A little helpful tip

Good work and good luck to everyone!

Do you want a quick trick to help you get through a day's writing?

Write down five things that can next happen in your story. For instance:

1. Goes for walk in woods

2. Comes home to find house open

3. Goes to neighbor for help

4. Finds neighbor dead

5. Heads into the woods to hide

Now write 400 words for each of those little points. You'll have made your word count for the day. If you find that you make your word count total by #3 because what you're writing is more than you imagined, put #'s 4 and 5 on a list for tomorrow.

This kind of mini-outline is really flexible because you're never very far ahead of where you're working. Be sure to think in terms of description, too. Description can really help to fill out the story.

NaNo Day 2 -- 9015/22021 total

This was a more difficult day than yesterday, but I made the count I wanted, so I'm good. It will keep dropping down after this. I have work to get back to. I did a little bit today, but the NaNo novel kept pulling me in. That's good, of course.

Here is another short snipped. Remember: FIRST DRAFT

"Okay. So you trained and went into the ring when you were old enough? How old?"

"Started training at six. At ten, though, we had a choice to go into the ring or work somewhere else in the Camp. I knew that many died in the dance -- but that was years away. 21 sounds very old to a ten year old."

Damn. Damn them -- to use that against a child. To hold out what was, in truth, the only showy, exciting thing on this world and let children think that it was worth the price. He didn't speak, but Dancer must have seen the look in his face. He nodded. In this they both understood each other.

"Tell me the rest," Cha said. He sat his cup aside. He could hear distant sounds of people now -- the town coming awake, and he feared that Dancer might be right. If Devlin wasn't here, he would still try to hold on to Dancer, but he wasn't entirely sure he could.

"There were never more than ten chosen at a time. We trained in groups selected by age." A different sort of pain crossed is face this time, and Cha wasn't certain he wanted to hear the next part. He sat very still and Dancer didn't look at him. "There were nine in my group. Three opted to go to work in the camp when they turned 18, right after we started training with actual bears. Two died in training and two more died in the ring the first year we performed. Satin is the only other one left from my group, but he's very ill from Bear Poison he took a week ago. I don't think he'll survive. That makes me the last one still in the ring from my group."

Nano Day 1: 14006

Hard day of work!

Here is a little snippet from the opening. I'll drop these in every now and then, but not likely every day, especially once real life work kicks back in again!


Remember -- FIRST DRAFT! MISTAKES! NEEDS EDITING FOR CONTENT!


Devlin stood beneath the shadow of the high wooden benches that rose in tiers above her and tried not to wince every time she heard a creak or groan from the wood. It didn't help that she'd read the history and knew that the last set of bleachers had collapsed ten years ago, killing more than fifty people and maiming others. Safer, now, they told her, but she didn't believe it much. She didn't trust low tech work on backwater worlds.

And she didn't think much of Forest anyway.

Devlin hadn't intended to come to the Bear Dance today until she heard that their best dancer would perform tonight. The one Bear Dance she'd seen had been disgusting and it hadn't helped her attitude towards the locals. Pitting a human against a local animal was barbaric, and she didn't know how humans could even stand to watch.

This was not her favorite assignment and she still couldn't decide why anyone would send someone of her rank to such a backwater little world. Oh, she knew the major part of it -- Earthers' interest -- but anyone could have come in and filed the reports. She'd liked the work on Caliente better than she liked this one. Forest may be a lovely world, but she hated the people. Hated them all at this point -- and had to pull that feeling back and be objective. She couldn't let it interfere with her assignment.

Clearing the way and sailing in for NaNo

Before I forget -- remember that you can download the free 'NaNo for the New and the Insane' ebook at my site: http://www.lazette.net/FreeStuff/NaNo.htm

We are only days away from the start of the insanity. I still have far too much to get done -- Vision for Writers update for the new issue, Forward Motion update for the new month, the DAZ3d Newsletter for this week -- all in all, it looks like a difficult few days!

Vision is nearly completed, at least. FM doesn't have much left to do. I have not started the weekly newsletter because I still don't have all the info I need for it. Lucky for me that I've been doing these for years, and I don't anticipate having a lot of trouble with it when I do get the rest of the info. I hope.

I've been working at getting the house cleaned up, too. That's not all too difficult, except for the time factor.

So, it looks pretty much like I'm going to leap into the Devlin Books come 12:01 am November 1. I have five full outlines for books that should be at least 90k each -- that's far more than enough to see me through the month! I might have the sixth outline done as well, but I'm not worried about it. Even though these were based on earlier works, the new outlines are almost entirely new stories -- and, of course, I'll be recreating them all from scratch anyway. I'm looking forward to the work.

This is what happens when you look at something 20 years old and realize that you actually have a clue how to plot a story now and maybe it will even make sense. This is a project that is going to continue on into 2011, and likely editing until 2014 or so. I don't mind long term projects. Always having something on the list to work on is good for me, especially when I'm so busy.

I had hoped to do some cover art or at least a banner. That is looking less likely, but I might still get a chance before the end of the month.

As usual, I plan to go crazy for the first couple days of NaNo. I can afford to take that much time before I have to focus again on other work, especially if I try really hard to keep everything cleared off going into the month. Before long, though, I'll be back to work on the weekly newsletter and such. It's hard to say how much I'll get done this year. I do have good outlines, though, so that should help.

The work tonight is to finish up what I can and then sit down and list out everything that has still to be done. I'm going to get things done and start preparing to have all kinds of insane NaNo writing fun!

Russ is home!

He's busy tonight, but we've been going like mad the last few days. I now own a slightly outdated, but wonderful laptop that we picked up new for $169. I am very happy to have it! This not only allows me to work away from my office now and then, but also to work away from home if I have a chance to go anywhere with Russ!

I'd been saving up money in hopes of finding something inexpensive. This was far more inexpensive than I had expected. I thought I'd have to spend at least $400 to handle even the small amount of absolute things I needed.

So I bought a Nook with the rest of the money.

Yes, I did. And I LOVE it.

I am reading one of the three books that was on it when I bought it -- Pride and Prejudice. I have never read it before. I think I might have read parts of it for school at some point back in the dark ages, but I really didn't remember much of it and I have never watched any of the shows or movies that have come out. It's exploring whole new territory for me.

And the one thing I have noticed is the almost total lack of description. Well, that and the Omni POV, of course, but I expected that one. I'm catching a lot of the humor, which I didn't expect. It often takes me a little while to get into the feel of a story.

My first actual purchase is a set of Andre Norton novels. She's the person who started me in my love of both science fiction and of writing. I'm looking forward to reading them all. My plan isn't to buy much of newer material at all, but to stock up on classics and historical material. It should work out wonderfully for me.

So it's been quite a week for me. We went to De Soto National Wildlife Refuge a couple days ago. I went to the zoo yesterday and took 577 pictures. Yes, it will be a while for me to sort those out, though many of them were sets of three bracketed shots.

I'm writing about 1k a day while Russ is here. I'm enjoying the slow pace and working my way up to NaNo.

So, that's it! The only real problem I have at all is that the DAZ people are VERY late with stuff this week. I need to get to work on it now!