We’re coming in on the end of the month, and I am happy to report that I’m well on-track.  It’s been a busy writing week–of course, I made it easy on myself by working on the short story I knew I’d be able to make progress on!  This story may turn out to be nothing but a fluff piece, but I’m enjoying it.

And besides, as they say (and by “they” I mean Brenda Ueland), no writing in which the creative force is at work is ever a waste of time.  That’s not a direct quote, I’m not at home and don’t have her book with me, but something like that!

As things stand, I have about a thousand words left, which after 49,000 is hardly anything.  I will most likely finish tomorrow, a day early…and I find myself oddly reluctant to do that!  I remember I had the same feeling last year–I had a big push over Thanksgiving weekend and was well ahead the last few days…and I kind of hated to finish before the 30th.  I suppose because then the journey is over.

Which is silly, of course, because it’s not like I’m going to stop writing on November 30th, or December 1st.  I’m not even sure the short story will be over (most likely not).  But the loss of the goal takes some of the push out of things, and I rather hate to lose the impetus before the month is actually up.

Oh well.  I’ll most likely hit 50,000 on the 29th, and still carry on with the short story over the next few days in a slightly less intense way.

For tonight, hunting for an excerpt…and here’s one from the other short story, the one that got stuck–but that I’ll probably finish eventually and may ultimately be more useful than the fluff one I’m writing right now!  No context needed, it’s the opening page, and though it is with characters from my novel, it’s meant to be possible to read it independently…

            “So is it true that cats can see ghosts,” Jasper asked, “or is that just part of the air of mystery you put on?”

            “We don’t put on anything,” Tom said with an indignant twitch of his tail.  “We’re just naturally mysterious.” Continue reading “NaNoWriMo Day 28: End of the Tunnel” →

I continue making NaNo progress, though it continues to be in odd directions.  My novel draft stands around 35,000 words and is likely to remain there for the foreseeable future.  I worked on a short story for another almost-8,000 words.  I finished that up yesterday, and thoroughly enjoyed writing it.  It was nice to have a focused story that began and ended with really only one plot-thread–even though I usually love juggling all the different threads!

After finishing the one story, I started another and made some progress yesterday.  But today I felt inspiration was at a low ebb, so to keep my word count up and my hand in, I wrote a scene for a different short story.  That gives me a total of three, one completed and two in-progress, all of them focusing on characters from my current in-progress novel draft, which is in the same world as my NaNo novel.  Follow all that?  🙂

As you can see, I’m getting a little scattered!  This would be a problem in the long-term, but when it’s just for the last week of NaNo, I’m not going to worry too much.  I’ll see where inspiration strikes tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll finish at least one of the in-progress short stories by the end of the month.  And whatever’s left un-done…well, that will give me something to do in between editing my in-progress novel.

Excerpt tonight from the completed short story…for those following along at home, that’s the one with the sleeping beauty curse on the castle, which captured Julie while leaving Jasper outside.  After a rather uncomfortable night in the woods…

Jasper creaked to his feet, stretching stiff limbs, and walked through the trees to the castle.  There were changes.  During the darkness, defying all normal laws of plants, the thorns had blossomed.  There were green leaves too, but far more noticeable were the endless, heavy red roses.  The color of blood, Jasper thought bitterly, and refused to acknowledge them as beautiful.

However Julie might want to tease him on the subject, the truth was that he had always stayed away from sleeping princesses—those girls inevitably expected marriage proposals the moment they woke up, which had always seemed rather like rushing things.  He had heard stories, though, and among the less plausible parts of the stories was the idea that the roses around the towers were intelligent. Continue reading “NaNoWriMo Day 26: Curioser and Curioser” →

Happy Thanksgiving!  I am thankful that I get to spend lots of time this week with family and friends, I got to eat turkey and pumpkin pie, and I’ve still been finding time to keep up with NaNo.

As I told everyone who asked at Thanksgiving dinner, NaNo is going well, but oddly.  As I thought might happen, I got stuck on the novel.  Not in the way I feared though–I was afraid I’d run out of ideas.  Instead, I have, in a way, too many ideas.  As I mentioned, plot bunnies are multiplying and I don’t know yet how to fit them together, or how it’s all going to fit with the characters.  I could push ahead, but I’m afraid I’ll end up in a corner or just heading down a wrong path and have to throw a lot out.  It feels like the story needs to percolate a bit.

Obviously, NaNo is not designed for that kind of time.  So I’m putting the novel aside for the moment, at 34,000 words so far this month, and working on a short story instead.  I’m counting it all towards the total–because it is writing in November.  It’s even set in the same world as the novel, but with different characters.

The short story focuses on the main characters of my other current novel project.  It’s convenient writing a novel about a wandering adventurer–you can always do a short story about another adventure.  And if I end up publishing the novel on Amazon, I’ll be able to use the story in various ways for promotion.

For the moment, here’s an excerpt.  Jasper, Julie and Tom (a talking cat), who generally wander about having adventures, have decided to spend the night at an empty castle.  It appears to be Sleeping Beauty’s tower, after Sleeping Beauty has awoken and left–there’s even a broken spinning wheel.  Unfortunately, the curse isn’t quite as dormant as they might hope…

           The first Jasper realized something was wrong was when he heard a sound like thousands of branches thrashing together in a high wind.  The problem was that there was hardly any wind.

            The sound was coming from the direction of the castle—and he would have guessed that as the source of any problem anyway.  He started back that way, string of three birds slung over one shoulder.  At first he was moving at a fast walk, but as the sound continued, he was quickly at a run.

            He broke out of the trees into the clearing around the castle and came to a horrified halt.

            “Didn’t I tell you not to touch any spindles?” he yelled, futilely. Continue reading “NaNoWriMo Day 23: Good But Odd” →