author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Hey, check it out. Progress on the novel and progress on the blog. I got most of the blog-and-novel-editing interface done today.

I also found out that this year's XOOP BBS over at NaNoWriMo.org is a bit more secure than last year, when I was able to ship my novel stats data over directly to the page that edits my profile. This year, I can't affect the fields on the form page, and I can't call the form processing page. I suppose that's all good security practice on the part of XOOP, but I really wanted to be able to edit my stats both on this page and on NaNoWriMo.org all with a single push of a button. So instead I have the Edit Novel Submission on my web page pull up NaNoWriMo.org in a new window, where I go ahead and make the same edits all over again.

The novel is starting off slowly, mostly because I don't really know the main characters very well yet. And also because I haven't had much chance to indulge in dialogue except in the "framing" scenes - that is, the scenes of Diane some sixty or so years into the future telling the story to her grandchildren, which scenes act as a structural frame for the story itself. It's a better situation than last year, where I was trying to let character write plot on the fly. At least this year if I get stuck I can skip ahead and write the unicorn-and-lion scene, or the confrontation with Diane's father's latest girlfriend. Or I can make up a classroom scene with the kid she's going to fall in love with eventually. And writing those scenes at least will teach me more about who Diane is and exactly what her gripes are. But since I still don't know her very well, and I haven't had much of an opportunity to let her find her voice, it's slow going.

Anyway, today my task was to get Diane through the initial confrontation over dinner (initial to the book, but nothing new to her really) and over to the point where she gets mad and storms out onto the balcony to be alone and incidentally discovers the magical properties of the unicorn horn talisman. I had to decide, too, exactly how the talisman works. That decision both proceeds from and affects the way in which she accidentally stumbles into her first transformation.

I mean, how do you get a sixteen-year-old girl to put a strange rock in her mouth, or hold it up to her forehead, or whatever? In the initial dream I had that led to this plot, I had to hold the piece of horn tightly in my fist while it was wet. But dreams don't have to be logical. Nor do they have to be clean. I mean, in my dream, the only way I could tell that I'd transformed was by looking at my shadow. I was continually aware of this lumpy piece of ivory in my hand. And even if Diane, in clean fiction, holds the talisman in a hand that disappears from consciousness as the hoof takes its place, well, how does she then turn back? Does she somehow flex the two halves of the hoof and let the talisman fall out? And what sense does it make to associate the horn with a stone caught in the unicorn's hoof? See, I have all these logical concerns that my dream was too inconsiderate to address for me.

In the end I had her find the talisman physically pleasing to the touch, like a hematite worry stone is, all cool and smooth and round, so she's just standing there and rolling it about her hands and face when she accidentally gets it in the right place. It sticks there and triggers the transformation.

Wow. It sounds really dumb when I put it like that. Eh, I may yet change it. But in any case, the question of how she turns back to human form is unresolved. It seems kind of violent to have her wedge her horn in a crevace and break it off. And I don't think the unicorn's ghost will let her get away with that. Maybe we'll just go all Deep Wizardry and have her shed the horn when she consciously reasserts her human thoughts. When in doubt, usurp an existing fantasy convention for your own nefarious schemes. Har.

So tonight I left off with Diane-the-younger running north on four legs, not yet aware that there's a ghost in this body with her, and Diane-the-elder going misty-eyed as the children ask her what it was like. The latter of those I'll go ahead and put up as my excerpt now, because I'm rather proud of it. It's a little purple yet, but I think it's got real promise.

See you tomorrow, when I'll be blogging live from The Tea Spot!