Tag: Writing

NaNoWriMo Day 28: End of the Tunnel

On By cherylmahoneyIn NaNoWriMo9 Comments

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” →

NaNoWriMo Day 26: Curioser and Curioser

On By cherylmahoneyIn NaNoWriMo2 Comments

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” →

NaNoWriMo Day 23: Good But Odd

On By cherylmahoneyIn NaNoWriMo3 Comments

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” →

NaNoWriMo Day 20: Plot Bunnies

On By cherylmahoneyIn NaNoWriMo1 Comment

Just a quick update tonight.  I am well and truly into Part Two of the novel now.  As hazy as some aspects of Part One were, Part Two is even more so.  Things are starting to come together–or spiral all apart, it’s a little hard to tell.

I have been discovering plot bunnies, as the NaNo community calls them, those threads of ideas that have a way of multiplying.  I had been without any real plot for the second half of the book.  Now I seem to have fallen into two plot threads, sort of three, and I’m not quite sure how they’re going to fit together.  Either this is great, or I have completely lost control.  I can’t tell which yet!

So I am trying to trust the process, and we’ll see what happens…

One thing I am enjoying–I’ve found a way to bring in a character who originally only existed as a throw-away line in my other novel draft.  For that story, I had to explain why Prince Randolph was on a quest when he had neither the skill nor the inclination for the task.  So he mentioned in passing a battleaxe aunt who had pushed him into it.

Randolph himself is not in this year’s NaNo novel, but I decided I was getting too many royal families and it would be wise to make the princess of this one Randolph’s sister.  Which means she has the same battleaxe aunt…and I’ve decided the aunt should appear in this novel, and be responsible for one of my new plot threads.  Whatever else I do with these plot bunnies, I’m pretty sure the aunt is staying in some form!

For tonight’s excerpt…how about meeting the Battleaxe?  There have been a great many developments since my previous excerpt, and Maggie is traveling to the castle in Rokinley, Michael’s country, with Michael and his brother Laurence.  They’re about to meet a traveling party from the royal court, which sends Maggie into something of a panic because she’s still pretending to Laurence that she’s the Princess Evangelina, and has no idea how she’s going to get out of that once she tells it to the entire court.  Michael’s only advice is to keep smiling…

And Maggie smiled, and kept smiling and promised herself she would ask for an audience with the king immediately when they got back to the castle, that was the only way to handle this now, and Michael had better come because she was really going to need some kind of support now, especially if it all came to throwing herself on someone’s mercy, and all she had to do right now was just smile and…

And then the door to the largest of the carriages, which had rumbled up a few minutes behind the faster horses, opened.  A woman stepped regally out, and Maggie stopped smiling.

The woman who came out of the carriage did not take the help of the footman standing ready to hand her down.  She was a tall woman with severely pinned-back hair, wearing a gray dress cut on stern lines.  She was not unusually large, though people tended to forget that when she’d been out of their sight for any length of time.  Her eyes were a startling blue.  She had a kind of beauty, but the word people more often used was imposing.

Maggie stared at her, paralyzed.

It was Lina’s aunt.  The king’s sister, the one everyone knew really ran Giramm, the one everyone in the court—but never to her face—called the Battleaxe, with equal parts respect and terror.

The Battleaxe stalked directly towards Maggie, and the laughing, cheery court of Rokinley parted like the sea to let her pass.  Maggie knew that courtesy demanded she get down from her horse, but she clung to her perch as the only possible high ground she could command.  At least she was above the other woman, and could make a galloping escape if she had to.

The Battleaxe stared up at her in silence for a long moment, and Maggie wasn’t sure if the rest of the group had fallen silent or if she just couldn’t hear them over the pounding of her heart in her ears.

Then the Battleaxe smiled and said, “My dear Evangelina, it’s so good to see you.”

Blog Hop: Character Cross-Overs

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop, Ruminations9 Comments

The blog hop today is hosted by Butterfly-o-Meter Books, with a truly fascinating question:

Mix’n’Match: The bookish gods are giving you a free hand, you can pick any one character (book, TV series/movie, play etc) and inject them into a different novel of your choice. Which character and series would you mix’n’match?

I am immensely intrigued by this idea–but I also found it quite difficult, and I had to think about why.  I think it’s because most of my favorite book characters (and movies and TV) exist within very clear worlds, where there are very clear rules–not laws, just the way the world functions.  But they’re all very different…so I struggle to imagine a character taken out of one universe and moved to another.  I find it easier to imagine characters from different worlds in a kind of limbo third place, coming together for a social gathering.  I’ve written short stories along those lines.

So who do I think could gather together and have brilliant conversations with each other?  Links go to relevant reviews!

I think the Phantom of the Opera and the Hunchback of Notre Dame would have quite a lot to talk about.  Watch out for those Parisian mobs, but gotta love the views of the Seine.

Princess Cimorene of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles could be great friends with the princesses from Jim C. Hines’ Princess Series.  They’re all strong women in fairy tale worlds.  If she was a few years older, Merida from Brave would be a great addition to the group too.

All of L. M. Montgomery‘s heroines live in the same world, so it’s easy to imagine them together.  I’d love a story with Emily and Anne together.  The fantasy worlds those girls could invent if they bounced off each other!  I bet they’d get on famously with Tom Sawyer too, who certainly has just as wild an imagination, even if it goes in rather different tracks.

Jane Eyre and the second Mrs. De Winter really should have a chat.  The second Mrs. De Winter may think she has problems, but at least Rebecca really was dead.  Things could be worse.  Interestingly, both characters were played by Joan Fontaine in movie versions.

Jacky Faber and Captain Jack Sparrow would turn the world upside down if you got the two of them together.  It’s entirely possible that the British Empire would fall.  But such adventures along the way!  I don’t think I can top that.  🙂  Captain Jack and Jacky really ought to have an adventure together.

So who would you toss together to  have a chat?  Or would you take someone and drop them into a totally different world and let chaos ensue?