I’m sad about this, there’s just no other way to say it. According to a letter they sent to TheOneRing.Net, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh won’t be involved in making The Hobbit or other LOTR prequel films made by New Line. I won’t try to summarize the circumstances here (the post is very thorough in order to stay balanced), but I totally understand PJ’s reasons for not playing ball. I just hope that New Line thinks twice about their decision, or The Hobbit will be a poorer film for their lack of foresight.
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nanowrimo day 18 – downhill from here
Not much to write about today, but I feel obligated to do so. (I think that comes with the territory.) Chapter 8 is finished now, which means 6 chapters to go. I’m well into the part of my outline that has the most question marks, so the characters have started doing their own driving. All I know is that they need to end up at a certain library with a certain point of view by chapter 11, but they get to choose their own path to get there. That’s actually sounds a lot more future-focused than I actually am; it’s just a way of saying “i write what the voices tell me.”
Oh, and yes, I skipped another day. Technically I did write 13 words yesterday, but that was just so I wouldn’t get that sad little empty spot in my progress chart again. It was a long day, and Doctor Who won out over Technomage. I’m still on track, both in terms of word count and the two-days-per-chapter thing. I can’t miss another day like that, but… well, I just can’t, I guess.
nanowrimo day 15 – halfway
Finished chapter 7 today, which is halfway through my newly-revised 14 chapters. Halfway through the word count, too. That’s a handy thing, because the month is halfway gone as well.
It’s really starting to feel like I’m over the hump; the characters are moving themselves along, I’m writing over 2000 words in a sitting (which helps with all the procrastinating I do), and the plot is shaping up quite nicely. I got a bit talky with this chapter, but I made up for it at the end by having one of the main characters kick some a$$ with his own brand of tinker-fu. I’m really looking forward to these next few chapters, because the other main character now gets to learn some of that tinker-fu from the master, which means I get to figure out how it all works.
Let’s just hope I can think of a reason for it all before I have to write an ending. But hey, we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.
nanowrimo day 13 – smooth sailing
Not much to report today. Writing is proceeding apace, and I’ve just completed Chapter 6. I added a bit of it to my WriMo profile excerpt thingy, because it didn’t seem completely stinky. Both that and my word count from the past two days were surprising, because I managed to clock myself on the head with a ceramic bookend on Sunday. It’s a long story, but it meant I was writing 2000 words a day even while K watched me to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. Who knows, maybe it knocked out my Inner Critic instead.
Onward and forward!
nanowrimo day 11 – outlier days
If you’re paying close attention, you might have noticed that up until today I was blogging my NaNoWriMo progress once every two days. That was no coincidence; my evil plan had me finishing a chapter every second day, with 15 chapters in all. That worked until yesterday, a day when my productivity crashed so hard I actually fell behind the projected schedule, despite an early lead. I was no longer just Not Exceeding Expectations; I had entered the realm of Falling Behind.
It’s what WriMo founder Chris Baty calls the “Week Two Wall—a low-point of energy, enthusiasm, and joie de novel that strikes most NaNoWriMo participants between days 7 and 14.” And boy, does he get that right. I’ve been avoiding the novel like it was some kind of thing people avoid all the time, choosing to do anything else instead of work on it. Because that’s what it had become: work. Even space monkeys couldn’t help me out of this pickle, because it wasn’t so much about not wanting to write, but more about not wanting to suck.