Nano 2016 Motivation and Confession Thread

[SeverinR]

My villain is either acting wildly out of character or exposing a legitimately sympathetic side I didn't know he had. I can't tell which, and it's kinda baffling, because either way would drastically change the rest of my story.

Doesn't matter go with it. It'll all work out in editing. Treated 10 times worse in the states...(Oh, sorry, that's what you say when you drop, kick, or run over a box when you work supply in the military) Just go! Go! Go!

lol

1900 words and holding. Hopefully more time to write over the weekend.

Charge! Write it, Write it. (ok, not really this gung-ho, but trying.)

 

[Chessie]

Since it's imperative I stay off Facebook for a few days because otherwise I'll snap...think I'll be getting a lot of writing done. Made it short of ~350 words shy of 3k last night and got politically distracted. SO...today I'm aiming for 3k. I have the next couple of scenes fleshed out pretty well so hopefully this will help immensely. Also got the concept art cover for this story back and it's pumped some new life into me. I've got to get this book to good. It won't happen during NaNo, but if I lay the right foundation down now then revisions will be easier. Go!

 

[Svrtnsse]

I did not manage to stay of FB. Managed roughly 2k words for a total of 13.5k words. Shortened down a long and complicated conversation into a handful of paragraphs about someone serving hot water to two silent men.

Now sleep.

 

[Tom]

1730 words. I am so tired today, but I managed to power through.

 

[Chessie]

Made it 1,604 today. I wanted to do more but I've been nursing my sick husband. My words were crap. Absolute utter crap. But they're there. And I'll care about it later. Building the foundation is my only goal for now.

 

[Heliotrope]

Not me. I worked for three solid hours on trying to get chapter 7 right... but didn't add any new words. I added alot of new words lol... but nothing to add to my total.

 

[Gribba]

2835 words today...

 

[ThinkerX]

1700 words tonight, 11400 total. Finished chapter three, which is 7080 words in its own right. (Or maybe not. There is another scene or three I am considering adding.)

The NaNo counter says I should finish December 10th, but at this point the final word count is a guess. (45,000? 55,000? Somewhere in there.) Could be higher, could be lower, or I could lose my motivation and quit.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Got about 1800 words today, which is just slightly more than half of what I'd hoped for.

I did start on a new and interesting event though and we finally get to encounter the main character of the story again - for the first time since the beginning. Also, exploring the art of shamanism in my setting from a practical point of view which is something I've not had the opportunity to do before.

Total word counts (finished chapters) 14.5k

 

[Caged Maiden]

I'm working, but still a couple thousand words shy of the goal. Hopefully I can make up ground. Honestly, this is as close to the daily word count goal as i've ever come. Usually, I have to finish out with a few 5k word days to win. I guess, then, I'm actually doing all right!

Eyes wild, Aunt Maeve dashed from the house, in about the fastest run an arthritic old woman could manage. She carried her skirts up above her knees, and on bare feet she hobbled to a stone slab set near the tree line. She called it her altar, but Raisa suspected it was a natural formation, something uncovered by whomever built the little stone cottage. Too big to move and too beautiful to break, perhaps.

Aunt Maeve kneeled at her altar and with a knife she must have grabbed on her way out the door, she cut the tops of her fingers. Just above the nails. All four on her left hand.

It was blood she was after, and fingers bled plenty without leaving an injury.

She squeezed the bloody hand with the other one, to wring as many drops as she could before clotting.

“Now, my Raisa,” she said, “give me your hand, too.”

Before Raisa made any sort of decision on her own, Aunt Maeve used her knife to cut into Raisa’s finger, as she had her own. Lengthwise, splitting the cuticle, where the nail grows. It hurt, but not unbearably so. Raisa was more curious than anything else.

“You got love in your little heart, dear one,” Maeve said as she collected Raisa’s blood and drew a circle on the altar. “But there’s something dark in there, too.”

 

[Ireth]

I like the excerpt, CM. Makes me wonder what's going on and what's gonna happen. But the hurt-hand-to-get-blood trope has always bothered me, to be honest. Injuries to all four fingers, especially with blades, would hurt a LOT, regardless of whether or not they'd scar. (Take it from someone who hurt both pinkies at once thanks to the Blizzard mixer at Dairy Queen during her last summer job.) Fingers and hands have a ton of nerve endings in them; that's why we have nail beds (which are the pink bits under your protruding fingernail. Not to be confused with the cuticle, which is the dead skin right at the base of the bed). Are these characters going to have trouble using their hands afterward? They might be better off cutting the back of their arm or something.

 

[Chessie]

The Blizzard Mixer? Oh, you poor thing.

 

[Caged Maiden]

I was a cutter, and when I wanted blood, I cut my fingers the same way as in the book. So...while I agree, slicing a hand is silly, I've had plenty of cuts on my arms and hands (with razor blades) and arms don't bleed like fingers, and you have to do a lot more damage, and fingers take longer to clot, so for the sake of a small wound, you get a lot more bang for your buck. Which I realize makes me sound sick, but it was a long time ago, and I was a troubled teen.

 

[Chessie]

Is it okay for me to have a day where I just don't care? Because that's today. I've fought with some friends, having a bad day, and I haven't seen the sun in close to a week. Winter in Alaska is deeply dark and I'm feeling a bit moody. So I only wrote 1065, which is ok because I'm still set to finish 2 days early. My husband has also been sick and it's hard writing when I feel that he needs me.

Since I haven't shared a slice of my work, here it is raw and unedited:

Spoiler: Excerpt

White light glowed underneath his palm, brightening up the dimly lit cellar. She felt the immediate surge of magic seep into her body, warm and alive, healing the burned tissues of her skin, evaporating the pain, and even causing her cheeks to tingle. She closed her eyes for a moment, basking in the warmth of his care, losing herself in the scent of his musk and the richness of his energy so close to her. Intoxicating. Nothing like any Mirovinian healing she had ever experienced and far from the shamanic traditions of the indigenous Tsy.

Ludmila decided that Sergei was purely magical and she needed to learn whatever it was that he knew, or find out how he had ended up a ward of the witch. He couldn’t be of this world, however. Not at all.

When he removed his hand only two golden letters remained imprinted in her flesh, the furious rashes gone. Her skin was smooth, milky in its natural tone, although the branding concerned her.

“Will she always know where I am?” she asked, rubbing her wrist in partial disbelief at the power of his healing touch.

“Baba knows everything,” he responded, and took back her arm in order to wrap gauze around the letters. “Do her bidding and she’ll release you. Disobey and not even I will be able to save you.”

“Hmm…”

Ludmila groaned in delicious relief. She was drunk on his beauty, drawn to his power. All of her life she had been surrounded by magic, by healers, by potions and alchemical formulas that cured diseases and poisoned enemies. But the instant nature of his skill called to the part of her which craved deep magical knowledge and recognition as a master. She needed for him to teach her how he worked, how he healed more effectively than any mage she had ever known.

 

[Svrtnsse]

So the fire alarm went off in my building and didn't get shut off for half an hour and now it's two hours later and I still can't sleep and I'm getting up fro work in three hours.

I realized I haven't shared any of my story here yet. Here's a sample:

Spoiler: Kala Is Alone - Chapter 8 (snippet)

So Kala went home and everyone else went up on the hill where the village lit its fires.

And as it burned — wood and flesh — the villagers sang and remembered. A song not unlike wolves’. Slow and sad. Loud and lonely. A song to soar above the ice and snow. A beacon of sound to guide the leaving soul towards the stars.

It was a good fire.

It’s what the village needed. They’d had a tough start of the winter. Death, madness, and suspicion. The fire helped. There’s nothing quite like standing around a big fire in the dark of winter howling at your fears and your sorrows with your close ones.

You just stand there, and the flames warm your face, and perhaps you hold someone’s hand or you cradle your daughter in your arms or you lean on your brother’s shoulder — and you’re part of something that’s bigger than yourself and your family and old as time itself.

Or you can lock yourself up in your house alone.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Is it okay for me to have a day where I just don't care?

Yes. Gives me a chance to catch up.

 

[Chessie]

Yes. Gives me a chance to catch up.

Heh. Come at me bro!

 

[visually_alert]

Nothing fancy, but here's what I'm working on. My character is about to wake up in a field, naked. Some kids found her:




[emoji99]

Ok, you've hooked me I'm new to this forum but I read through this and I'd keep right on reading. Thank you for sharing that.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

[Heliotrope]

Yay! A decent working draft for chapter seven is done. I lost some time the past couple days trying to get that together, but I just couldn't move on until I got all the working peices in order.

Now ready to move on to Eight

“Enough fairy tales.” He grunted. “You really want to know what’s happening? You want to see the truth? You want to find your pa?” He turned from us, his heavy boots a dull echo on the cracking wooden deck. When he reached a ladder at the far end of the railing Bastion shook his head.

“She isn’t ready Teach.”

“They’ll all be lost before she’s ready.” Teach spat, “And so will you.” Bastion didn’t respond. Instead he sucked in his cheeks like was trying to hold is tongue. Finally he muttered,

“Don’t go with him Andy, you’ll only get yourself caught.”

Teach looked up through bushy eyebrows and took a deep breath.

“Better caught than dead."

 

[ThinkerX]

1200 words so far tonight, 12600 total. Might add a few hundred later on. Or I might not. Added three scenes and a thousand words to Chapter three (8100 words!) Got started on Chapter Four. I have tomorrow off, and chapter four shouldn't be that long, so maybe I can get that pounded out.

Guess I'll jump into the excerpt thing. A sort of scene setting street scene. Warning, it might be a tad un-PC.

And with that Rebecca and Barry were bundled off the Seeker with half their coin (thirty-two dinar and change) and following vague directions through narrow cobblestone lanes between grim stone warehouses and decrepit longhouses. Plump blond-haired women in long dresses and oily youths in fur and leather eyed her as they navigated the streets.

Their course took them along a wide avenue choked with wains moving east and west. The eastbound wagons were mostly empty, but heavy barrels smeared with oil from the Porpita Pools west of the city filled the others.

“Lysander say’s that oil is the source of Permia’s wealth,” said Barry. “He also says they’re fools coz it’ll run out someday.”

One of the carters slowed, leaned from his wagon, and made Rebecca a crude offer that caused Barry’s ears to flush red.

Rebecca, no stranger to such propositions, responded with a counterproposal that prompted a ‘guffaw’ from the wagoner.

“You let them say things like that to you,” asked Barry.

“I’m used to it,” Rebecca told him. “Besides, it’s fun.”

A second carter, this one a rotund woman with long dark braids, slowed, told Barry he needed a woman with meat on her bones, and offered him a job.

Barry blushed and shook his head.

“Must be the place,” said Rebecca as they approached a wall guarded by a pair of rough-looking square gate towers. The sound of steel ringing against steel came from the other side.

“Wait here,” Rebecca told Barry.

“I’m hungry,” said the plump youth.

Rebecca pressed a dinar into his palm. “Grab a bite at that eatery.”

A bearded lout inside the entry demanded two dinars for access, copped a feel, and then told Rebecca to take the stairs to the right once in the manor. I should be charging him, Rebecca thought as she crossed a courtyard where two armored oafs swung huge swords at each other while a row of young men and women watched with halfhearted interest.

To Rebecca’s eyes, Baron Var Karman’s Manor didn’t look like much: a three-story stone cube barely big enough for a residence, yet signs above the door proclaimed the presence of administrative offices.

Entrance cost her another dinar, but at least she didn’t get fondled this time. Then she was standing in a line of supplicants outside an undersized office listening to muttered conversations from within. Eventually, it was her turn. The official – a rather attractive blond hair fellow with a cruel smirk – recited a bunch of legal gibberish that ended in a demand for ten imperial dinars and a crude suggestion as to how the fees could be reduced.


Rebecca, who’d wined, dined, and bedded far less savory characters took the hint and left the office arm in arm with the philandering bureaucrat.

Outside, she found Barry plopped on a log, watching the armored idiots hack away at each other while bouncing a big breasted blond lass on his knee. She tossed the kid a second dinar, and let the official escort her to an establishment that offered thick steaks, strong wine, and convenient upstairs bedrooms.