenge over the last weekend of August, and while I didn't complete the 10K challenge I signed up for, I did write a little over 6,000 words, which is respectable.

Total word count: 47449

I estimate the book will be done at about 65K. That's a decent length, since it's young adult. And I have to be done with it by September, or October at the absolute latest, so I'll have time to prepare for NaNo 2004.

The pregnancy is going fine, as far as I know, although we still haven't heard the heartbeat or had an ultrasound (we'll go in to hear the heartbeat Sept. 15), so we can't know for sure if the baby's OK. But I'm at nine weeks now with no apparent problems, and the morning sickness and horrible fatigue are starting to go away.

It had been a long time since Holly had been in the little girls' area; since she'd been a little girl herself, as far as she could remember. She didn't remember it being this noisy all the time. Every room seemed to hold a crowd of giggling 7-year-olds playing that game that was supposed to predict who you were going to marry and what kind of house you'd live in. What was that one called? Oh yes, MASH.

Holly stopped at the door of one of the rooms as the game inside fell silent. "Can any of you tell me which room is Mae Lynn's?" she asked the group of Lower B girls.

One of them, a bratty-looking brunette with pigtails and her pajamas on, even though it was only 5:00, gave her an astonished look. "Mae-Lynn Hinshaw?"

Holly nodded.

The girl gave her a snotty look. "We wouldn't know where her room is. She's in Upper A. She's only six."

Holly rolled her eyes. "Well, excuse me for not being able to tell the difference between 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds." She went back out into the main hallway and then down the A class hall, where the girls were still too young to be giggling about boys, if only barely. They were friendlier than the older girls, and quickly directed her to Mae Lynn's room. Mae Lynn and her roommate weren't there, but Jarvis was, sitting on her undersized pink-covered bed, surrounded by unidentifiable metal parts.

...

"Won't Mae Lynn wonder what all this stuff is?" Holly asked.

He shook his head. "I'll just seal up the box and put it in her closet when I'm done. She knows not to touch my stuff. I always leave things in here if I don't want anyone in our class to be able to find them. Besides, by the time I'm done here, she won't be able to tell what it is. She'll think it's just another computer I've taken apart."

Holly nodded. She already couldn't tell that the parts had come from vacuum robot. There were wires, miscellaneous bits of metal, computer chips ...

"What exactly are you doing with this, anyway?" she asked.

Jarvis's eyes gleamed. "I'm trying to take out the ID chip without damaging it. If I can do that, and I can connect it to a power source, then one of us can take our ID band off and carry this instead. And the doors won't know that it's us and not the robot."

2004-08-15T22:52:00.000-05:00

So, I didn't make the July goal, not even close. But I have a good excuse: I'm pregnant! Yes, it's hard to believe, but I'm in the process of making a person at this very moment. Babycenter's calendar tells me that my little embryo is growing a brain and starting to wiggle around this week. Is that creepy or what?

The nausea and fatigue and bloating are getting to me, but I'm writing again, finally. I've had three good writing nights this week already, and I'm at a total word count of 40401. My new goal is 50K by the end of August, and this time I really think I can do it. I will try to update here to keep myself motivated. I have to finish this one soon, because I'm committed to doing the sequel to Aftermath for NaNoWriMo.

Eve sat quietly beside Daniel. She was always with the two of them, but Holly almost never saw her speak. She wore her long brown hair parted in the middle, and it fell in her face when she bent forward, hiding her long face and awkward expression. Holly almost felt bad for her, she seemed so shy and unpopular, except that she was always with Daniel and Alan.

Holly strained to hear what they were saying, but a group of Upper C girls next to her had started sharing gossip in loud, giggly voices, and she couldn't hear over them without moving closer. And that would be too obvious. She sighed and bent back to her tray and her math homework. She was dropping crumbs onto her textbook with every bite, but she didn't care. She'd worry about that during the schoolweek.

A commotion from the Trinity's table attracted her attention and she looked up. Eve had pushed her chair back and stood upright."Just stop," she said out loud. Commons got very quiet, very fast, and heads all around the room turned toward her. She didn't seem to notice. "Both of you, stop. This is bigger than the two of you. Don't you remember what we're here for?"

Daniel turned toward her, his provocative grin modulating to a more conciliatory smile. But Alan didn't calm down. He stood and faced Eve, his shoulders trembling visibly. "So it's you, too," he said. "You're all against me." He reached down for his backpack, slung over the back of his chair, but the strap caught on the chair and he yanked it up so hard the chair toppled to the floor with a noisy crash. Alan left it there and stormed out of the room without looking back.

Eve stood awkwardly where she was, looking after him, then sat back down and put her face in her hands. "It's all going wrong," she said softly.

2004-07-20T00:59:00.000-05:00

Well, Meika challenged me to write 10,000 words in July since I haven't done much of anything yet this month. Now that it's the 19th, I don't even know if I can do that much, but I did write 461 words today. And I wrote a challenge story that was about 3000 words long last night, a crossover between the characters from Aftermath and the Academy characters. It was a strange alternate reality sort of thing, where the Academy characters find a hidden room that turns out to contain the brains of the Aftermath characters (revealing that Academy is set in the New United States hundreds of years after Aftermath, although it isn't supposed to be like that for real). Anyway, it was writing, and that was good. Maybe she'll let me count it toward the 10,000 ...

Total word count 37850.

2004-05-29T11:48:00.000-05:00

OK, so I'm just not going to finish. Not now, anyway. The Academy project is officially on hiatus.

I think I might work on my fantasy novel for a while now. It's a story that literally came to me in a dream, but not in any exciting way. I dreamed I was in Forward Motion chat and someone was explaining the plot to me.

The premise is that three American brothers have been going through a magical gateway to a fantasy land since childhood, and the oldest brother (the only one who knows how to work the gateway), who is now king, is assassinated while the younger brothers are visiting him. That means they're now trapped in the magical kingdom, and they want to go home.

2004-05-27T20:41:00.000-05:00

I officially give up. :-(

I'm at about 37000 right now. Theoretically I could still make it. But I just don't think I will.

I think I'll still aim for my original overall goal, which was to have the whole draft done (at about 80K) by the end of June.

2004-05-26T02:58:00.000-05:00

Random excerpt from a couple of days ago:

"What are they doing?" Mary asked.
"I don't know," Jarvis started, but just then Mary caught movement at the corner of her eye and they both looked up to see Alan Gray and Daniel Ivanov entering the grove.
"You have no right to know," Alan said. His posture showed subdued fury and his black eyes blazed. His jaw was clenched tight as he spoke, and his odd, British voice came out even more clipped than usual. "You have no right to even ask."
Daniel stood behind Alan, leaning lazily against a tree. He looked relaxed. His face betrayed no emotion.
Jarvis lifted his chin. "I have as much right as you. What do you know about the Academy? What is it they're not telling us?"
Alan crossed the grove in a few quick strides and loomed over Jarvis, his tall, awkward frame dwarfing the younger boy. He put one hand on Jarvis's collarbone. "I said you have no right to know. It's none of your business. You're here by choice, all of us are. You have to accept the school for what it is."
"I have as much right to know as you do," Jarvis said defiantly.
Alan leaned forward and visibly tightened his grip on Jarvis's shoulder. "You don't know anything. You're a stupid little kid. You aren't an Original like I am. And worse, you're here with her." He snapped his chin to the side and fixed his gaze on Mary, practically spitting on her as he said it. "An outsider. A foreigner. Someone who has no loyalty to the school. Who isn't one of us. She has no right to be here at all."
Jarvis put a hand on Alan's arm to try to push him away, but his fingers were shaking and he couldn't even grasp it properly. "Let go of me," he said.
Mary stood and grabbed Alan's arm, trying to pull him away from Jarvis. He was surprisingly strong. She couldn't budge him. "Let go," she said.
He smiled coldly down at her. "You're a worm," he said. "You're an insect. You shouldn't even speak to me."

2004-05-26T02:51:00.000-05:00

1309 new words.
36813 total words.

13177 words to go. Still in the realm of possibility ...

2004-05-25T02:36:00.000-05:00

I officially don't suck!

Lost track of exact counts the last couple of days, but I did about 1600 yesterday and 2500 today.

Total: 35,339
Remaining: 14,661

Daily average needed for next seven days: 2094.42

My work week ends Wednesday and then I have a long weekend, so I'm off the rest of the month. I think I can still do this.

2004-05-22T02:10:00.000-05:00

Make that 31196. Whee!

2004-05-22T01:49:00.000-05:00

Lost track of a couple of days there. Nothing on Wednesday, 1600 or so yesterday, about 1000 today.

Anyway, my total is now 30,599. I have ten days to write the other 19,401. So that's 1940 a day on average, which is doable.

I'm feeling discouraged, though. At this point in NaNo I'd fallen in love with my story. That hasn't happened with this one, and it's going slower. But at least it's going right?

2004-05-19T02:33:00.000-05:00

Missed yesterday. Wrote about 800 then, so I missed my minimum.

Total for today and yesterday combined:

2252 new words.
28008 total words.

Exactly 1556 average daily wordcount.

That means I'm behind again, but it's still manageable.

Jarvis had done his time on water and sandwiches and room confinement before. He could handle it again. If it kept Daniel from guessing that the grades hadn't been what he was after.
He relaxed his fingers and let his hands twitch as much as they wanted to as he hunched down and tried to put on a nervous expression. "You have to promise not to turn me in," he said.
Daniel leaned in closer. "Sure," he said. "So you were looking at grades, is that it? Whose grades?"
Jarvis thought fast. "Mine and Holly's," he said.
Daniel cocked his head to one side. "Why would you look up your own grades when you know what they are? And if you wanted to know your little girlfriend's grades, you could just ask her."
Jarvis blushed -- that was real -- and thought harder. Daniel was right, and he wasn't stupid either. "Serafina," he said.
"Why Serafina?" Daniel asked. He sounded puzzled.
"Holly hates her," Jarvis said. "I was hoping maybe I'd find something out about her, like maybe her grades aren't as good as she lets on."
"Well?" Daniel asked. "What did you find out?"
Jarvis shrugged. "No luck. Her grades are fine."
"Ah," Daniel said. He stood up straight and hoisted his backpack over his shoulder.
"So you won't turn me in, right?" Jarvis said. "You know they'll kill me if they found out I got into the grades server."
Daniel smiled, and his eyes practically twinkled. "Of course not. But just a word of advice. Don't mess with Serafina. She knows how to take care of herself." He waved and left the room.
Jarvis packed up his laptop and headed back to his room. In the hall, on the way back, he realized something. Daniel hadn't stayed to use a computer. And the E class always had gym when D class had art -- that was how Oliver had gotten hit with the soccer ball in the first place.
What was Daniel doing in the lab at all?

2004-05-17T12:34:00.000-05:00

1028 new words.
25756 total words.

I only wrote 411 yesterday, but I'm counting this morning's writing with last night. So I really didn't miss my minimum.

1609.75 average daily word count. I need to start catching up again.

2004-05-16T01:45:00.000-05:00

1165 new words.
24700 total words.

1646.67 average daily word count.

2004-05-14T17:31:00.000-05:00

1844 new words.
23516 total words.

I think I added about 300 last night after I stopped counting.

Average daily wordcount: 1679.7

Thoroughly ahead now.

2004-05-13T19:02:00.000-05:00

2491 new words.
21396 total words.

Average daily wordcount: 1645.85

About 1,000 of those words I had to write TWICE today because the damn Windows 3.1 laptop, which I had to use today because my husband took the good laptop, froze as it was saving my file to disk. Good thing there was a Works tmp file, too, because for some reason, it decided to delete the entire file before trying to resave it, thus wiping out my earlier work as well.

2004-05-13T00:52:00.000-05:00

1028 new words.
18905 words.

1575.41 average daily wordcount.

I'm now officially falling behind.

2004-05-12T02:03:00.000-05:00

1123 new words.
17877 total words.

1625.18 average daily word count. Just barely making it.

2004-05-11T02:32:00.000-05:00

1143 new words.
16754 total words.

2004-05-10T03:55:00.000-05:00

2070 new words.
15612 total words.

average daily word count = 1734.7

"Most of the people here have been so nice to me, though. Don't you have any friends?" Mary realized as it came out how bad that sounded. "I mean ..." She tried to amend her statement, but he cut her off with a wave of his hand.

"I know what you mean," he said. "Not really, no. They're not all bad people, but this school. This school's all bad. Look at what it does to people."

Mary looked around. Commons was full of laughing groups of students clustered around the long tables. Even the so-called Holy Trinity seemed to be in a good mood. They were engaged in a spirited game of cards with some other E class students. As Mary watched, Daniel threw his cards down in mock anger and grinned at Eve as she pumped her fist in celebration.

She looked back at Oliver, puzzled. "I don't get it. Everyone's happy. It's the best school in the country. It's hard, but that's what we all wanted, right? It's supposed to be a challenge for us gifted kids."

He shook his head. "That's not what I mean. It's unnatural. The way everyone acts, it's unnatural. It's not real. The school's not real. It's a mirage. Look at what it does to everyone. Look at what it did to Alexa."

2004-05-09T03:24:00.000-05:00

1422 new words.
13542 total words.

1692.75 average daily word count. Still on track.

2004-05-08T00:09:00.000-05:00

1707 new words.
12120 total words.

Antonia sat down at the table across from her. "You looked at the schedule when you applied, didn't you? At our age, it's two weeks in December, two weeks in August, the rest of the year is here. Forget about spending time with your family. Forget about having friends back home. Forget about watching your favorite TV shows or going to concerts or knowing what clothes are in style this season. This is home. The school is everything. This is your life." Her narrow brown face was serious and her dark eyes were wide.
"But you were just telling me how great everything is," Mary said. She looked outside at the vast expanse of tundra and thought about her parents' rambling two-story house back home, the small neighborhood park down the street, the girl from next door who used to skip rope with her in the street when they were little because there were never any cars. It was quiet there, but not like this; there was a whole neighborhood around her there, and it was less than an hour's drive to Billings. Out here, if you tried to leave on foot, you could die of starvation before you saw another person. She knew; she'd checked the map.

"It is great. But it's a different lifestyle. I hope you have fun here like I do, and don't get weird about it like Alexa did." Antonia leaned back and stuck her booted feet up on the table. "I just want you to know what you're in for."

2004-05-07T02:09:00.000-05:00

1104 new.
10379 total.

2004-05-06T01:54:00.000-05:00

1155 new words.
9275 total words.

2004-05-05T02:12:00.000-05:00

1463 new words.
8201 total words.

2004-05-04T01:46:00.000-05:00

1184 new words.
6727 total words.

Today was a struggle. But I kept my count over 1000, which is my absolute daily NaNo minimum.

2004-05-03T01:13:00.000-05:00

Blame Forward Motion chat.

Another 1319 new words.
Total 5543.

2004-05-02T19:07:00.000-05:00

1936 new words.
4225 total words.

Somewhere in there I deleted about 200 words to fix a scene and then added about 500 more to replace what I took out. So I'm not sure how the counts are working out. But I'm still on top of things.

Here's Serafina's first appearance:

A man in a black uniform stepped out of the plane and offered his hand to a girl who followed after him. She had long, straight, dark brown hair, and wore a midnight blue dress that came to just below her knees with white stockings and low black heels. She held her chin up as she walked gracefully toward the entrance of the school. The man in the black uniform followed a few paces behind her as another man emerged from the plane with two midnight blue suitcases.

"Who's she?" Mary asked.

"You've heard of Cawley Industries?" Holly asked with a sniff.

Mary suddenly recognized the logo on the plane. "The technology company?"

"And furniture. And glassware. And solar cars. And a lot of other things." Holly crossed her arms and watched the girl approach. Mary saw now that the girl didn't look any older than she was.

"Yes, I've heard of them," Mary said.

"That's Serafina Cawley."

2004-05-02T01:27:00.000-05:00

1211 new words.
2471 total words.

The totals might not add up quite right because I'm doing a little bit of editing here and there to the earlier parts as I write the new ones.

2004-05-01T03:13:00.000-05:00

After midnight on November 1, I only wrote a few hundred words, just a quick start so I'd have something to work with the next day.

My count for the last hour is 1264. Mary's arrived in Anchorage and has met Antonia. Things are going well.

2004-04-29T18:49:00.000-05:00

W00t! I have comments. And I made them look the way I wanted, too. Thanks to Haloscan for making comments so easy.

2004-04-29T14:15:00.000-05:00

Added a whole bunch of links to the side of the page. And I fiddled with the stylesheets to make the colors less ugly and the fonts less huge. It's not displaying right in Opera, but oh well.

Going to figure out how to add comments soon. Maybe when I'm not theoretically in the middle of work.

2004-04-29T00:29:00.000-05:00

I don't know why I just signed up for a blog. I blame it on the beer. And because I was reading Anne Marble's Gorok and Wulf blog. Anne is from Forward Motion, where I go to chat, write, and be entertained.

I wrote my first novel for NaNoWriMo 2003, a project which challenges participants to write 50,000 words in November. I hadn't written anything seriously since high school. In high school I wrote a lot of bad poetry because it hadn't occurred to me that poetry wasn't really the best writing career around. I also wrote some "literary" stories with no plot and no purpose. Not that I mind literary writing. But I'm not good at it. And it's not much fun for me to write, no matter how much I love to read it.

Then, eight years later or so (I graduated from high school in 1994) I happened to read George W. Chambers' The King in Yellow in the same week as Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and the convergence of those two events made me think I should write. It was a funny coincidence: I read The King in Yellow and came away inspired, full of ideas for ghost stories and subtly creepy short stories like Chambers wrote. Then I went to the library and checked out some books that I had made a note of at one time or another, books someone had recommended to me. I had no idea that Bird by Bird had anything to do with writing. I checked it out, started reading, and thought, "Oh. I see. I can really do this."

But I was still writing short stories. And I still hated every word I wrote. The first time I really sat down and tried to write, I had to go downstairs to the basement, turn off all the lights, and write by the light of a single candle so I could see the lines to write on but not read what I had just written. It was an OK rough draft of a short story about a young military man who returns from duty overseas to find that maybe his wife was lying about her miscarriage. I revised it once, and then sort of lost inspiration again. I got about halfway through two other short stories set in the same town.

That was the extent of my writing until NaNo. But when NaNo started, I sat down and I wrote an average of 1,900 words a day on a novel about a girl from my hometown of Norman, Oklahoma, who survives a viral apocalypse, saves the life of a very strange young man, and then comes of age in the fascist society he creates as the Prophet of a new religion. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done. I loved my setting, I loved my characters, I loved writing. I even loved the creepy rapist henchman character. I finished the novel at 93,000 words in late December after winning NaNo with 7,000 words extra. Then I went through and edited what was there and cut out about 25,000 words of crap. (I am a professional newspaper copy editor. I know all about crap.)

Then I spent February, March, and part of April going back and filling in the holes that were left. It's at about 90,000 words now, and it's a complete second draft. My brother, a Buddhist monk in California, says he liked it. A bunch of 13-year-old girls from NaNo liked it. My husband hasn't read it yet, but he's a chronic procrastinator. And my best friend from college, who I didn't even know was a writer too, read mine and liked it and shared her own cool NaNo novel about vampire monks with me. We even swapped characters and wrote some fanfic about both our novels.

Now it's approaching the end of April, and I'm about to do it again: at the six-month mark after NaNo, I'm starting another book. Not the sequel to the first one, which I haven't sorted out yet, but a totally different one, about smart kids at a strange elite boarding school in Alaska in the future, with cool gadgets and a unique community, along with secrets, deception, and murder.

I'm starting it May 1. If I can do it, and keep this up, and do it every year, I can write two books a year.

I am going to post my word counts here every day in May. We'll see how well it goes when I don't have 20,000 other people doing it with me. But at least I have the most important one; my friend is doing this with me. Wish us luck.