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Posts tagged as “Nanowrimo”

Me and my dumb mouth

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Axually, it's Dakota's dumb mouth at issue here, and while I'd love to include an extract ... ssh, SPOLIERS! But the point being, the day after Thanksgiving, I'm back on track for National Novel Writing Month. And this includes an evening hanging out with my friends at the wonderful Nola restaurant I'm so fond of. No pictures of that (phone battery gave out) but I do have a followup picture from my solo excursion to Cocola Cafe in Santana Row, where I finished out today's Nano:

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I've done Nano enough times that I probably could have skipped today and even tomorrow if I wanted, just to hang out with my friends who are in town (staying at another friend's house). But this "vacation" isn't really a vacation for me: it's a writecation. Writing really is like a second job now: if I want to be a writer, certain things have to get done. In this case, it's Nano, and sending off acceptances and rejections for DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME:

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You'll note a little asymmetry there: my coeditor, who's done this before, is way ahead of me contacting people about their stories. And those are just the acceptances. Argh. And then I've got to respond to Trish's comments on my own story, which, while I was proud of it before, now looks like it will need a lot of work. Sigh. This is why I like working with editors, I tell myself, they make my stories better. Sob. At least Nano is on track:

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Of course, the second half of the story is a complete salsa, and I don't know where it's going, but there's a building, and it's on fire, and it's a spectral fire, that only starts once a year, and there's William Blake's spirit guide riding a tiger, and oh yeah Cinnamon wears a Santa hat, then threatens to punch him in the gut if she meets him in a dark alley. So yeah, I'm having fun, even if I briefly hit a little plateau there while recuperating from all that turkey.

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Now, more mountain to climb! Onward!

-the Centaur

Thanksgiving: Mission Accomplished

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Once again, I have successfully written NOTHING on Thanksgiving Day, spending it instead with friends!

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Mission accomplished. What am I thankful for? My great friends that I've known for a quarter century.

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The wonderful food we all prepared (mostly) by hand on a holiday that's not yet commercialized.

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Preparing my first nearly perfect pound cake in a few years (more on that later). Not to mention living in a land where we can all not just eat, but have dessert! Most of all, being far enough ahead in Nano to just hang out and spend time with friends without worrying about keeping myself caught up.

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As Fonzie would say, "Ayyy, little buddy."

I don't know how much more time I'll have this weekend to hang out with my friends; if it wasn't for Nano I'd be spending all my time sending out acceptances and rejections on DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME. But I do have to eat, so I'll be having at least one and possibly two more nice meals with my friends. And I hope several long phone calls with my wife (away on business).

More things to give thanks for. The gifts, they don't stop coming.

So, thanks, God, for everything.

-the Centaur

God’s Marines Wield Strange Weapons

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At last, back on track for National Novel Writer's Month. I like the graph: I like seeing how the week of a software release has taken a neat chunk out of my progress, and how a few days on vacation gets things back on track again. This reminds me to continue taking of the week of Thanksgiving every year if I want to get new novels done.

The title comes from a scene I've just written, in which Dakota Frost is baited into a battle with a wand-wielding priest. Soon Dakota realizes they were set up --- and figures out how to de-escalate:

The priest cried out, striking me with the back of his free hand.

I winced … then turned the other cheek.

The priest stared, drawing back his hand again. I reached up and put my thumbs through the straps of my backpack. Then I turned my head even further, exposing the cheek, eyes glaring at him sidelong in silent accusation. The priest frowned, then lowered his hand.

“Dakota Frost,” I said, extending mine. “Best magical tattooist in the Southeast.”

The priest stared at my hand dumbly, then realized he had a free one.

“Father Aidan Cosgrave, SJ.”

“A Jesuit,” I said. “Interesting to find a Jesuit wielding a wand.”

“God’s Marines,” Cosgrave said, “often find themselves wielding strange weapons.”

I'm over the halfway point of Nano now, with 6 or so free days on vacation to try to really get a head. Onward!

-the Centaur

Derailed

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Software launches. Anthology editing. I am now officially behind. Time to get back to Nano.

Fortunately I have the next nine days off, starting with tomorrow!

This is why I plan Nano carefully ahead ... this always happens, so you need to plan to have a buffer ... not just getting ahead early, but a place and time to catch up later for if and when you fall behind.

-the Centaur

Now that’s what I’m talking about…

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Yesterday was nearly a wash - worn out after three long consecutive work days pushing software in preparation for a release, and then out late on date night with my wife - dinner at Aqui's (yum) and movie Tron 3 (AKA Wreck it Ralph, you're not fooling me, Disney). Totally. Worth. It., of course, but still ... less than 300 words done for the day.

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But today? Up early to take my wife to the airport, had breakfast at Crepevine, and got almost triple that before even 9:30AM!

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And now, I'm in for my second writing session, before even 10AM. This is what makes Nano work.

Excelsior!

-the Centaur

Pictured: Crepevine as seen from the upper window of Cafe Romanza, my wife at Aqui's, and progress.

UPDATE: Writing Session 2 done, I am now officially caught up for the day:

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And, despite the last week's slippages, I'm still ahead overall for Nano:

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Plus there are at least one and maybe two or three more writing sessions today.

Hyperion!

You have got to be kidding me

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You have got to be kidding me.

I noticed a little extra space on my previous post at the top of a quote I pulled out of SPECTRAL IRON. I wanted to cut it out, so I went to Ecto, my blog client, and switched to its HTML mode. This is what I found embedded in my document as a result of the cut and paste - three hundred and thirty five lines of hidden goop, which looks like it came from Microsoft Word:

  <p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>

<o:DocumentProperties>

<o:Revision>0</o:Revision>

<o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime>

<o:Pages>1</o:Pages>

<o:Words>172</o:Words>

<o:Characters>779</o:Characters>

<o:Company>Mythologix Press</o:Company>

.... hundreds of lines deleted ...

mso-style-parent:"";

mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;

mso-para-margin:0in;

mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;

mso-pagination:widow-orphan;

font-size:10.0pt;

font-family:"Boldface PS","serif";}

</style>

<![endif]-->

<!--StartFragment--></p>


Charming! Feel like dieting much, Word? Axually, it looks like this may be part of a strategy to ensure formatted cut and paste works in Word and other programs, probably just interacting badly with Ecto.

S'ok, Word. We love you anyway, just the way you are.

-the Centaur

P.S. Pro tip: Option-Command-V pastes unformatted in Ecto.\

Back on Track

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I don't see catfood on your todo list there, mister.

No, but I am back on track for National Novel Writing Month, even though today was consumed almost completely by a software release that just ... wouldn't ... die. I'm actually planning a postmortem on a tiny little patch that ended up becoming a complete new release of our software that exposed interactions everywhere from our unit test framework to software we're launching next year. That made me late for the monthly Writing Allies meeting - normally I chunk out a piece of time to write over dinner before I get there, even if we all are having too much fun talking about writing to actually write. But when I got home, even after a lot of cat wrangling, I did manage to sit down with the laptop (or, from time to time, follow cats around with the laptop):

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Back on track for the day: 18179 words, or 16219 added. Still a day ahead. Woohoo! An excerpt:

Doug stared with interest at the footage from Ron and Sunny’s cameras, then at the pictures I’d taken of the graffiti with my cell phone. He asked if we had more, and I was embarrassed to admit that we’d hightailed it before fully finishing our location scouting.

“S’alright,” he said, reviewing the tape one more time. “Most interesting.”

“Well,” Sunny demanded. “What is it?”

“Definitely magic,” Doug said. “But I’m guessing you knew that.”

“Well—” Sunny began.

“C’mon,” Ron said. “There’s a demonstration of magic on the tape—”

“I was there,” Sunny reminded him. “And I do believe in magic. It’s just—”

“A projectia,” I said suddenly. “A caster’s will magically projected as a form.”

“Precisely,” Jinx said. “Like your tattoos, but free-floating. They can be as insubstantial and transparent as, well, ghosts, or as solid and opaque as physical objects. Your old boss, Christopher Valentine, used them to create his famous doppelganger illusion.”

Congratulations, Nano writer! Now back to work.

-the Centaur

Why do we get ahead in Nano, Master Bruce?

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Because we know we'll fall behind again.

What' s the cause? Launch crunch, exhaustion, and spending time with my wife before her upcoming trip.

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And you know what, writing friends? All that's more important than Nano.

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Totally. Worth. It.

I'm taking a whole week off at Thanksgiving just to write, so its Ohe. Kay. if I fall behind from time to time, as long as I don't let myself slip down the slope altogether.

According to my calculations, I'm fine. I could slip one whole day and still be fine.

Not that I plan to. Tonight is writing night!

-the Centaur

Getting off on the right foot

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Alright! I set aside time for two long writing sessions today, so I finally got ahead, writing 3473 words today. If I can push it just a bit further, another 1600 words, I think I'll hit my target for tomorrow. If only I had a doorway to extra time ... oh wait: tonight, I do.

Set your clocks back, everyone. As for me, who knows if I'll get there, but it's back to climbing that hill:


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-the Centaur

UPDATE: 1:40AM (after Daylight Savings Time) and 4292 words added today, totaling 9828 words. Night!

National Novel Writing Month – Spectral Iron

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"Everyone's favorite skeptical witch is back for her fourth foray in SPECTRAL IRON!"

Sheesh. I do find it hard to write marketing copy. I just had to stop, right there.

SO ANYWAY, National Novel Writing Month, 2012. My one, two, three, four, five, six ... seventh, SEVENTH time writing 50,000 words of a new novel in the month of November. It's quite the challenge, but it's the second best thing I've ever done for my writing other than join the Write to the End group - more writing comes out of Nano than (almost) anything else.

How much writing, you ask? (Or maybe you don't, but hey, it's my blog post). Nano itself six times would be only three hundred thousand words, but it was the seed for seven hundred thousand words of text and four completed novels. The Nano's I've done so far were:

  • DELIVERANCE - 2002 - 150K words - IN PROGRESS
    Seven hundred years after the Fall of Humanity, a rag-tag crew of a human spacecraft at the Frontier of space encounters a distress call from a ship owned by the aliens that took the Earth - and encounters one of the humans they left behind, who doesn't seem to think Humanity fell after all ... even though she barely looks human.
    Didn't finish this one, even though I eventually got 150,000 words into it. Hope to get back to it someday. My story "Stranded" in the anthology of the same name is set in the same universe, with a YA version of the same setup - the protagonist of "Stranded" is actually the granddaughter of one of the protagonists of DELIVERANCE.
  • FROST MOON - 2007 - 100K words - DONE
    Dakota Frost, a magical tattoo artist who can bring her tattoos to life, is asked by the police to track a serial killer preying on the magically tattooed around the time of the full moon - and then she encounters a werewolf who wants a tattoo done before the full moon to control his impulses. Has she found the killer ... or the next victim?
    Finished this one in 2009, published in 2010.
  • BLOOD ROCK - 2008 - 150K words - DONE
    Magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost returns, now fighting a plague of killer graffiti that is attacking vampires, werewolves and humans alike. As Dakota struggles with this new plague, she finds that fighting it threatens her relationship with her friends, custody over her new daughter---and ultimately, her life.
    Finished this one in 2010, published in 2011.
  • LIQUID FIRE - 2009 - 120K words - DONE
    Magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost returns, now struggling to keep her head above water in a magical world which threatens to consume her. A chance meeting on a plane leads her to befriend the beautiful fireweaver Jewel Graceling - but as Jewel increasingly comes under attack, can even Dakota save her?
    Finished this one in 2012, hope it to come out in 2013.
  • JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE - 2010 - 100K words - DONE
    There's no better defender of the Liberated Territories of Victoriana than Jeremiah Willstone, and she'll tell you that herself! But when her rich and powerful uncle calls down a monster from another world and escapes with it in a time machine, is even the stoutest defender of Liberation up to the challenge?
    Finished this one in 2012, hope it to come out in 2013.
  • HEX CODE - 2011 - 55K words - IN PROGRESS
    Cinnamon Frost is a street cat turned domestic - where by cat, we mean weretiger, and by domestic, we mean adopted. But can someone who grew up running the streets really learn to settle down in class? Even if they have her favorite thing in the world, math, there's always English class - and if that's not enough, someone may be trying to kill her.
    Still working on this one. Hope to finish it in 2013, have it come out in 2014.

Now it's on to SPECTRAL IRON, book 4 in the Dakota Frost series. Pictured above are some of the books I'm reading to "feed my head" for the plot of the book, which involves magical tattoos, piercing, the fae, ghosts, three kinds of zombies, television, and the appropriate relationship of science to skepticism. From the site, here's my blurb:

Dakota Frost is the best magical tattooist in the Southeast - but she's not in the South anymore. Her new role on the Magical Security Council has taken her to the underbelly of San Francisco, and she's got a camera crew dogging her every step as she's trying to map the magical Edgeworld. But when she runs foul of the fae, and is forced to do them a favor, even one of the world's most skilled skindancer may be in trouble.

Because if you don't know how to kill a ghost, how can you track down his murderer?

You need to write 1666 words a day to succeed at Nano, and so far, so good. Halfway through my day, and more than halfway through today's progress. I should easily catch up to where I should be (missed ~300 words yesterday because me and my wife decided to take a long walk and then crash after that, rather than me getting my late night writing run in).

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But most of the day is ahead of me. Alright, enough procrastinating. Back to work!

-the Centaur