author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

As Mr. Baty writes in No Plot? No Problem!, plot is simply the movement of characters over time. Therefore, if the plot appears stuck, let your characters get to moving.

And if you characters don't want to move, find some new characters.

Where do you find characters? You find them in real life. Go people watching.

I did a bit of that yesterday, albeit unhappily. See, the Denver RTD (bus) system involves a necessary evil known as the Westminster Park'n'Ride. It has platforms on either side of Highway 36. Getting back to Boulder from Federal and 32nd involves taking the #31 north to the West Platform, using the pedestrian overpass to walk across the highway, and then catching a westbound #B at the East Paltform – all the while hoping and praying that the B doesn't arrive while you're halfway across.

Part of this dilemma, I admit, I should have avoided by taking an earlier 31. Instead, I took the one scheduled to get to the Park'n'Ride at 10:12 PM. The B is scheduled to depart at 10:19.

I had my bike. But it had snowed, and the pedestrian flyover was treacherous with slush. If I'd tried to ride on the corkscrew ascent and descent, I'd have risked repeating the accident I had that morning on the eastbound Goose Creek bike path where it switchbacks to go under Foothills. (I'd post pictures of my face, just to get the point across, but you'd think I was just fishing for sympathy. So leave it at this: it's not pretty. No stitches, though. Apply hanky to bleeding spots and get on with the day. I was lucky. Wear your bicycle helmets, boys and girls!)

So I'm about 2/3 the way across when, yes, the B shows up. And me, I start hollering, "Stop that bus!" at the top of my lungs as the bus disgorges its passengers. One of them I swear looks up at me. But the B pulls away as I limp the rest of the way down to the platform.

And as a couple who got off the bus cross paths with me, doubtless on their way to pick up their car, I say to them, "I wish someone had told the bus driver to wait!"

And the look they gave me can only be described as, "Forgive me, but exactly what species are you?" Kind of a cross between "And I should care... why?" and "Funny, I thought I heard something. Must have been the wind."

It was that look that just devastated me. I swear, I sat down in the bus shelter and sobbed. Maybe I was just weak from gulping cold air and running as fast as I could, but I was a wreck. I sat there and just howled, knowing I'd be waiting half and hour in the cold for the next bus and that the people I'd appealed to simply couldn't be bothered to acknowledge my existence.

By the time I finished having my little tantrum, I had made my decision. These people were going to be in my novel.

I got to the IHOP Write-In a little late, where Kandybar and her friend Dana were already hard at work, and I jumped right into a climactic ending scene in my novel. Diane has just seen her Older Disreputable Boyfriend shoot her class mate (and evolving love interest) and drive off, and she goes running out in the street to try to flag down some help. That couple, those evil uncaring unsympathetic lizards, are driving the only car passing by. And they give her that very look. Excuse me, but... why should I care?

As writerly revenge goes, it isn't nearly as satisfying as the short story I just submitted to SciFiction, which story was "inspired" by the excreble behavior of a family of children sharing a flight with me from Phoenix to Denver. In that story, well-deserved harm actually comes to those kids, whereas in my novel, that couple are merely revealed as the rejects from the human race they truly are.

But still. It was sweet. And worth about 1,000 words.

Ha-ha. Off to take the car to the shop for its check-up now. I hope to get a good 'nother 1,000 words done in the waiting room. Talk to ya later...

Chris Baty knows! He knows with the knowing of many, many people who know! His knowing is neither to be no-no'd nor naysay'd, because he knows!

The "Week Two Wall" is real. It is no joke. It exists, and it is out to get you.

Lookit! I don't even have enough words yet to rightfully consider myself in week 2! But there's that damn wall. It is a wall full of slogans, one on every demon-inscribed brick, and the slogans say things like, "This novel is crap," "You call that a plot?" "You realize it's completely unoriginal, right?" and "Of course you don't know what happens next! The characters are all stupid!"

And of course there's this: I cannot continue writing days upon days of "Diane woke up. She went to school. She went home again, possibly running into Important Characters. She then either turned into a unicorn and ran around the Front Range all night, or she decided she was too scared or maybe that she needed her sleep. She went to sleep. She woke up and went to school."

Obviously, compression has to happen somewhere. I believe a rereading of Snyder's Black And Blue Magic and Season of Ponies is in order. Both are wonderful examples of the sub-genre of teenage supernatural coming-of-age fantasies to which I am attempting to contribute. They follow their protagonists over an entire summer, and somehow manage not to go "and then she woke up, and then she went to find Ponyboy, and she either found him and had more wonderful adventures or she didn't find him and was sad, and then she went home, had dinner, and went to bed, and then she woke up again."

But first I have to reach my 2000 words for the day. Midnight is fast approaching. There is no time to reread favorite books.

So I guess for now I will walk into that Wall and attempt to knock it over with my forehead, and write how Diane gets home from school and decides whether her evening plans will involve running around on all fours in the mountains again.

Mad props to all the other NaNo'ers out there who are doubtless having angsty Week Two Wall moments of their own. We can do this, y'all.

His name is Uno. In this picture, he looks like he takes after Mommy. But in fact he is a lazy ass.

The pot-luck write-in at my place mentioned yesterday, did in fact happen today. In attendance were myself, SlyCrow, and épinards. Those of us who were writing did in fact actually reach our writing goals (/me glances at 2007 word diff between this blog entry and yesterday's), and we stuffed our faces full of - lessee, how'd I put it on the forums? "Kick-ass chili and mouthwatering homemade bread." Yummmmmmmm.

I did a whole bunch of house-cleaning before everyone showed up. Don't thank me. It was a selfish and calculating act. I cleaned up before I started writing, so that when I started writing, I couldn't procrastinate by cleaning the bathroom. Because - get this - it was already clean. And, unlike some, I don't reclean clean things. I find other ways to procrastinate. Ways that actually serve a purpose.

Like, getting up and spooning myself another helping of chili with sour cream and green onions and cheese on top.

Diane has made it home and gone to bed and woken up and gone to school and started to come home from school. All of which came out, really, no more interestingly than that. (Except for the near encounter with the cougar. Dun-dun-dunnnnnnh.) Now she's gone and run into Mitch, the Older And Disreputable Boyfriend Type. Mitch exists in my head as a sort of mobile grunt that has the potential to explode into violence. I guess all characters have to start somewhere. He started as a plot necessity, so I'm not exactly surprised at his current flatness.

Tomorrow is Tuesday, and I have no actual events planned except going into the office and slotting more data into a database. (I have this part-time job that, among other things, involves fixing a very broken MS Access database. This means I have to relearn Access. And cuss out its various "I'm helping! Bizzaro! I'm helping!" wizards.) Lots of time to witter over trying to write the next 2000 words.

Wish me luck!

P.S. Oh hey. It turned out that there was a copy of No Plot? No Problem! on the shelf at the Boulder Bookstore. What luck! Now, there is no copy there at all, because I bought it and brought it home. As for Pen On Fire, that one I had to order.

OK, check it out. I have 43,620 words left to write, and 23 days (not counting today) to write them in. That comes out to some 1,900 words a day. So if I write 2K a day from here on out - and I did write 2K today - then I'll be able to take a couple days off and still win!

We had a great turn out at the Tea Spot social today. In attendance were, in order of appearance, Kandybar, SlyCrow, mimsyborogove, and Willow. And myself, of course. I'm vortexae. And we all managed to cram ourselves into a single booth. Everyone's gone now (and I'll head for home myself after I get this posted), but then it's past 5:00 PM now, and people started arriving around 12:30, so I think we all managed to do our time.

Kandybar wins the prize for words written so far and words written here, today. But as you can see I made some progress myself, as did mimsyborogove. And in between paragraphs there was some chatting too. It was a nice sort of Write-in/Meet-up hybrid. And now I am thoroughly caffeinated. (I highly recommend the "Golden Thunder" Darjeeling now available at the Tea Spot.)

Tomorrow we'll be having a write-in at my house. I plan to make some vegetarian chili with garnishes of grated cheddar and sour cream ready to go. SlyCrow and mimsyborogove are likely to be there, and if it goes well we'll do it again next week Monday too when Willow might be able to join us.

I'm really liking this write-in thing. Last year we didn't really have any, and if I wanted to actually write at the meet-ups I had to be all antisocial and stuff. But this year it seems, like I said, that the line between social gathering and writing date has blurred in a yummy way so that it's easy to shift between the two modes. It helps when you have a whole bunch of people show up ready to write and socialize too; that way you don't feel like you're the only one A) talking everyone's ear off, or B) ignoring everyone and furiously typing.

I got Diane through most of her first transformation scene, and up to the point where she realizes she'll have to cooperate with the ghost in order to get home again. I left off right in the middle of a paragraph, and I'll probably do a bit more writing tonight just so I can see her home by bedtime. Which may mean that I'll earn a third day off sometime this month. Hurrah!

So I'm going to head to the Boulder Bookstore now, place an order for Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem!, and pick up a copy (if they have one) of Pen On Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide To Igniting The Writer Within. And then I'm going to head home.

All in all... another good day. *happy sigh*

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!

Oh, the suspense! Ah, the unremittant cliffhanger! Ooh, the now-properly-working word count bar!

So, yeah. I was able to drive away from Gallup just fine. The sun drove off those few flakes of snow, and I woke up feeling like a McDonald's burger under the warming lamp. Gallup was not a problem.

Raton, however, was another story. Someone please kick some sense into me next time I drive through Raton in early winter, OK? Remind me what a really good idea it is to check the weather, and how nice it is to have alternate driving plans. See, I didn't make it to my precinct's polling place on time on November 2nd, 'cause there was this snow problem going on.

So here I am getting sleepy again, it's going on 6:30 in the afternoon, and the rain is getting harder and colder as I approach Raton. In fact, it's snow. Blowing snow. Did I mention I was sleepy? And the steering wheel seems to have a lot more play than I'm used to. So I figure, stop in Raton, park at another Holiday Inn Express, check the weather online, see if it's going to get better soon or worse, figure out whether I should wait out the weather or push on ahead. The first exit into Raton looks to be what I want. I put on my right turn signal, slow down, begin moving into the exit lane – and then, because the road is now composed entirely of black ice, proceed to do a graceful 180 that leaves me looking scared and stupid in the triangle of asphalt between the highway and the exit lane. Thank the Gods no one was coming, 'cause otherwise you might be in suspense for the foreseeable future without me to write the rest of this story.

With the fear of the Reaper now firmly settled into the back of my skull, I inch down the exit lane at about 10 mph until I finally join up with the main drag. The Holiday Inn Express is on my left. I get into the next left turn lane, do a U-turn that I hope isn't illegal, and suddenly realize that the road now looks really familiar. "Ah. This is where the I-25 S business loop through Raton merges back into I-25 South. I'm getting back on the highway. Shit." The next damn exit was about 3 miles down, at I think Highway 64, which gets you to Taos. I didn't go to Taos, of course. I turned around and headed back to Raton, noticing now how the blowing snow diminishes visibility when you're headed north much, much worse than when you're headed south. Noticing also that this time I was not alone on the highway – a semi was coming up behind me.

Thankfully, this time I managed not to spin around when exiting. And I figured out that instead of U-turning I had to take a left, and then another left, and then another left, and then a right. This Holiday Inn Express was not built to be conveniently accessible, let me tell you. And if the snow plows hadn't yet gotten to I-25, then this little series of town roads wasn't even on their schedule. But I managed to toddle into a parking spot and fight the wind and get into the hotel lobby.

WiFi access: Check! Comfy sofa: Check! Cell phone: No signal. Damn. Ok, pay phone? Check!

Hope of getting home tonight? Nuh-uh. Hope of getting a room for the night? Keep dreaming. Raton Pass was closed, and everything in Raton was booked full of stranded travellers. "Try going to Las Vegas. 90 miles to the south." No thank you. I'd rather camp out on the couch.

I spent the next few hours on the phone and on email with my husband and one of the other election judges, apologizing in my most grovelling fashion for not being able to open the polls with them after all, and thanking them for running interference for me. I can't remember when the last time I had to have someone call me at a pay phone was. It makes the other folks in the lobby look at you funny, I'll say that much. I did some gabbing with other stranded folks. There was a couple who were driving someone else's car from point A to point B for them. There were three nice ladies and their two dogs, a mastiff and a pit bull if I remember correctly (when I asked, the words "pit bull" were whispered as though they feared eviction for having such an allegedly vicious breed of dog with them). And then there was this pair of Puerto Rican New Orleanians who just couldn't get over the coincidence of running into a hometown girl in New Mexico of all places. (Barry and Raúl, if you're reading this, thank you ever so much for the offer of a bed to crash in. As it turned out, the manager cleared up a meeting room and laid out some rollaways for us to sleep on. At $10 a bed, it wasn't so bad a deal for such unorthodox circumstances. I meant to leave y'all a note at the desk expressing my gratitude, but alas, I am a ditz and forgot.)

They opened the pass at 10:00 that night, but I was in no mood to push my luck. I left at about dawn the next morning, bearing coffee and tea and french toast and a bagel from the breakfast room, rocking out to another Yes playlist. (Union is a perennial favorite in the LeBoeuf-Little household; "Lift Me Up" was pretty much our courtship song. I don't think I'd listened to Talk since I was dating Mr. Wrong back in college. It was a lot better than I remembered it. Open Your Eyes was OK for the first two songs, which absolutely rock out, but the rest of it was just plain silly.) Raton pass was, well, passable. I got a speeding warning outside Trinidad. And I hit rush hour in Colorado Springs and Denver too. Did you know it's possible to type while driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic? Yeah. You just put the laptop on your lap, drive with one hand, and type with the other. When the placement of the keys require you to either switch hands or look down, for the Gods' sake, switch hands! Oddly enough, the enforced slow pace of such typing made the next few sentences of the novel come out much easier. My brain works better when it is obliged to slow down.

And there you have it. Made it back to Boulder and got to the polling place around 10:30. Of Election Day itself, and its aftermath, of course, the less said the better.

And that is way too long for a blog entry when I'm this far behind on my word count. I'll stop now.

The problem with driving on absolutely no sleep is, you have to pull over to nap a lot. I thought I'd be doing more writing on the way, but both in Flagstaff and Holbrook all I did was sleep.
 
Right now I'm in Gallup, parked at a Holiday Inn Express. This particular line of motels seems to have gone in for wireless internet in all its outlets. I'm loving it. But I'm also looking at the sky and wondering if I'm making a mistake stopping here. The sun is shining down uncomfortably hot on my face, but tiny flakes of snow are falling, making distinct "tap taps" on my windshield.
 
Well, I was starting to fall asleep just waiting at the light to turn into this parking lot, so it would behoove me to snooze a bit regardless. With any luck I-40 E will continue to be passable when I wake up.
 
Oh. And a couple hundred more words. Yippie!

It's just going to have to wait until I get home.

I'm still at the hotel in Tempe, but I won't be for long. The car is all packed up. All that's left is for me to get my own happy ass in there along with my bookbag, laptop, printer, humorous back-support pillow ("The Witch Is In") and print-out of a new short story to mail to SciFiction.

I'll be driving on no sleep and a heck of a lot of coffee. As I type this, the hotel staff are making their way down the halls dropping off copies of the USA Today—just to give you an idea of what time it is. (Heck, those of you who pay a little attention have already read the datestamp on the blog entry. Duh.) WFC2004 is some ten hours over and done. And you know what I just found out? I can get internet in my room. My window faces ASU campus, and if I'm sitting over here at the desk, I can sometimes connect to SSID "asu_tempe". And sometimes I can even stay connected for a significant amount of time.

It seems to be more reliable with the window open.

My last act before leaving this hotel room for good is to start my novel, remembering the wise words of one of the WFC panelists (whose name I have shamefully forgotten): If you can't put in your four hours a day, put in a few sentences at a time, several times during the day. Do what you can if you can't do more. And so I have put down a little over 300 words of the opening scene which begins the outer story that frames the inner one.

I'll be hitting the road soon. Next stop: Flagstaff. I'll try to pull up in range of a wireless signal there, type a few more hundred words on this novel, and blog about it. In any case, the goal is to get home in enough time to get a good night's sleep before—eek!—opening the polls tomorrow morning. That is - in 27 hours. 27 hours until election day! You had just better show up, is all I'm sayin'.

So apparently my MLdom (municipal liaison stuff) is now official. Gods help me. Erin emailed to tell me that I've got the actual moderator superpowers in the Colorado:Elsewhere forums. Go me. I guess I'd better go use them or something.