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My post-it note outline for Cold Blooded is going pretty well. I've been having ideas, filling in blanks, figuring shit out. It's also making me a bit nervous.

There are points at which Des' new human friends find out what he is (a vampire, if you're just joining us). The first (friend A) was a few scenes before the midpoint, and the second (friend B) was at the midpoint. I moved friend A's discovery a little later, to the midpoint. Then what about friend B? Oh, I moved that a quarter of the book earlier to the First Plot Point.

And this concerns me. Like this plot is a precarious Jenga tower and if I move the wrong piece, the whole thing is going to come crashing down. I had briefly considered Friend B not finding out at all, and now I pull this shit? What am I doing?

When Inciting Is Not Exciting

I'm starting to wonder about my inciting incident. Is it the thing I think it is?

I've seen many times that in a murder mystery, the Inciting Incident is when someone dies, or the body is discovered. So that's where I had it.

And then the First Plot Point is when the main character is irreversibly pulled into the adventure.

The thing is, my first murder doesn't really… affect anything? It happens "off screen" and the main characters hear about it via a news alert. It creates a bit of atmospheric tension (just the tiniest bit), and fewer people are going out and buying ice cream.

And then my First Plot Point was where the main character ends up getting involved. He gets in a direct confrontation with this serial killer. And then he discovers a body. Now things are starting to happen. I think. That's where I left off.

Purposeful Wandering

When I started my revision adventure, I made a list of all the scenes in Cold Blooded. Then I went through and marked all the ones the were important, and the ones that weren't. Scenes that needed to stay vs scenes that needed to be cut.

A lot of the scenes at the beginning that were marked for deletion involved main character Des just… wandering around. Like, he'd walk around town, or around the college campus, and he'd run into people and have awkward conversations and leave. Nothing really important was happening, so I declared that we needed to skip all that.

And because of that, my beginning is very sparse at the moment, as I have yet to figure out what else should go there to fill out the world and the characters and the plot.

Then I had a sudden realization the other day. The wandering was not for nothing. It was important. Des goes wandering around town and around campus because he's looking for a connection. Not that he'd know what to do with it if he found it. Like a dog chasing a car. He wants to go out and be a person and make friends. But when he actually encounters people, the reality that he's a weirdo vampire coming off of a period of near-total isolation comes crashing down and he has to make his exit.

Making Friends

Revision, or rather, rewriting of Cold Blooded continues. Yeah, this is what I'm going to be talking about all the time for the foreseeable future, so buckle up, buttercup.

A new hurdle has presented itself, in that I need to know how to make friends. That is, I need to characters to become friends within the next, say, 20,000 words. Which, now that I say it, is a lot of words, and I should be fine. But there's still the how. I can't make friends in real life, how am I supposed to make them in fiction? Basically, Des, my main character, has recently met another character, and they need to reach a certain level of trust by the Midpoint.

But, like I said, I have about 20,000 words to get there. So let's focus on the here and now. I'm currently writing a scene in which the ice cream shop is featured on an episode of some show on an ersatz Food Network. To be honest, I don't know if this part is going to make it to the final cut, but I'm going to act like it is until that decision is made.

Fifteen Minutes of Fame

So listen, I'm sort of famous now.

I mean, not like, really. But kind of.

Here's what happened. I wrote out a story, a true story of a local murder, not something I made up, and I sent it to a popular true crime comedy podcast. And my god, they read it. They read words that I wrote, and those words were heard by several million people.

And now, all I can think is that I want more of my words to reach more millions of people. Guess I'd better get that novel finished.

So what's stopping me? Mostly me.

For a First Effort This Feels Kind of Last Ditch

NaNoWriMo is over. Thank God. Did I reach 50,000 words? I did not. Is that okay? I guess.

My actual novel, the space story Wandering Star, ended at around 25,000 words. Not a good sign. Basically, I suddenly knew how it was going to end, but not anything else that happened before that, so I metaphorically steered that ship straight into the ground and brought it to the end.

Then I limped my way up to just past 34,000 by adding to a story I left unresolved three years ago, and then writing/starting several short stories based on some of the numerous writing prompts I have saved. My plan was to make up the 20,000 words I needed by writing at least 1,000 words on 20 different prompts. In like two days. One of which was Thanksgiving. So that was easier said than done. I think I ended up doing three different prompts, two of which are more or less complete little stories, and one of which is still in progress. It keeps taking turns I wasn't expecting and I'd like to see where it's going with this.

The Trouble With Triangles

Am I writing a romantic subplot?

I'm certainly not trying to. But it sort of seems like it's heading that way. Even though I'm trying to stop it.

Help me.

My resistance fighter chick is starting to get very touchy-feely with my space cop dude and I don't know what to do. I don't know if I can make her stop. She is very stubborn. Oh no. I can see where this is going. It might be inevitable.

Oh no.

This is not meant to be that kind of story.

Lost in Space

NaNoWriMo is underway and my god I am not prepared.

I told myself I wouldn't get behind again. I'm already behind. I've got all these ideas and somehow… no words.

Well, not no words. I have a few words. Some of them are ridiculous, and therefore, my favorite words.

Case in point, this piece of inspired literature:

The Captain of the Corps was a man of about fifty, with an authoritative moustache. Men would follow that moustache into hell itself. His name (the man, not the moustache) was Reginald Shepard. His friends called him Reg. His subordinates called him Captain. His moustache called him home.

Fucking amazing.

Forget About Details and Decisions Now

NaNoWriMo starts in less than a week. Am I ready? Not remotely. Am I going to dive into it anyway? Absolutely.

I'm going to pants the shit out of this novel.

For those not "in the know," pantsing is writing by the seat of your pants (a phrase which also makes no god damn sense). You have maybe a vague idea of plot, or a few characters, and you make up the whole damn thing as you go.

My plan for this year was to create a beautiful and full outline. Clearly that is not how I roll.

Bumps in the Night

Urban legends. Something lurking in the dark, that will snap up bad children, lest they learn to behave.

That's why there are cannibals on my spaceship.

They're an urban myth, or whatever the spaceship equivalent of "urban" is. Eat your vegetables or the cannibals will get you. (Joke's on them, due to the impracticality of livestock on a spaceship, everything's vegetables.)

But maybe something is lurking down in the lower decks. Something with a craving for meat. Something just waiting for some unsuspecting victim to wander too close.