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20 Goes at Nano

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Above you see a big pile of all the words I’ve written in National Novel Writing Month and related challenges, laid out horizontally by day of month and laid down vertically by the challenge in which I wrote them, creating an interesting strata effect, like words deposited by a geological process. This month marks my 20th attempt at Nano, 18 of which were successful:

Deliverance 2002 Nanowrimo WINNER
Frost Moon 2007 Nanowrimo WINNER
Blood Rock 2008 Nanowrimo WINNER
Liquid Fire 2009 Nanowrimo WINNER
Clockwork 2010 Nanowrimo WINNER
Clockwork 2010 December Nano FAILED
Hex Code 2011 Nanowrimo WINNER
Clockwork 2012 Script Frenzy WINNER
Spectral Iron 2012 Nanowrimo WINNER
Marooned 2013 Nanowrimo WINNER
Spectral Iron 2014 Camp Nanowrimo WINNER
Spectral Iron 2014 August Nano FAILED
Phantom Silver 2014 Nanowrimo WINNER
Spectral Iron 2015 Camp Nanowrimo WINNER
Hex Code 2015 Nanowrimo WINNER
Phantom Silver 2016 Camp Nanowrimo WINNER
Phantom Silver 2016 Camp Nanowrimo WINNER
Spiritual Gold 2016 Nanowrimo WINNER
Spiritual Gold 2017 Camp Nanowrimo WINNER
Spiritual Gold 2017 Camp Nanowrimo WINNER

As I’ve noted before, the two in which I failed were “off months” where I tried to tackle Nanowrimo on my own. For me, it’s much harder without the external benefit of the contest, and on the two times I tried it I bombed out after a few days. You can see that in this graph, which shows the number of words I’m ahead or behind at each part of the month:

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This graph means the most to me, because I was involved in the creation of it, and so intuitively understand it; if I see my monthly progress (the darkest line above) below the dotted line of the average, I know to worry; if I see it below my worst track for any part of the month, I know to really get cracking. Looks like the farthest behind I ever got (and succeeded) was 20,00 words behind, on LIQUID FIRE in 2009, and in PHANTOM SILVER in 2016.

But for people not intimately involved in laying down those tracks, the average amount ahead / behind per day is perhaps more useful:

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This shows that a successful Nanowrimo participant can be very far ahead, or very far behind, and still win in the month. Do what works for you! There’s a lot of wiggle room in there.

But if you’re more interested in brass tacks, here’s the maximum and average amount I wrote in each day:

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This shows that typically at the start of Nano I’m writing a little bit less than the needed word count per day, and at the end of Nano I’m writing a little bit more - but that the maximum I have to do each day is radically more than that - once almost 10,000 words (and that was a hell of a push, I can tell you - that was PHANTOM SILVER in July of 2016, and I was down to the wire, writing 7000 words in the last day - and finding the Camp Nano counter was 2000 words off of Microsoft Word’s count, so I had to generate 2,000 more words in the last couple of hours).

I will probably dig a bit more into SPIRITUAL over the last two days of the 30 day challenge (I know July has an extra day, but I can use the break). I’m not quite done - the manuscript is at 171,330 words, but maybe 20,000 to 30,000 words of that are in-manuscript notes that need to be turned into text, and then I have a lot I want to cut. During Nano, if I change my mind about how a scene is going, I don’t cut it and rewrite it, because that defeats the purpose of generating words; I write the word ALTERNATELY on its own line and rewrite the scene. After Nano, all that needs to get edited, merged and/or cut.

Often, I find that I’m not satisfied with the first rough draft text I produce in Nano. There are amazing gems in there, but also drek. But at the same time, I find that I am almost always very satisfied at having a text that flows through all the scenes I wanted to write. The idea of a scene in your head is just that - an idea. It’s not real until you write it. If you don’t write it, you can’t improve it - you’ll either long for it to be written, or you’ll elaborate on your idea of it in your head endlessly, or, worst of all, get caught up in the smug satisfaction of your own unfinished work, admiring the creation of something awesome that doesn’t actually exist.

But once you write it, you can see whether the idea works or not. You can decide to keep it, or refine it, or discard it. Even better, it springboards you - into new alternates for the same scene, or new ideas for what happens next, or new insights into your character, their plot, and the themes of your story.

Don’t just dream your story - write it down. Only by writing dreams down can you turn them into reality.

And Nanowrimo is a great place to get started with that. The 50,000 word challenge may seem impossible. It may not even seem like the kind of thing you want to do. No one is making you, after all: you don’t have to. But if your head is filling with ideas and you can’t get them out, why not take on an impossible seeming challenge to write 50,000 words of them down.

Believe me, it’s possible.


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-the Centaur

Viiictory^18

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So, for the eighteenth time, I have won a National Novel Writing Month challenge … this time, the 50,000 word challenge for Camp Nano of July 2017!


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The cafe I’m in is about to close, but I’m proud to say I (a) finished the 50,000 words a few days early so I can relax this weekend and (b) solved some problems in my manuscript, making it easier for me to reach that final finish line for Dakota Frost #6, SPIRITUAL GOLD!

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More tomorrow when I have more time to reflect on getting this much closer to the end …

Onward!

-the Centaur

Mining that SPIRITUAL GOLD

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Well, we’re getting ahead of the curve at last on SPIRITUAL GOLD … two days ahead.

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My writing retreat this weekend has paid off. I spent some time hanging out with the Treehouse Writers at the Linde Lane Tea Room in Dixon, California, then holed up in a hotel in downtown Davis, hanging out in bookstores and coffeehouses in an attempt to make some progress on SPIRITUAL GOLD. The actual day of the drive was a wash, but after that, I managed to get more than two days worth of words done in each day, and almost that today.


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Now at last I’m ahead of the curve, and if I can stay there for a few more days, I’ll win Camp Nano. More importantly, however, I’ve marched forward in the manuscript so I’m around Chapter 37 out of roughly 50, with much of the text of the remainder partially written and merely needing some ironing out. With luck, I’ll finish SPIRITUAL GOLD at the end of the month, and shortly thereafter, and then can begin editing Dakota Frosts #4-#6 together as one big trilogy.

Onward!

-the Centaur

Caught up

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At last, caught up on Camp Nano. Taking a break. That is all.

Getting Momentum on SPIRITUAL GOLD

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As usual, it takes me some time to get back into a book, especially if I’ve spent the first few days of the month distracted by something like, uh, I dunno, scouting locations for the book.

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But, now, after about a week of concerted work, I’m getting my legs under me. Blood remains in the water, but it is receding.


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Should I include an excerpt? Ah, sure. Raw stuff, still needs more research, but, here you go:

“Hey, hey, hey,” I said. “Why would you want me to use the isolation tank?”

“Because Carrington got infected after a spirit journey she took here,” Heinz said. “A journey which just might have taken her into faerie, given our current theory. And since I have the magical affinity of a wet noodle, and wouldn’t know a faerie from a star on Broadway—”

“Troglodyte,” I muttered, glaring at him. “Fine, fine, fine, I’m the best suited for this … this suicide mission—”

“No!” Wilz said. “If you really think this will hurt you, no go. I don’t need the liability.”

I sighed, then stared at Heinz.

“In my professional judgment,” Heinz said, “if this was a normal infection, one of the hundreds of people who’ve used this isolation tank would already have been infected. If this was a magical infection, you would already have been infected by your prior exposure. And if there’s magic here at all … you’re the most likely one to find it.”

“Fine.” I said. “Fine—”

“I … will show you to the showers,” Wilz said.

Ten minutes later, I returned from a quick splashdown, holding tight to my body a big, warm, white fuzzy robe provided by Wilz, as Heinz looked at me with quite the smirk. I glared at him, then turned the glare on Wilz, who recoiled in a mix of surprise and curiosity.

“No commentary!” I said, peeling off the robe quickly, bare to my metal bikini. “Zipit!”

Wilz took the robe, then drew his hand across his mouth, glancing at Heinz.

“Okay,” Wilz said. “We’d rather not have to flush this water after each use, so—”

“Don’t say don’t pee in it,” I said, pointing at him. “I know that already! I’m an adult!”

“Yeah, well,” Heinz began.

“And you’re not!” I shot back.

“I didn’t personally put Doctor Orleans in the tank,” Wilz said. “I don’t know what was said, so I don’t know how to recreate the conditions that she, er, he, experienced while in there. All I can tell you is to lie down, to relax … and to keep your head above water.”

“I hope there’s a headrest,” I muttered.

“There is,” Wilz said. “Let me help you in—”

The Epsom salt laden water of the tank was warm, thick, almost tacky as I went in. The tank made soft booming noises as I moved, strangely muffled by the outer padding. Wilz helped me straighten out to level, then guided my head down to a horseshoe-shaped rest.

The door of the tank closed … and I was left in darkness.

Onward!

-the Centaur

SPIRITUAL GOLD in Progress

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So this is NOT the cover for Dakota Frost #6, SPIRITUAL GOLD …


... but it is what I'm using as a cover for my Camp Nanowrimo page for July.

For those not in the know, much of the Dakota Frost series is written during National Novel Writing Month and the related Camp Nanowrimo challenges. For each of these, I take on the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month. This month, I'm working on Dakota Frost #6, SPIRITUAL GOLD.

Now, this may seem far away, as the latest Dakota Frost out is, #3, LIQUID FIRE, available wherever fine books are sold. But, to reduce the gap between books - and to increase the coherence between books, I'm writing the next three Dakota Frost books and the first three Cinnamon Frost books together, as one, giant, loosely-connected, six-part novel.

Dakota Frost's next adventures have the working titles SPECTRAL IRON, PHANTOM SILVER, and SPIRITUAL GOLD. Running just behind each of these will be Cinnamon Frost's first solo adventures, HEX CODE, BOT NET and ROOT USER. I've finished rough drafts of SPECTRAL IRON, PHANTOM SILVER, and HEX CODE, and hope to finish the rough draft of SPIRITUAL GOLD this month.

At that point, I'll start trying to get the Dakota Frost trilogy beaten into shape, even though it will take me two more Nano pushes (at least) to finish up the slightly shorter Cinnamon Frost novels.

Regardless, hope to get these in your hands soon. Wish me luck!

-the Centaur

Wishful Thinking Won’t Land a Man on the Moon

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Wishful thinking won't land a man on the moon, but it might get us all killed - fortunately, though, we have people who know how to nail a good landing.

All we have to do now is preserve the fruits of their labors.

Now that a climate denier is barreling towards the presidency, other climate deniers are coming out of the woodwork, but fortunately, NASA has a great site telling the story of climate change. For those who haven’t been keeping score at home, the too-simple story is that humans have pumped vast amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the past few decades, amounts that in the geological record resulted in disastrous temperature changes - and it’s really convenient for a lot of people to deny that.

Now, don’t worry: NASA results are in the public record, so even though Trump’s team has threatened to blind NASA’s earth sciences program and looks poised to conduct a witch hunt of climate change workers in the Department of Energy, even though climate deniers are wringing their hands in glee at the thought of a politicized EPA attacking climate science, scientists are working to save this climate data. If you want to get involved, check out climatemirror.org.

Now, I said it’s a too-simple story, and there are a lot of good references on climate change, like Henson’s The Rough Guide to Climate Change. But, technically, that could be considered a polemic, and if you want to really dig deep, you need to go for a textbook instead, one presenting a broad overview of the science without pushing an agenda. For example, Understanding Weather and Climate has a great chapter (Chapter 16 in the 4th edition) that breaks down some of the science behind global climate change (human and not) and why anthropogenic climate change is both very tricky to study - and still very worrisome.

And because I am a scientist, and I am not afraid to consider warranted arguments on both sides of any scientific question, I also want to call out Human Impacts on Weather and Climate 2/e by Cotton and Pielke, which in Chapter 8 and the Epilogue take a more skeptical view of our predictive power. In their view, well-argued in my opinion, current climate models are sensitivity studies, not forecasts; they merely establish the vulnerability of our systems to forcing factors like excess carbon, and don’t take into account areas of natural variability which might seriously alter the outcomes. And, yes, they are worried about climate groupthink.

Yes, they’re climate skeptics. But no-one is burning them at the stake. No-one is shunning them at conferences. People like me who believe in climate change read their papers with interest (especially Pielke’s work, which while it in some ways makes CO2 less of an issue and in some ways makes other human impacts seem worse). Still, Cotton and Pielke think the right approach is “sustained, stable national funding at a high level” and decry the politicization of science in either direction.

Still, do worry. Earth’s climate looks intransitive - it can get shoved from one regime to another, like the rapid-cooling Heinrich events and rapid-warming Dansgaard Oeschger events in the geological record, possibly triggered by large-scale ice sheet breakdowns and ocean circulation changes. Yes, global warming can cause global cooling by shutting down the existing pattern of global ocean circulation - and we’re pumping enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to simulate past triggers for such events.

Do you see why people who study climate change in enough depth to see where the science is really not settled end up walking away more unsettled about the future of our planet, not less? And why we stand up and say NO when someone else comes forward saying the “science is not settled” while acting like the science has already been settled in their favor?

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"Have fun warming the planet!” Just hope it doesn’t inundate Florida. I’d love to tell you that the projected 1M sea rise discussed in the Florida resource isn’t as bad as the Geology.com map’s default 6m projections, but unfortunately, sea level seems to be rising in Florida faster than the IPCC projections, and if the science isn’t really settled, we could have a sea level rise of … jeez. After reviewing some of the research I don’t even want to tell you. The “good” news is, hey, the seas might fall too.

“Have fun rolling the dice!"

-the Centaur

Sandi’s Latest Art Show is Today!

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Saudi’s latest art show is today in downtown San Jose at 6pm! She’ll have 25+ pieces on display highlighting all aspects of her amazing creativity. The full details:

https://www.facebook.com/events/262434390823115/

PRESENTING THE ARTWORK OF SANDI BILLINGSLEY

Please join us for an evening of Art and Wine on Friday, November 4th, 2016 from 6 to 9 p.m.

1 Almaden Blvd, Suite 800 on the 8th floor

Please RSVP with Emilie at 408.287.6500 or emilie.slawinski@ampf.com

The site is the offices of Ameriprise Financial Services, but as far as I know, this is just an art opening - a series of events hosted by them for over a decade to support the arts in San Jose. Come check it out!

-the Centaur

Con Crud!

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So, I had all sorts of plans to post on my upcoming panels and the ambience of Dragon Con, but I overslept. Not by, like, an hour, or two hours, but more like eight hours. Sure, I got up and killed my alarms, a few times, but what really happened as I kept trying to get up and kept crashing out was that I realized I had caught a case of con crud. Science fiction conventions gather an enormous amount of people, and hence, their diseases, and hence: con crud, that mysterious illness that hits you a day or two after you get to a con. I know a lot of people who have been knocked out by it, but it's hit me hard only two or three times. This time, I ended up sleeping on and off for twelve hours out of sixteen. Fortunately I didn't get the cough or sniffles, though I felt them starting. But I rested up, and got up when I felt rested, and even though I missed hitting the dealer's room today, I had a lot of fun at my two panels. So what I'm saying is, be good to yourself. It's easy, when you're at a con on a mission, to get caught up on all the things you could do. Well, do the things you should do, take care of yourself, and relax: cons will roll around again, and you want to be healthy enough to survive them. Up tomorrow, 10AM: You've sold your first book, now what? A bunch of people much more experienced than me tell you what to do when you're facing book two. Oh, and I'll be there. At 2:30PM, I'll be talking about synopses that will sell - or not sell - your book. And at 10PM, I'll be talking about fun ways to kill your character. Oh, hell, here's the whole list:
  • You’ve Sold the First Book, Now What? Saturday 10am, Embassy CD – Hyatt What happens next? Publishing professionals offer information about the industry–what they’re going to do, and what you need to do for yourself.
  • Writing a Synopsis That Will Sell Your Book – MODERATOR Saturday 2:30pm, Embassy CD – Hyatt Writing a great synopsis may be harder than writing a book. These outliners and pantsers will offer suggestions to make the process easier.
  • 101 Fascinating Ways to Kill off a Character Saturday 10pm, Embassy CD – Hyatt Description: Our favorite writers recount some of the more interesting ways they’ve eliminated characters–or tried to.
Also, THIRTY DAYS LATER is still on sale for $0.99! Onward! -the Centaur