Week Three Sprintin'
Mon 2004-11-15 22:24:30 (in context)
- 20,294 words (if poetry, lines) long
- 0.00 hrs. revised
Lookit dat. Put a little extra wordage in today's novel-writing session. Almost 300 words extra. Unfortunately, the extra sprint got me where I don't know where to go next. Tomorrow is, as always, another day; maybe I'll have figured it out by then.
Diane has had her second adventure, in which she slips into the unicorn's role as healer and protector. She also learns about the unicorn's attraction to innocence when her road home takes her past her friend's house. She finds herself in the conflicted position of seeing her friend through a unicorn's eyes. There's a lot of tension there, and none of it is really resolved when her friend comes over the next day to tell her about his close encounter. She has to pretend to be all excited and stuff when in fact she's going oh, crap, please don't talk about it.
See, it's a superhero story. Superheroes often find themselves discussing themselves with close friends and romantic interests who don't know their secret identity. Black and Blue Magic is in that way a superhero story too. Harry's discomfort when his neighbor tells him that she saw an angel is kind of what I was going for in this scene, only for Diane the gut-writhing apprehension is twisted up a bit tighter and there's less comic relief. I don't know why there's so little comic relief going on here. Maybe I'm taking it too seriously. Maybe Diane hasn't yet escaped MarySuedom, and it's myself I'm taking too seriously.
(Here ends the self-searching psychoanalysis portion of today's blog entry. Next up: NanoGoofiness!)
It's just me and SlyCrow today doing the pot-luck write-in thing. I rewarmed last week's chili, which only gets better over time, and devilled me up some eggs 'cause we're behind in our household Royal Crest Dairy delivery consumption. SlyCrow brought some very nice cornbread. We thought maybe Multivitamim and Willow might show tonight, but as of yet there has been no sign. We're listening to the Blue Man Group audio CD and the sound of our own typing.
I'm thinking I should actively seek out people to write with more often, even after NaNo is over - there's a certain amount of peer-pressure energy that keeps me from Alt-Tabbing over to Skilljam or Insaniquarium (or some other time-waster video game). I mean, how can I slack off when there are other people in the room hard at work?
I got a call from hubby-o'-mine, saying that after his gaming session (Dungeons And Dragons I think they're playing tonight) he'll have to go right back to the office and I probably won't see him until 5:00 AM tomorrow. That probably means we're both going to be sleeping in. I'm on a Mon/Wed/Fri schedule at RRSR, so I'll be home all day tomorrow. I may just try out the "6,000 Word Jet-Pack" idea that Chris Baty writes about in the Week Three Pep Talk chapter of his book. It goes something like this:
Pick a day when you have nothing to do. Get up and do three 30-minute writing sessions in a row. Go do something else for awhile. Lather. Rinse. Repeat for a total of 3 cycles of 3 30-minute sessions each. For bonus points, do it again the next day. Lord your 12,000 word jump over all your local NaNo buddies.
Thus, in the next couple of blog entries you will either see some lording-it-over going on here, or else some coulda-shoulda-didn't whinging. Stay tuned to find out which one it'll be.
Oooh, suspenseful!