NaNoWriMo 2014 daily diary
Week One - Off to the races
Week One is where you ride the wave and stack up as many words as you can in preparation for the cold shock of the dreaded Week Two. I realised this week if I finish book 4 of my trilogy (and then go back and finish the story for book #2), I'll have over 200,000 words of this series. And if I finish this, my tenth NaNoWriMo novel, I'll have written as many words as are in Tolstoy's War and Peace, something I use for software testing because it is so long.
Saturday 1st3077 words. 615 in front of the light box in the morning feels like a good start, over the 2k mark at Crooked Tree in St Charles after working in Stone Spiral during knit group, finished up at home after some Ubuntu work on my Alienware laptop (yay for bootable Linux installs). We are blessed with five weekends this NaNo year!
Sunday 2nd5312 words, 2235 today. Testing Scrivener's Mac/Windows file compatibility today, I need the dual boot Win7/Ubuntu Linux machine with me instead of my trusty MacBook Pro. Thank goodness for the 32Gb thumb drive, I can throw everything on that and work wherever. This also proved that Scrivener files work on both Mac and Win7. Two characters decided to have lunch. One of them didn't exist yesterday. It's starting to look like I have a story to tell.
Monday 3rd7351 words, 2039 today. Off-site at a client office, with one of those working lunches, came home exhausted and cancelled karate for the night. Pro tip: if your meeting room is the temperature of an icebox, people are probably not paying attention. Having trouble making the word count.
Tuesday 4th9707 words, 2356 today. This was a hard day to get work done. Wrote a little before work, more at lunch while fixing a co-worker's knitting skills, and ground out the last bit at home. I feel woefully under-plotted for this story but things are happening I didn't expect. Went out and voted, so I have retained my right to complain about the results, and even got to use the newfangled touchscreen voting booth.
Wednesday 5th12262 words, 2555 today. Crossed the 10k mark before work and earned another NaNoWriMo badge on my profile. 25k here I come! Planning to write in St Louis Bread Co before karate and hopefully knock out the second thousand words for the day with a character that's verbally sparring with her counselor/interrogator. Ended up doing a little in the karate studio between group class and my private lesson.
Thursday 6th14532 words, 2270 today. Eight hundred words at lunch in the quietest conference room at work. Skipped ahead to a different character and got to pull in some work from my 2009 novel. Left a note for myself to go update that novel to match the current one, removing an explicit date reference to 2009 and replacing it with "early twenty-first century." And Yellow Cat, the mammoth orange tabby that we were feeding at our old house, has now turned up in his third novel. Cats hold the secret. Brought in the big guns and started following @NaNoWordSprints on Twitter, first sprint got me 455 words.
Friday 7th16744 words, 2212 today. Made it over the thousand mark during lunch, characters are turning up in other character's scenes and causing trouble. Wonderful, word-count-inflating trouble. I'm wondering if I can break the 20k barrier this weekend, there's nothing planned except write-ins.
Week Two - Revenge of the Frost Giants
NaNoWriMo lore says that Week Two is an icy blast of cold on Week One's sunny progress. I'm definitely feeling the ill effects of not having a road-map to where this novel is going. Lots of cool characters, but not much idea of things they desperately want.
Saturday 8th20057 words, 3313 today. Off to the Crooked Tree for a morning's work. Went there a few months back and got asked "What are you doing here? It's not November." Was at 1875 for the day when I left there, want to get over the 20k line today and that's another 1381 away. NaNoWordSprints to the rescue again, 907 words in 5 and 10 minute sprints alone.
Sunday 9th22115 words, 2058 today. Just under 300 words before church, then I made it over my 2k at the central StLNaNo write-in in Clayton. Turned up at 12:30, left at 4pm. Characters from previous books in this series are turning up uninvited and demanding airtime.
Monday 10th23990 words, 1848 today. No writing at lunch, did almost all of this after work at the St Louis Bread Company near the karate studio, and some in the lobby of the studio before group class, lesson, and sparring class. It's getting dark at 4:30pm now, which is hard to bear. Didn't quite make my 2k a day bar, but I nailed the NaNoWriMo 1667 words a day.
Tuesday 11th24520 words, 530 today. Hello week 2 wall, I'm officially stuck. I have a bunch of cool characters but I'm hazy on what a lot of them want other than to be left alone to live their lives.
Wednesday 12th26374 words, 1854 today. And I'm BACK. I know how to make this story worse for my characters. All of my characters. There will be balance between universes. And explosions. I've burned my buffer of words, but if I can keep my normal 2k a day pace for the rest of the week, I'll be in a good spot.
Thursday 13th28641 words, 2267 today, and some of those were on a plane. Off work, wrote a little before my haircut and more after at home. Flying out to San Francisco for the Night of Writing Dangerously! After 11 years doing NaNoWriMo and ten completed novels, this is our first time at the NoWD. I'm writing the biggest character in St Louis into my story, the Gateway Arch, and it will play a big part in the story. Such a late night, didn't get into the hotel till past 2am Central time, midnight Pacific time.
Friday 14th30650 words, 2009 today. No snow in San Francisco, it's WARM here. T-shirt in the street warm, unlike the freezing temperatures and snow in St Louis. Wandered around downtown before heading out to Oakland and the Office of Letters and Light on the Bart train. Paul went next door to talk tech with the resident geek, Dave. I sat at the back of the office writing at the break table, after checking out the conference room with the official board member Viking helmets (to be worn when decisions are made). Left them a hedgehog drawing for the wall, and got a ride back to the Bart station with Sarah and Shelby, leaving Shelby the sole American in the car. Finished up the days word count in a cafe off Montgomery Street, we walked all over the world today. FitBit says over five miles. Put together the second regional stats update, St Louis region is over 9 million words so far.
Week Three - Stalling and Re-starting
Where our hero discovers novel writing isn't as bad as last week, and interrogates some characters. After ten years of novel writing, we made it to the Night of Writing Dangerously!
Saturday 15th32667 words, 2017 today. Wrote in Bread and Cocoa after breakfast, before heading out to Imagiknit in the Castro district. San Francisco feels like a very European city, good public transport, everyone walking around, diverse population. So many iPhones! The PDF copy of my novel so far is 90 pages long and I'm about to throw a big wrench into the story. Wrote more in Samovar Tea Lounge, across the street from Imagiknit. Left the hoodie behind today, way too warm for that extra layer. Went to the NaNoWriMo Out-Of-Towner's get-together in the evening, met Grant Faulkner, and saw the others from the office again, plus some of the LA train contingent.
Sunday 16th36275 words, 3608 today. It's the Night of Writing Dangerously! Wrote a little before breakfast and after, went out to Pier 39 to see sea lions. There were two sets of sea lions, plus a couple of introvert sea lions on their own floating platforms away form the others. Had crab for lunch and took a tram back to the hotel. Walked to the Julia Morgan Ballroom in a purple velvet dress with a hefty laptop bag. Hit the candy buffet, there were tea refills at the table, and so many people writing. Wrote over three thousand words and made up my deficit from last week's lack-of-plot-induced wobble. There were cupcakes, milk and cookies, singing and dancing, and so many words. Met Chris Baty right at the end of the night to say thanks for a decade of craziness and fun.
Monday 17th37017 words, 742 today. Leaving sunny California and going home to below-freezing, snowy, St Louis. Succumbed to the caffé bon-bon at Bread and Cocoa, double espresso shot with condensed milk, powerful stuff. Took the Bart train to the airport, lazy lunch before a 4pm flight back home. Heading from t-shirt weather to snow and below freezing till Wednesday, ugh. Still feeling the effects of not having a plan up-front but some plot appears to be happening in spite of it.
Tuesday 18th37528 words, 511 today. So tired. Horribly late night due to a delayed plane, asked a friend to sit with me in the last meeting of the day and make sure I stayed awake. Wrote a little at lunch and took the night off, fed a friend steak and kidney pie, he made brownies and we compared the UK and US versions of Top Gear. Hands down a UK win, no question.
Wednesday 19th39631 words, 2103 today. Writing in the gap between work and karate, and between karate group class and my private lesson. It's amazing what a decent night's sleep can do for you. Interrogating one of my main characters to find out what she actually wants. She got what she wanted, but what happens next for her? Also she got to make tea, proper English tea with milk and sugar. Everything's better when there's tea.
Thursday 20th40359 words, 728 today. Another lunchtime writing session in the hidden conference room at work, the one no-one knows is there. Got ambushed by an Apple Update in the evening, and a Founders Porter.
Friday 21st42831 words, 2472 today. Playing with my Villain and her minions today, and I'm ending it right before a big fight scene so I can get a good start tomorrow. This story won't be done at 50k, but I really want to find out where it's going.
Week Four - Finishing by any means necessary
Took some drastic steps to get to the end of my story, I left it a bit over the halfway point and jumped ahead to the final scene, wrapping up a four-book series.
Saturday 22nd45043 words, 2212 today. Planning to catch up to my original 2k a day goal today, nearly made it last night. Got some work done in the Crooked Tree write-in, more at home while it was raining hard, with a cat on my lap. Loving that the NaNoWriMo funding graph only has 2 unfilled books, the $1.2m and the fully-funded $1.3m. Would love to see those completed by month end, donate today!
Sunday 23rd46545 words, 1502 today. Horrible rainy grey day, perfect for staying inside. Got over the thousand mark before dinner, character threads are converging nicely.
Monday 24th46691 words, 146 today. Tired, got sent home by my instructor with no sparring after a (hopefully) minor ankle injury from skidding on a wet grocery store floor yesterday.
Tuesday 25th46978 words, 287 today. Assembling a bucket of scenes to work from, looking for the ending. I think I have some endings, but they're still a way away from here. I'm going to write some of the later scenes and skip ahead.
Wednesday 26th49032 words, 2054 today. Wrote the final scene for my four-part series. I'm missing about 20 scenes before I can officially consider this thing done, but I have an ending for two of my main characters (three if you count the cat, and the cat is crucial). I'm working backwards and it's showing me what needs to go in the space in between. Also today it snowed.
Thursday 27th50464 words, 1432 today. Happy Thanksgiving! Crossed the 50k mark with the scent of roasting turkey wafting through the house and my faithful cat by my side. I have at least 17 more scenes to write, which could each be a thousand words, so I'm not done yet, but I'm filling in the gap between the middle and the end now. I love my series ending. But for now, I can knit again, and read. Snow still on the ground.
Friday 28thTook the day off writing, ate turkey leftovers for 2 meals, started knitting an orange hat, relaxed at home with the husband.