First of all, Happy Thanksgiving!  🙂  Also, this is a bit of a landmark for me–my 200th blog post!

Thursday, not surprisingly, was not a big writing day for me.  I was out of town to visit relatives, but I did bring my laptop and managed almost a thousand words–which put me nearly 600 words behind.  I was kind of worried yesterday afternoon, because I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write next, I knew I was going to have a couple more days in the next week when I might not be able to write much, and we’re practically to the end of the month!

So I took a walk around my neighborhood.  Walking helps me think out stories.  And I thought up a story for Lyra to tell, and came home and typed away in a flurry of words.  It turned out to be a great story (at least, I think so!) and I had my best NaNo day yet–3,300 words!  Then today Lyra and Dastan had a very big argument which got lots of words out quickly, and Lyra followed it up with another story, a Grimm-retelling laden with angry commentary.  Result: another 3,000 words.

I love having days like this.  🙂  Barring complete disaster in the next four days, I think I’m looking good for 50,000 by the end of the month.

You know what’s ironic, though?  I originally started this novel as a spin-off from my main writing project.  That one is about a wandering adventurer, and one of the adventures he wanders into is the story of the twelve dancing princesses.  So the two novels are meant to overlap–but I’m pretty sure I’m going to finish the month without actually getting to the part that overlaps!  But that’s all right…it gives me plans for December, to actually finish this story that’s definitely going to be longer than 50,000 words.

Excerpt…with a little context: Lyra and Dastan’s argument is because he proposes, but she doesn’t want to get married yet and had thought he understood that.  Afterwards, she tells a couple of her sisters a version of Grimm’s “The Maiden without Hands.”  (I swear it’s a real story, and I didn’t even make up the strangest parts).  This is the end of the story:

            The maiden came to a pear tree and, unable to pick any fruit without any hands, she contrived to eat a single pear as it hung on the branches.  That must have been a very messy business, which may be why she only ate one before retiring to sleep among some bushes.

            The next morning, the king came out to walk in his garden, and noticed that one of his pears was missing.  He decided to hide nearby to see if the thief would return.  That evening, the maiden ventured out to eat another pear, and the king confronted her.

            The maiden told the king her sorrowful tale, and he was so impressed by her beauty and her goodness that he asked her to marry him.  She probably should have been wary of marrying a man who actually kept count of the pears on his tree, but then, she didn’t have many other prospects.  Of course, he didn’t have to propose to her at all; he could have just offered to be good friends and perhaps a bit more without needing to make it all permanent and binding, but no, he felt he needed to get her into some sort of lasting agreement.  So she said yes because she didn’t have the nerve to say no, and they were married.

            The king had a set of silver hands made for her, which sounds pretty but also completely useless and uncomfortable.  He probably meant well, but that’s the worst kind of trouble, when a man means well and then goes striking off in completely the wrong direction without actually knowing what a girl wants.

            According to legend, they lived happily ever after, although you do sort of have to wonder about that kind of legend because life is just so much more complicated than happily ever after would lead you to believe.

            When I finished my commentary-laden telling of “The Maiden without Hands,” Talya cleared her throat awkwardly and said, “So, you’re kind of upset with Dastan?”

It’s been a good two days for moving the contents of the novel forward, although my word count has only been decent.  I’m 150 words behind right now, and it’s just not happening anymore tonight…but I’m hoping to get some good writing time in during the long weekend (at least, the later part), so I should be able to catch up!

Yesterday Lyra and Dastan got their first romantic scene, some 34,000 words in.  For me, that’s early.  I have a tendency to have my leads dance around each other (no pun intended!) for entire novels and finally get together at the end.  A close friend who is usually one of the first to read my novels still hasn’t forgiven me for the couple who didn’t get together until the second-to-last chapter.  Definite romance only halfway through will probably make her happy.  It might make up for the other draft I’m working on, which again holds the romance off until the very end…

So yesterday moved matters forward nicely, despite a last-minute change of setting.  And it turned out Dastan was right, you can’t actually see much from the top of a tower when the surrounding landscape is dark, so an orchard was better…but he could’ve pointed it out to me earlier, you know?

(I think this is a product of the frenetic writing of NaNo–both that the characters seem to be taking control more often than usual, and that I’m looking at it that way.)

Today, I was trying to sort out the next section of plot, and suddenly realized a terrible, dramatic, vitally important matter I have been completely overlooking for the last several months as this story formed in my head–I hadn’t figured out how to bring Jones in!  Regular blog readers know that Jones is my regular character–my clumsy, well-meaning, hopefully endearing man who gets at least a cameo in all of my novels.  He’s my game for regular readers, something to spot in each novel.

Jones already has a life in this universe–he works at an inn that figures prominently in The People the Fairies Forget–so I decided for this story he gets to take a break from helping customers at the inn and have a go at being a champion, trying to rescue the princesses from their supposed curse.  He is remarkably and amazingly ill-suited to being a champion of any sort, which should provide some fun scenes.

How’s about his opening scene as tonight’s excerpt?  A little clarifier–his full name is Richard Samuel Jones, and while he normally goes by Sam, here he’s trying to put on the right image by presenting himself as Sir Richard.  The “Sir” is completely invented, as will be revealed later but I might as well just tell you now!

Our fifty-third champion turned out to be one of my favorites.  Possibly my absolute favorite, depending on how I choose to qualify the last one.  #53 was responsible for one of the very few times I ever laughed during supper with my father.

I saw him for the first time when we came into supper, and he was already sitting at the table by Father.  I classified him as one of the Well-Meaners.  They’re the ones who smile at us when we come in.  The Greed-ers don’t pay much attention to us, and the Cattle-Buyers leer.

#53 smiled, and when everyone did their polite rising to their feet, he tried to too.  Instead, there was a completely spectacular tripping.  I have no idea how a person trips over a chair he’s trying to stand up from, but he managed it.  Then he picked himself up without a trace of embarrassment or any indication that he felt this was out of the ordinary, which was somehow even funnier.

My sisters and I got to our seats with tightly clamped lips and a lot of pink cheeks.  Father, whose mouth may have twitched a little but who mostly maintained his solemnity, introduced #53 as Sir Richard of Ryvideau, and then went through his usual speech about the slippers and proof and so on.

Richard got back into his seat without incident, and food was served.  There were five courses.  He managed to knock over his drink twice (which let me see he was drinking water, so it wasn’t that kind of clumsiness), dropped a chicken leg, and lost three napkins.  He stayed amiable and unperturbed through it all, which made me wonder, first, if this was just normal for him, and second, if so, how he could possibly have ever become a knight.

Tired tonight…

Yesterday was a good day.  We explored the locked room, got into all sorts of character development, and wound up with almost two thousand words written.

Today has involved lots of running about, and for a while there I thought I was only going to get a few hundred words down.  But, I managed some more time and dragged my characters through a couple more scenes (including one scene which probably deserves better and may get it in a revision), to wind up only 96 words behind.  Today, I’m calling that a victory.  Especially because I ended with Lyra starting another story (kind of–I’ve been having her tell backstory like it’s a separate story), and her stories are always good for my word count.  So I’m hopeful for tomorrow.

That’s all I’ve got tonight.  Have a paragraph.

It takes a very special sort of mind to be interested in whether one’s ability to light a candle magically is affected by the waning and waxing of the moon.  Maybe if the candle exploded during the full moon, that would be interesting, but Eleanora never observed any effects so dramatic.

So I guess I got the hang of Thursday after all.  My expected distraction today didn’t develop, and I got a nice 1,733 words written.  Which would be excellent–but it turned out that it was yesterday I couldn’t get anything done!  Fortunately, I had that big cushion built up, so I finish out today 174 words behind the goal.  That’s a paragraph or two; I can deal with that.

It’s a funny thing about those word-count cushions.  You build what seems like a nice big one, a thousand words or so ahead of the game and the chart looks so pretty with the “written” line up above the “target” line…and then one slow day knocks it all out.  I was out most of yesterday evening, and I swear I was going to be good and write when I got home…but then I had a package.  And I’m compulsive about packages, they have to be opened, and if it’s something fun…well, it was a new picture, so it had to go on the wall, and by that point I figured Lyra and Dastan could wait until today.

Which they very nicely did, and still showed up to get work done tonight.  And anyway–if I ever got too far ahead, I suspect I’d lose all my motivation.  There wouldn’t be any challenge then!

Tonight’s excerpt:

There are many locked doors in our castle.  We’ve slept behind a locked door every night, for as long as I can remember.  Any doors leading outside are locked.  There are all sorts of spare rooms that are kept under a key.

But the most incontrovertibly locked room, the room that was kept the most inviolate, the most untouched and unvisited, was our mother’s.  It had been locked the day she died and, as far as we knew, it had never been opened.

Mother and Father had always had separate bedrooms; it’s common enough among royalty, although I suppose they must have, you know, visited.  There are twelve of us, after all.  But anyway, Mother had a room that was just hers.  Vira remembers it.  I don’t.

I think we get to visit the locked room tomorrow.  I’m looking forward to it.  🙂

It’s mid-month–I can’t tell at all if I’m mid-novel–but I am mid-wordcount!  In fact, I passed 25,000 pretty early this evening, and am now almost 1,500 words ahead on the word goal.  I had a very strong Friday and Saturday, and have managed a bit extra the last two days too.

All of which adds up to a very good thing, because I may be having another “can’t write anything” Thursday.  I haven’t had a good writing Thursday yet this month, and I’m not hopeful for next week either (being Thanksgiving, you know).  It’s just something about the day.

Now I have to quote Douglas Adams: “It must be Thursday.  I could never get the hang of Thursdays.”

So I’m happy about my word count for now.  Although it made me even happier yesterday when I hit on a relationship quirk for my characters.  There must be an official name for the concept…but it’s some back and forth that two characters keep doing throughout the book, and that probably will be used to reveal their connection.  In Red’s Girl, Red always denies needing help whenever Tam helps him, but then thanks her; by the end, she says “you’re welcome” before he gets to the thank you part.  In The People the Fairies Forget, Anthony is forever shortening Catherine’s name to Cat over her objections, until finally an emotionally pivotal moment causes her to admit she likes it–which he always knew.  Relationship quirks.

And then yesterday Dastan suggested that he and Lyra do a daily trade of ways they’re different from their multitudes of siblings.  Not sure of every way I’m going to use this, but I think it’s going to help.

I did have a nice writing point here…oh yes, that the word count is good but having a sudden character or plot breakthrough is actually more satisfying than sheer number of words.  Which is intriguing though not really surprising.

I also think I’m slightly more incoherent tonight than usual.  Lyra wanted to tell a story, so I did a lot of flowery, Brothers Grimm-style writing, and I think now I’m having a reaction, manifesting itself as random chatter.

Don’t mind me.  Too much typing.  Let me find you an excerpt and then I’m off for the night…

I know, you can have the beginning of Lyra’s story, which will probably make it on here in its entirety for some Fiction Friday.  For now, an excerpt:

Once upon a time, there was a shopkeeper’s daughter who was very beautiful.  It was a sad fact that because she was beautiful, people’s automatic inclination was to do things for her.  That might not have been so bad in itself, but she had realized this tendency early on and loved to take advantage of it.

When her mother asked her to clean the house or to help with the laundry, she’d make endless excuses to get out of it, preferring to spend the time combing her hair or trying on different dresses.  When her mother did insist on her working, she was so slow about it that the good woman would eventually give up in exasperation and do the job herself.

When her father asked her to mind the shop, she would avoid helping customers if at all possible, and when she couldn’t avoid it she was as slow as you could imagine.  She asked the customers to pack up their own purchases and couldn’t be bothered even to do the counting to hand out change.  You may expect that service was slow and the customers ended up waiting around, whenever she was minding the shop.  The men, however, so enjoyed looking at her that they didn’t often complain.  Still, her father knew that he was losing business because not everyone was willing to wait—and he wasn’t winning customers to his shop from the women in town.

One day the prince of that country passed through the town and his party stopped at the shop to buy fresh supplies for their journey.  It happened to be a day when the girl was (in theory) helping in the shop.  The prince saw her, and was sure that he had never seen anyone so beautiful, which may have been true.  He had been reading too many stories, and become convinced that such a beautiful face could only indicate a kind nature, a worthy spirit, and a personality that would match his own—in other words, that her beauty proved she was his soul mate, which it didn’t at all.