The Real Treasure Was the Novel We Wrote Along the Way

All right, we're back for the post-NaNo wrap-up. I didn't mean to wait quite this long, but here we are. So… oh boy, where do I begin?

I guess I'll start with point of view, because that's what I talked about at the beginning of November. I did keep up the system of alternating between the two siblings (with a couple exceptions, I'll get to that in a bit). It was interesting to decide which point of view a scene should be told from. Some were obvious, because only one or the other was present, but some had both characters present, so it was not so clear. I did find that ending the chapter and switching POV in the middle of those scenes worked pretty well to give both perspective on whatever was going on.

But then there were a couple of scenes that really needed to be from a third POV, so there are also two short chapters that break the alternating pattern. They are from the POV of a character who can see the future. Which brings me to the next thing: tense. Now, I'd say the majority of fiction is written in past tense ("She baked a cake"). There are also books written in present tense ("She bakes a cake"), often Young Adult fiction. But you never really see things written in future tense ("She will bake a cake"). And what better time to try out future tense than in a chapter in the POV of a precognitive character? It was fun. I would definitely never write a whole book like that. But it was a very interesting thing to try. Especially as the future comes to them in a big jumble, and not necessarily in any order. It works fine for a short chapter, but would be infuriating (to both reader and writer) in a longer work.

Secrets of a Small Town

So here I am trying to plot out this new idea. As mentioned last time, there were a series of real life deaths that lack a satisfying explanation. I'm going to fictionalize them and give the story a proper conclusion. 

But. These three deaths are the only thing I know about the story. I can do literally anything with the rest of the narrative. Is this realistic fiction, or is something supernatural afoot? Who are the other characters? Who is trying to solve the mystery? Who is trying to keep the mystery from being solved? I have no idea, and the possibilities are endless. 

I've created a thought-dump document, where I am just putting anything and everything that could fit into this story. I have a vague idea about a main character. There may be a love interest (for once), and I am resisting the urge to kill them off. 

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.

Monsters and Mayhem

I have a lot of things in my head.

I've had a few random ideas for my current story, involving time travel, human sacrifice, the usual. I also have this gnawing in my brain, in my very soul, to finish The Long Road.

I don't know why that story is so important. I mean, every year, I sit down to write a NaNo novel, and I say, "This will be the one." The Great American Novel. The story that's going to change the world, even if it's just my little corner of it. It's the story that will make sense and I'll be able to show it to everyone without cringing. Every year, I say that.

And every year, I write a pile of complete nonsense, with a few good gems sprinkled throughout, the needles in my haystack.

A Story About Something

Writing Desks and Ravens: Freedom Edition.

And what's more free than freewriting?

I've started writing for Camp NaNo. I still have pretty much no idea what it's about. Some kind of Lovecraftian horror, I guess, judging from what I have.

Basically, I started with a single scene that popped into my head. This one tiny moment. Just… this:

Blood seeped through his fingers as he lay in the grass. In the dim light, the indistinct form of the creature edged closer. He was done for. There was no escaping now.

The thing was only six feet from him. It could have turned and finished him off. But it didn’t. It kept moving, right on past him. He wasn’t a threat anymore. He was already dead.

Forking Roads

This post is being written late, because I got super distracted yesterday. By a book. Not one I was writing. One that I was reading.

I've been big on road trips lately. The Long Road was a road trip. My little rom-com involves an albeit short trip where two people get to know each other. And I just read (in seven hours) John Green's An Abundance of Katherines, which kicks off its main story with, that's right, a road trip.

I think this is a sign that I need to get back to at least one of my stories.

Where Am I Going?

I moved the blog post to Saturday so that I could spend all day working on it.  So as you might guess from this very late post, I have spent all day doing… not that. I've been "thinking" about it, I tell myself. I do an awful lot of thinking.

Lately I've been thinking about this story I'm working on. Namely, what should happen next. I haven't written it yet because I don't know. I don't know if it's going in a good direction, as is.

As I'm sure I mentioned before, one advantage to publishing episodically is that you can get feedback along the way, right away. You can see if a character or a storyline is doing well, and that gives you some indication of where you might want to take the story.

Stalling Out

Basically the moment I dove into this Waffle House idea, I was tired of it. I know, it seemed like so much fun. I thought, this will solve all my problems, they'll just pass through the Waffle House to an infinite number of worlds, and I'll have all the worlds I need.

But, It's. Not. Working.

So Infinite Steve: Evil Edition (who is actually called Esteban) has kidnapped Andrea, because a series of fortune cookies told him to. Essentially, he thinks that she is the key to getting back to his reality, because the fortunes led him to her. They were:

• Enjoy the good luck a companion brings you.
• When the universe closes a door, it opens a window.
• A chance meeting opens new doors to success and friendship.

Open Doors

So it has come to this.

The Waffle House.

Now, I don't know a lot about Waffle House. We don't have them here. What I do know is they never close. Even in the face of natural disaster, if they can be open, they will be open.

I also know that the Waffle House is a nexus between dimensions.

Unexpectedly Jentacular

All right, this post is going up super late, but here it is. It's been crazy busy lately, with not a lot of exciting progress on the writing front.

I've moved beyond the timeline splitting part of the story, and our heroes have continued on, hoping to make it to that all important something in California. Whatever it is. They would have just kept driving if they could, not stopping for a second. But, well, the limitations of modern machinery. So they have to stop for gas.

And at first, everything seems okay, like all the weird shit is behind them.

Portals and Plot Holes

This story is getting weird. I mean, I know it was supposed to be weird, but then all of a sudden there was a cult, sacrificing our heroes to their gods. Okay. Why not. Then apparently they were cannibals, just because there happened to be a kitchen nearby. I did not plan for this.

And now I've written them into a bit of a pickle and I'm not sure how to get them out. It was all because I realized they were getting away too easily, and I had to make it more of a challenge. Now it's… too much of a challenge.

Honestly, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to skip to their daring escape and figure out the how later. To be honest, I think I messed up with my interdimensional portal placement, and that's going to need to be fixed later. But you know what we say about that?

It's December's problem.

Murder, Mayhem, and Small Towns

Taking my own advice from last time, I jumped right in to the meat of the story and immediately killed someone. You know how I like doing that.

But by finally getting my first taste of murder, I opened the floodgates to the rest of all that nonsense I had brewing. By killing one guy, I've introduced the Hitchhiker (even though we won't find out who she is until she returns later), the Sheriff (who, despite all initial appearances, is not here to help), and a small town that's going to be a confluence of weirdness and dimension hopping. And it has the best introduction to a town I've ever written (as though I've ever managed to describe a town before),

Check it:

It was the very definition of a farming town. Obscenely small, where everyone no doubt knew everyone else because they all showed up to the same family reunion. And no one knew who had invited them. Aunt Judy brought a Jell-O mold with vegetables in it, for some damn reason. Who the hell invited Aunt Judy?

Rough Roads

For some reason the super fun, super random, super easy story is super hard to write. I'm way behind on word count, and the story is dragging like it's trying to pull lead weights through the Swamp of Sadness.

I have all these great ideas, about divergent timelines, but they have to happen later, or I'll run out of ideas later, instead of running out of ideas now. I mean, I have divergent timelines, and alternate realities, and time loops, and a potentially haunted cooler, and none of it's happening right now.

Why?

The Road Ahead

I had an idea, recently, about naming chapters or sections in my NaNo novel after road features. I picture, in a print version, at the beginning of each section is an image of a road sign, and then the applicable title.  Like this:

So the bit with the diverging timeline would be called Fork Ahead. And Roundabout, pictured above, has something to do with a time loop. Those are the only ones I'm sure of at the moment. As though I'm ever sure of anything.

Interpersonal Relationships

I meant to spend the morning writing, but I got distracted by a genealogy search. All because I wanted to know how old the little desk in my living room is. Answer: about a hundred years old. Maybe a hundred and ten, depending on what age boys start carving their names in things.

I saw an episode of Pawn Stars yesterday, and now I'm on a history kick. Of course, if you know me, you'd know my whole life is a history kick.

Anyway, then I got distracted and traced my family back 1,000 years. What does that have to do with today's post? Not a damn thing, probably, but it's part of the reason it's up so late.

Once More With Feeling

The relationship between my two characters is still in the early stages. So what did I decide to do? Separate them. Now, I don't know if this was a Good Move™ because I don't read romance. I don't know the rules.

"Well then, you should learn the rules."

Why you… you're absolutely right. So I've done a little research, grown a little as a person, all since the last paragraph, and I've learned one thing I'm definitely failing at here.

The reader is supposed to identify with the heroine.

This is a chick-centric genre, after all. You should feel for the heroine, as she goes about her… adventuring and romancing and whatnot. So she has to have *shudder* emotions. At the moment Catherine's upset and kind of pissed because she's all alone and Nick may or may not have gotten himself stupidly killed. But, boy, do I not know how to describe that without making her into a puddle of emotional goo. Like, she's either emotionless or pathetic. There is no in between.

I literally googled "how to write emotions." It did not help.

Lost in the Labyrinth

First off, happy Independence Day. Or, if you're not in the US, happy Tuesday.

Camp NaNo: July Edition has begun. I've thrown myself, half-assed, whole-heartedly into it. As per usual.

I kind of have a plot. I'm still working on an outline. I'd like it to be a little more sketched out before I get too far into the story, but we can't always get what we want. I'd have to actually know where it's going in order to draw out a road map.

Right now, my biggest concern is that my occult detective has some occult skills. Of some kind. I don't actually know what they are. He finds things, somehow. That's why Miss DeWitt hires him. She knows the Lower World, to a degree, but it's a labyrinth down there. She needs him to narrow down the search. But I don't know how he does it. That seems kind of important, doesn't it?