Category Archives: NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month…

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If you follow me and glance over ThisWoldAndOthers you will realize, I hope, that I write SciFi, not for a living but for relaxation and as an outlet. I have mentioned NaNoWriMo before but forgot to mention it this year, just in case someone passing by might be interested but not know about it. November is/was the month and I have participated in (and become a winner once more!)

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 p.m. on November 30. Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought fleetingly about writing a novel. Here’s a little more about how it all works.

National Novel Writing Month is also a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that believes your story matters. You know how writing makes the world a more creative, vibrant place. Through NaNoWriMo—as well as our Young Writers Program, the Come Write In program, and Camp NaNoWriMo—we work hard to empower and encourage that vibrant creativity around the world. We can’t do it without writers like you.

NaNoWriMo 2012 at a Glance

341,375 participants started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

648 volunteer Municipal Liaisons guided 586 regions on six continents.

82,554 students and educators created worlds with the Young Writers Program.

615 libraries opened their doors to novelists through the Come Write In program.

And in 2013, 44,919 Campers participated in Camp NaNoWriMo’s online writing retreat.

The novels not done even at 50k+ words its about 1/2 way, but here is the draft cover….and synopsis…20131201-100915.jpg

War of the Worlds?

It’s a Black Swan event, a disaster no one was looking for, despite decades of discussion. A killer asteroid slingshots around the sun and is heading straight for the heart of the US.

A desperate shot with an experimental space plane and obsolete nation killer bomb may save the day. Except worse turns to weird when it becomes obvious that the incoming hundred thousand tons is not an asteroid but a derelict starship.

Weird turns to near certain war when the ‘derelict’ starts spinning out landing craft, does the President destroy it, do the aliens come in peace?

The story of the men and woman who get to put the answers together and live…if they survive…with the consequences.

20131201-100934.jpg

NaNoWriMo 2012, water under the bridge and other thoughts…

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So obviously I dropped the ball on NaNoWriMo 2012, and I started out doing so well with all the best intentions.   However with a daughter’s wedding and thanksgiving to survive and real work requiring attention so we can continue to pay the bills (not to mention a semi major home construction project gone a lot over schedule) I just ran out of the mental and chronological resources to ‘get-er-done’ as it were.

Catching the Watcher is not done-fore however I have continued to work on it though at a lot slower rate.  Its now upwards of 40K words and (I think) roughly half done, hopefully I can wrap it up sometime in January.

So obviously I am not a ‘real’ blogger either  … real life intervened and I heeded the call.  Despite all my toys and channels of access I still could not find it in me to even put a few thoughts down, post a picture, etc.   Maybe I should blame it on the new iPad with its beguilingly sharp yet tiny text and butter smooth reaction to my every touch, along with the strikingly fast LTE link and up-rated WiFi.  But then again I can do all sorts of blogging from the iPad so it should really be an enabler of more doing not more slacking off.

I could blame it all on others or on my own failures as a person.  But the fact is that life is impossible to regulate.  There is only one me on this thread of time from past to future and a practical infinity of other threads are bustling against me at the wave front of now.  To change frames, the water is flowing under my bridge and it will never come back.  But its good to watch it slide past every once in a while and realize that in no possible world can I ever realistically aspire to perfection, let alone reach it, but in aspiring to do the best I can with the now I have, I at least make progress in a direction I get to call ‘right’ as in right for me and the world as I understand it.

Falling behind….NaNoWriMo 2012 | Day 14

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Catching the Watcher:

I need to catch some time with the keyboard … I have the basic story line in my head, need to get it out. But too many distractions, like work, life, Thanksgiving, construction delays, daughters wedding … Yeehaa …

  • Words Written Today 1,655
  • Target Word Count 50,000 Target Average Words Per Day 1,667
  • Current Day 14
  • Total Words Written 23,426
  • Your Average Per Day 1,673
  • Words Remaining 26,574
  • Days Remaining 17
  • At This Rate I might Finish On November 29, 2012
  • Words Per Day To Finish On Time 1,564

Catching the Watcher | NaNoWriMo 2012 | Day 11

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Onwards and upwards into the black!

  • Target Word Count 50,000 Target Average Words Per Day 1,667
  • Words Written Today 2,701
  • Total Words Written 21,771
  • Current Day 11
  • Average Per Day 1,979
  • Words Remaining 28,229
  • Days Remaining 20
  • At This Rate I Will Finish On November 25, 2012
  • Words Per Day To Finish On Time 1,412

So someone might ask what is the world like in the 2060’s and how do I know? To which I reply I obviously cannot know, look at what the smart futurists in 1960 thought the world would be like in the 21st century…for example 2001 (still the best(only) ‘hard’ sci fi movie ever.)

Turn the question around, what was the world like in 1960, transistor just invented, first men in space.  But those who were adults in the think of it had grown up during an incredible step change in technology over twenty years and they expected it to continue.. Of course many of the technologies that had gone through that step change had pretty much peaked out (the 737 flew first time only a few years later, the B52 was in service.) But technology they thought was peaking (computers, radios, etc) were really only on the ramp towards immense changes. Then if you look twenty years on 1980 and twenty years on again 2000, you get some idea of the ramps of change in tech and society. You also get the randomization of events in the real world; tsunami’s, revolutions, wars, demagogues, political movements, etc.

What I try to do is pick the tech, economic social and political ramps looking at 10,15,20 year slices and wrap that all up and come up with a history that makes some sense of the background of the story I am telling.  It’s not perfect and I do not expect any of my predictions to come true, but its fun and interesting to think about.

Catching the Watcher | NaNoWriMo 2012 | Day 10

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So Progress continues and today was a good one. Space battles always get the blood flowing. Anyway here are the stats for the day:

  • Words Written Today 3,275
  • Target Word Count 50,000 Target Average Words Per Day 1,667
  • Current Day 10
  • Total Words Written 19,070
  • Average Per Day 1,907
  • Words Remaining 30,930
  • Days Remaining 21
  • At This Rate I Will Finish On November 26, 2012
  • Words Per Day To Finish On Time 1,473

I am setting the story in the 2060’s after a half century of banal and horrific events. A smallish nuclear war, the collapse of the old Middle East and the rise of a new Caliphate, but that’s all (important) background to the story. I try to focus on characters, on the story of their lives as it interacts with great events and how those things interact with their environment, which in many ways is much more fantastical than any fantasy.

Catching the Watcher | NaNoWriMo 2012, Day 9

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  • Target Word Count 50,000 Target Average Words Per Day 1,667
  • Words Written Today 2,737
  • Total Words Written 15,795
  • Current Day 9
  • Average Per Day 1,755
  • Words Remaining 34,205
  • Days Remaining 22
  • At This Rate I Will Finish On November 28, 2012
  • Words Per Day To Finish On Time 1,555

Ah sweet progress, not much yesterday (its rolled into today’s count.) I should have gotten more done today but I kept on hitting blocks and getting the urge to get up and go do something else. Hopefully I can get another good stint tomorrow and Sunday, fortunately for NaNoWriMo progress and very unfortunately for my real life the work I am having done on my house is taking longer than expected, this time the coating for the new cork flooring needs to harden for 72 hours before I can start moving furniture in so another damned weekend down the drain!

Catching the Watcher | NaNoWriMo 12 | Update day 6

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Cover art Draft:

  • Target Word Count 50,000
  • Target Average Words Per Day 1,667
  • Words Written Today 2,181
  • Total Words Written 12,284
  • Current Day 6
  • Your Average Per Day 2,047
  • Words Remaining 37,716
  • Days Remaining 25
  • At This Rate You Will Finish On November 24, 2012
  • Words Per Day To Finish On Time 1,509

Catching the Watcher, Update | NaNoWriMo day 4

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  • Words Written Today 2,281
  • Total Words Written 10,103<
  • Current Day 4
  • Your Average Per Day 2,525
  • Target Word Count 50,000, Target Average Words Per Day 1,667
  • Words Remaining 39,897
  • Days Remaining 27
  • Words Per Day To Finish On Time 1,478
  • At This Rate You Will Finish On November 19, 2012

National Novel Writing Month…its here…first update

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Catching the Watcher…I’ll post the in process cover art later.

Probably not Young Adult though the story is largely told from the perspective of a young woman, who starts out the story a few days shy of 18, but the majority of the story takes place some years later.

All space, all the time, no fantasy (except the fiction part of the science of course.) Hopefully semi hard, adventure fiction with some interesting characters, situations and background.

Started on the first, did post progress yesterday, and did a lot more today.  But its going to slow down again as the initial rush of ideas fueled by all my prep thinking and doodling founders in the reality of actually having to write all those fun ideas down.   (and for there is an ‘event’ coming that may cause me to crash out…but who knows what the future holds.)

  • Current Day 3
  • Days Remaining 28
  • <Words Written Today 5,351
  • Total Words Written 7,822
  • Average Per Day 2,607
  • Target Word Count 50,000 Target Average Words Per Day 1,667
  • <Words Remaining 42,178
  • At This Rate You Will Finish On November 19, 2012
  • Words Per Day To Finish On Time 1,507