Dark Night of the Soul - 15,445 words

A fanfic this morning, just for some fun.
Now deep in story mode, real work begun.
My protag's in trouble, in quite a scrape;
Dark night of the soul, from which no escape.

Wayward Web Search - 11,900 words

Was tied up in research most of today;
The Web is a master of time to slay.
Know I read something about this last week;
Now even Google will not to me speak.

Disconnected

No chance for status update yesterday
The Mad Scientist decided to play
With his router, left LAN in disarray
Then did the very same again today!

Kamikaze Sprint - 9098 words

Two thousand word sprint on "kamikaze"
Desperate ploy to induce writing spree
Doc Wicked, my hero in times o' distress
There's no other motive quite like duress.

Write or Die

Still fighting this cold, I worked in the rain,
Which did not entreat my health to regain.
Late in the day, I cannot tell a lie:
Not one word yet. It's time for "Write or Die".

Picking up speed - 7122 words

Story one is picking up speed, and my words are starting to flow,
but deep within the NaNo world the server is still running slow.
Ninety minutes to write my words today was all that I needed.
It may well take longer before my word count update is heeded!

Still sick - 5392 words

Still sick full on for four days now
This infection's growing old.
I'm tired and achy and struggling for words
And always feel the cold.

An earlier start - 3429 words

An earlier start today. I'm still sick
but more quick. Time to play.
My words done by one, I may
even get ahead to stay.

A fierce infection - 1739 words

A fierce throat infection, most the day in bed
Is no ideal start to NaNoWriMo
But minutes 'fore midnight, with eyes seeing red
My word count was met and away we go!

A quaternary quest for NaNo four

A quaternary quest for NaNo four:
No more the single tome from days of yore
Nay, a tetrad of shorts (or maybe more)
Equal fifty K words I aim to score.

Trick or Treat

This year for Hallowe'en I decided to dress up as a camper at Camp NaNoWriMo.



November is almost upon us, and that can only mean one thing: It's time for Camp NaNoWriMo! Come join Princess Kendal (wonder dog) and me on this idyllic writers' retreat, right in the middle of your life.



Make sure you come prepared with all of the supplies you will need for camp:

Note the emergency survival kit I am displaying with my right thumb. This handy tool serves as both security blanket and emergency communications device. No camper should be without one! (Click on the photograph above to be transported to Flickr where you can view the image with notes explaining other important camp gear.)

There is little time for quiet contemplation during Camp. That is why I am taking this moment around my Hallowe'en bonfire to consult my camp handbook while I slowly cook plot ideas over the fire. Note the camp beverages perched on the edge of the fire pit.


The favourite sport of Camp NaNoWriMo campers is, of course, writing!

The other Camp sport:
Drinking horrible, teeth-rotting syrup laced with copious quantities of taurine, ginseng and caffeine.

Camp battle cry:
When the going gets tough, the tough drink two-fisted.

For those less attuned to the great outdoors, there's always our luxury cabins:
Luxury cabins come equipped with heat and electricity.

Here's to another great NaNo.
Best of luck to everyone!

NaNovelist Woes

My first YouTube video. (Please click through to YouTube to rate it and let me know what you think.)

The story of a girl, a dream, a challenge, a trauma, and light at the end of the tunnel. (A cautionary tale about a possible post-NaNo outcome.)

This video is my entry into a contest to win a spot in Holly Lisle's How to Revise Your Novel course. I'll be working on revising three manuscripts in the new year, so any tips I can pick up from this course should be timely indeed.

Video text written and performed by me. Fabulous graphics also by me (hand drawn with a mouse!) Music by Torley Wong (a human repository of watermelony goodness who has generously released much music and other fine creations under Creative Commons licenses.

At two minutes and thirty-six seconds (actually, 2:35 when I created it -- YouTube added a second somehow) this video was pretty much at the limit of what my poor old computer could process. Even at that, I had to greatly simplify the graphics from my initial concept. The original storyboard was more complex, but involved far too many key frames, causing my animation software to hang every time I attempted to export the file. Simplify, simplify, simplify -- and a conceptual re-write of the visuals to replace a whole whack of raster images with vector transformations -- and my software and I managed to cobble together the video you see here. Sort of a mash-up of visuals à la "Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings" with narration at the speed of The West Wing dialogue.

High Hopes for a Halcyon Hat Trick

The National Novel Writing Month web site is relaunched for 2009 (though I note it's overloaded as I write these words -- wouldn't be NaNo without a few good server crashes, would it?) and I'm reminded by Selestial's recent blog post that it's high time I updated Dragon Dreams with this year's NaNo plans. So here it is: the official "yep, we're doing this for a third time" post.

"Soaring sights of a sophomore scribe" is replaced with "High hopes for a Halcyon Hat Trick" (I'm feeling confident) and I've updated my NaNo profile with the working title of this year's effort.

When I first conceived of "Love on the Rocks" I thought it would be a < 2000 words short story. I worked on it for a couple of days last spring and quickly realized that, to tell the story I wanted, it would need to be much longer. Much, much longer. That's good news for a NaNo effort, but not so much for a story one is hoping to submit to a short story contest, so I shelved Love and got to work on a different story entirely.

I think that, during my realization that Love on the Rocks needs to be a novel-length work, I fleshed out a decent outline for the piece -- but as I've been working on completely different projects in the months since, it's a safe bet that I'll be revisiting those Love notes soon to see just what it is that I have. (I flew by the seat of my pants for my first NaNo and, while I enjoyed the experience, I'm not eager to do it that way again anytime soon.)

I've got a relatively clear schedule for November again this year, so am going for 100K words and a full novel draft. Looking forward to the ride.

Plotting Along

My NaNo prep continues apace.

I've fleshed out profiles for my main characters and begun mapping out some scenes. All of the scenes for Act I are plotted so far, plus a few later scenes. I hope to find some time this weekend to finish up that process. Then I get to start playing with world-building!

Things are also starting to look good for hooking up with other Wrimos in the real world this year. That will be a nice change from last year's status as the somewhat exotic sole participant in town!

The Adventure Continues

Yesterday I wrote out a rough outline for my 2008 NaNovel, so I felt I should update this blog with the first of my posts leading up to this year's challenge.

Gone is the old "nexus for news of a neophyte's NaNo niche" subtitle. It's time for the "soaring sights of a sophomore scribe's sojourn".

This time last year I had no idea what I was going to write for NaNo. I decided it would be a good experience to fly by the seat of my pants for my first NaNo, and it was, but this year I'm falling back to the tried and true preparation method. I'll have more on my plate this November than I did last. Plus, the stakes are higher now. I already know I can write a 50K word novel draft in thirty days (90,517 words, in fact). This year I want to write something better.

W00T!

90,517 words and a complete novel draft.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/200650

Full Speed Ahead

I had planned to take yesterday off from my writing. The story was going well (I knew where it was going now and was confident I could finish it by month end) and I hadn't taken a day off all month. My local library is closed on Wednesdays, and my home was not at all conducive to writing, so I headed out to do some other things.

The day passed pleasantly enough, but I was bothered by the fact that I hadn't written. It was a persistent itch that I just HAD to scratch, but it was 8 PM by the time I realized I wasn't going to be able to get away with a day off, and I was tired and groggy. So I downed a can of Monster...

... and I played solitaire.

For hours.

"What was the problem Laura?" you ask. "You said you were gung-ho to write and you know where the story is going now."

I'll tell you: The problem was those pesky polls.

When I started this project back on November 1st, I really didn't know what the story was going to be about. I had no plot and no characters and was just making things up as I went along, so I figured that whatever direction my readers wanted me to take the story would be fine.

Then I posted the first poll.
And I was stressed out. I was worried for my poor character (who'd I'd only just made up that afternoon). What would you all make her do?

I forced myself to get over my overprotectiveness. I'd promised daily polls so we were going to do daily polls.

Then I found that the polls were starting to crimp my pacing. My own fault that, totally, because I kept asking questions the answers to which needed to be acted upon within the next moment -- but my readers have almost 24 hours to respond to each poll. Made it a little difficult for me to advance time for a bit there.

Then I wised up and started to ask questions that didn't need to be answered until tomorrow. That worked much better. I learned to go with the flow and create the story from whatever the readers wanted. I soared through 50,000 words on November 17th and the world was all blue skies ahead.

So why did I spend last night playing solitaire and stressing out instead of writing?

Because I'm running out of good poll questions.

I thought I had an idea for one, but it was four or five scenes away. I didn't really have time to worry about whether or not I would be able to write that much in one night, however, as I immediately realized that "Should India do an interesting, heroic thing that might help to advance the plot or should she stay home and sulk?" was a pretty lame question. (Although, surpassed in lameness by the alternative: Should Cleopatra wear a red shirt or a black shirt today?)

The trouble is, I now know where the story needs to go in order to reach a satisfying conclusion by the end of the month, but my readers don't. So...

I've decided to put the polls on hiatus for a week. I'm making an executive decision that I've fulfilled my polling commitment since I ran them daily through the first 50K -- which was the official word count goal. This final week is the icing on the cake, and I need to be able to run with it.

I would like to thank the people who have been reading and voting regularly for your support. I hope you will continue to visit Raindancing Dragons as I am still updating the story daily (it appears that I won't be taking a day off after all!) and we're just starting to get to the juicy part.

I will have one final poll for you which, while it doesn't have the power to be a plot-killer, will I hope at least be of some interest, so watch for that on November 29th. (Yes, I aim to be writing right through to the end of the month at this point and finish in style on November 30th.)

Back to the grindstone.

Coming Together

56,132 words so far.

Sometime last week I actually figured out where my story needs to go, so I took some time over the past couple of days to storyboard out what needs to happen with everybody so that they can all get to where they need to be. It turns out that I've written very close to two thirds of the scenes my novel needs so far, which is sweet seeing as how we are now two thirds of the way through the month.

Write on!

Massively Interview

I'm interviewed by Akela Talamasca on Episode 19 of "On the Inside" available online now at Massively:

http://www.massively.com/2007/11/17/on-the-inside-episode-19-rainbow-drake-and-nanowrimo/

all about NaNoWriMo and the SL Wrimos!

Bragging Rights