NaNoWriMo Update

I mentioned before I felt like a had a win in me this year. That has been seriously challenged this past week. I had a surprise medical issue appear which kept me in the hospital for two entire days. I feebly wrote about 100 words in that time. Since then I've been a little slow to get back into the writing routine, and blogging on top of that has been impossible. In the last three days, though, I have recovered my creative momentum to some extent. I have managed close to or over 2,000 words a day for three days in a row. I'm still very much behind over all, but I'm catching up. There was one day this week I was 8,000 words behind! That's when I doubted. Things are looking much better going into weekend two so I can again say, I think I'm going to win this year.

I big chunk of the story I've written involves the angel-being giving Rasmus formulas for various scientific breakthroughs which weren't really (so far as I know) part of the Seventeenth Century. The problem is I don't know much, if anything, about chemistry myself let alone what type of substances would have been common to an alchemy bench in that period. I could do the research right now, but that kind of detail is somewhat against the spirit of NaNoWriMo. Don't make sure it's right, just make sure it progresses. So to that end I have avoiding details and I've tried not to worry about chemical names. I've just thrown stuff together: Merchant's gall, silver tincture and Carpathian red are names I have used for chemicals. What at these supposed to be, really? It doesn't matter! Keep writing.

I didn't have a clear plot when I began, but one keeps emerging as I progress. Rasmus has cured a plague with his new angel science which I never intended for him to even confront. That story arc is almost over though, so I'll need to introduce something else soon. Progress! Keep writing! Right now my word count is 18378 words.
By now I should have 21671 words.

Off to a Good Start

First of all, I want to point out the Kickstarter we've been running has ended with great success! We ended with 139% of our goal raised. Thank you to all our backers! This is a great showing for a first-time company. We'll have the comic, custom dice, two bonus adventures and forty different animals because of the stretch goals we reached. I'll be posting about this project here throughout the year as Brandon and I get everything written and tested and ready to go, but you can follow along on the updates page as well.

The timing has worked out great. Just as the Kickstarted ended on 31 October, NaNoWriMo began on 1 November. I am very happy with the progress so far. Having a good idea has been a great help. I've chugged along to a little over the minimum word count each day so far. I'm not over my count for the day yet today, but the day is far from over. I say I had a plan, but that isn't really true. I had no idea what the plot of the story was going to be beyond the vaguest rise and fall of the action. The only think I was clear on was the journal format. That has been going well. I've always loved the books where part of the story was in the “extra” information on the page. Information hidden in the footnotes or encoded in the dates of diary entries has always appealed to me. I am getting to do that here. Somehow it's great fun to skip three days in the dates and come back in with my protagonist making an oblique reference to what else he has been up to. That is where my plot is slowly building up. It's like Shakespeare, a little, where all the action happens off stage and you just have the characters talking about how they feel about the action in soliloquy.

Not that I'm writing Shakespeare, but I am tying to affect an “old-timey” style. My story is supposed to take place in 1648. I don't know if I have an accurate “old-timey” vocabulary for that year. In fact, I would say I don't. My word choice is much more Nineteenth Century, I'm sure. I can't actually think of anything I have read from the Seventeenth Century other than the King James Version of the Bible. The great thing about NaNoWriMo, though, is that getting it “right” doesn't much matter on the first pass. If it sounds old, it'll read as “old.” I can always go back and fix it to the right kind of old if I develop the novel beyond the writing of it this month!

Here's a taste:

I have re-read again the passage from Goloksh. So convenient to have it written out so near at had. Again, I am drawn to de Chapallon's straight-forward amateur's method of simply asking the crystal whence its power derives. The practiced magus often shies away from direct confrontations with power because he has come to know their hazards. I suspect the first small text I transcribed under its influence is the same text he records. With Goloksh I pine for the proof of this theory by the actual page itself! On what misapplied hearth did that great artifact go up in the halls of Savoy? Alas. As I say, I believe I have begun as he did and this text we both produced is the answer to the question he posed. In short it is the proper appellation of the power to which the medium of this black stone opens the way.

Right now my word count is 6700 words.
By now I should have 6668 words.