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.

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!

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.

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It’s late and I’m tired, but I just wanted to let you know that I posted an excerpt over on my WriMo author page. It’s probably horrid, but I was particularly proud of it just after having written it, which was about five minutes ago.

…and that’s the real problem with the excerpt thing. I’m writing, writing, writing ever onward, never looking back, right? Well, that’s a problem when I want to pick something out to be representative of my work. This is supposed to be the Shitty First Draft That No One Reads ™, so I can’t just pluck something out and hope it’s excerpt-worthy. Neither can I go back and read through it looking for gems, because that would be ever backward, not so much onward. Even if I did find something, I’d be tempted to edit it, another no-no.

So instead, I just grabbed the last few paragraphs I’d written without cringing and uploaded them. Enjoy! (No space monkeys in this section, but maybe tomorrow. I haven’t a clue what the next chapter is about.)

I just finished Chapter 3, and my main characters have finally had a chance to catch their breath.  The space monkeys are no longer chasing them, so they got to introduce themselves a bit and get through some exposition.  Writing that was pretty easy, I just chugged along filling their mouths with dialogue.

And if you believe that, I have some space monkeys I’d like you to meet.

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