NaNoWriMo 2011 progress

... still writing!

NaNoWriMo 2011

Yup - I'm in it to win it this year - though I'm gonna cheat (of course) by finishing my current work-in-progress rather than starting a new novel.

NaNo 09: Day 2

"Oi, mate! Can you give me a hand here?"

I don't believe this is happening. By the look on the man's face, neither can he.

"You're naked," he says, all open mouth in unshaved jowls.

"My girlfriend's turfed me out, innit! Shoved me out of the door and won't let me back in. She says she's calling the Bill if I make a scene!"

Which is a lie, of course. After I asked him to break us into the building, Sam spent a couple of minutes gazing at the warehouse frontage, a thoughtless consideration of possibilities. Then without warning he stripped naked and hid his clothes under the wheels of a van parked a dozen metres down the road and, crouching, waited for someone to walk by.

"What do you want me to do?"

I watch the man's surprise meld into a smile across his face.

"Can you help me get into this place? I've got some overalls in there, but the key's in my trouser pocket and my trousers ..."

Now he's grinning. "This is a joke, innit! You got cameras stashed somewhere."

"No, mate, honest!"

There's no doubting my host's ability to lie with sincerity, but I can feel an acid of panic start to form in Sam's stomach when the man pulls a ring of keys out of his own pocket and jangles them.

"I don't know what's going on, but I do know you ain't got no clothes stashed in my building. So tell me what this is all about, yeah?"

And Sam stands up and smiles back at the man, shrugging his shoulders. "I'm not lying about the girlfriend, mate – well, I was lying about the 'girl' bit. See what I mean? I can't go in the pub for help: they don't like the likes of me in there ..."

It takes me less than a second to rummage and strain through Sam's memories to confirm the truth of that statement. I hadn't realised that this street is less than a mile from where he grew up; Sam had built up a detailed mess of information on his local pubs long before he reached the legal drinking age. This pub had a nasty reputation.

But why tell the stranger about his preference for men?

And then I felt it: a cool slice of communication between Sam's eyes and his heart, skin, mouth – like a gentle spit of iced rain foretelling of a storm to come.

Sam calls it gaydar. I call it spooky, the way one human can identify others attracted to them, a microsecond change in the chemical balances of both bodies – a means of communication beyond my understanding, or even intuition. And yet it happens all the time, and it's just happened here.

Sam's standing naked in the street, and the man who stares at him likes what he sees.

NaNo 09: Day 1

The pub sits on a corner of two shabby backstreets, part of the maze of lanes beyond Southwark High Street, away from the river and the redevelopments currently transforming the South Bank into yet another of London's tourist traps. I'm not surprised to find it open even at this time of the morning: there's something about the air in Southwark which seems to encourage a disregard of rules and regulations. Southwark was always the place to go for rough pleasures; I remember losing a lot of money more than once betting on the wrong cock or the wrong dog.

I'm tempted by the idea of fortifying myself with a couple of pints of beer before I start tracking Boude. But time is pressing – the clouds in the overcast sky above me are beginning to colour as dawn approaches, and the drizzle of people walking by is starting to thicken.

The warehouse is tucked behind the pub. It looks much younger than the pub, with ranks of steel windows a dozen feet above the path. But while the pub is open and operational, this place has a feeling of neglect, abandonment around it. The only new thing I can see is the padlock and chain across the bars ahead of the entrance.

Sam's back, and taking an interest in things again. 'Do you know how to break in?' I ask him.

'Why?'

'We're going to rescue the girl.'

'Okay.'

It takes a bare moment for me to sink back into the folds of Sam's mind. As he comes forwards I can already taste his concentration as he considers the problem – honey and strong cheese, which reminds me that Sam hasn't eaten since yesterday evening.

A couple of pints of beer might have been a good idea, I realise.

Updates and stuff

So having played with the shiny new toy, I've now updated the RikVerse website to include links and stuff on each of the chapbook pages. I also took the opportunity to spruce up the Rikweb Bookshop (on lulu.com) - just in case someone stumbles across the thing and in a mad fit of generosity decides to purchase the book.

I'm thinking that one further addition to the Rikweb website, on the Kalieda side of things most probably, should be the addition of a bulletin board (phpBB3). Not that I want to start my own community or cult or anything, but I think having something like a BB will be useful place to store background stuff - stuff like map tutorials or biology ideas which I find myself posting to other BBs which then get pruned.

I'm also thinking of maybe setting up a forum as a guestbook for the website - I always liked having a guestbook (and coded the old one up myself), but had to decommission it in the end because of the amount of spam it was attracting. Maybe the inbuilt spam controls on the current phpBB thingy could come in useful ...

What else am I doing? Well, I've failed this year's NaNoWriMo in spectacular fashion (unlike young Scavella and the other TUF stalwarts, who get a line of Conga Rats from me on their achievements).

Instead, I've been re-reading and annotating my first novel (now rejected by three Agents) with a view to a major redraft in January and sending out to more agents in the early spring. Believe me, this book is good - maybe a touch more spit'n'polish will help convince others of its goodness next year.

On the Rik's Blog Story (RBS) front, I'm not giving up on it yet! I might not have written much of it this NaNo, but I've certainly been thinking about it and have a good idea about where I want it to go. And I've also decided that I'm not going to go down the agented route with this one; rather, I'm just going to publish it via lulu.com - if only to keep the RikVerse book company in the otherwise bare shelves of the Rikweb Bookshop.

I might also carry on writing it on the Rikweb BB rather than here - one of the major drawbacks of writing anything long on a blog is the insistence of the software that posts appear in date-descending order, which I think is a real turn-off for both of my casual browsers.

As for this year, I'm planning to pull my finger out of my creative arse and do some work on both the RBS and on the Long Poem. I want the LP to be published (again via lulu.com) by spring next year - why wait to new year's eve to make resolutions, huh?

And I've just noticed that lulu.com appear to have extended their Publsihed By You service to the UK - which means that Rik's Sparky Little Printing Press may in fact become a reality rather than just a line on the frontpage of the RikVerse book and chapbooks.

I can't believe I haven't posted any cat photos on the blog this year - have to do something about that this week ...

NaNoWriMo 08 ...

... starts on Saturday.

I've decided that this year I shall cheat, just like I cheated last year. By which I mean I will finish writing a book rather than write the first half of a new book. In fact, I shall attempt to finish the Rik's Blog Story thingy I was posting to this very blog earlier this year.

It shall be fun.

You have been warned!

Rik's phrase of the day

"The End"

Yep, those are my favourite words right at this moment, because those are the words I found myself writing at just gone 3:00am this morning on page god-knows-how-many of the first draft of my very first science fiction novel.

And as a bonus, I also dreamed a title for the book this morning (later on; I was in bed by this time) ... The Gods in the Jungle. Snazzy, huh? The title only brings up two Google hits, so it should be safe enough to claim as my own.

Some statistics:
First word written: 1 November 2005 (All Souls' day)
Last words written: 23 March 2008 (Easter Sunday)
No of words inbetween: just over 127 thousand
No of chapters: 36 plus a short epilogue
No of sex scenes: um, two? Plus allusions to quite a few other encounters
No of point-of-view: characters: seven
No of other characters: there's a whole circus of them
No of alien monsters: the Barby Rats are cute - not monsters at all.
Happily-ever-after score: well, there's certainly a resolution for the 2 young lovers and the evil uncle ...

Anyways, there's lots to do still. Revision, for instance - though that shouldn't take too long as I've been revising for consistency and style as I go along. Then it's all the fun of submitting the tome to agents (and publishers) and waiting for them to recognise my 'genious', etc, etc, and so forth.

PS: Should I be worried about the jolly zombies in the dream that gave me my title? The royal blue rooms with bright yellow windows floating through the sky were also rather trippy. Even cutting off a zombie's face didn't kill it - luckily they were fine about the knifework, said it happened all the time and I didn't need to worry.

PPS: there's no zombies in my novel, just in case people were worrying ...

NaNoFiPoMo

I've given myself until the end of the month to finish the first draft of my novel and to revise/polish it. This is not as difficult as it may seem as I've already revised the existing text as part of an exercise to work out what sort of ending I ought to be writing. And writing another 5-10,000 words in 10 days shouldn't be a problem to a NaNoWriMo veteran such as me.

As an incentive, I've been researching UK literary agents. I now have a little list of 12 agencies divided into A, B and C groups who will be receiving my representation submissions (begging letters? Nah! I have confidence in my writting skillz) in the week after Easter, mid-June and mid-September respectively. No plans to send to publishers - that can come in December

But before sending the novel out into the wild, I ought to get me some of them beta readers, just to check that the manuscript is really as brilliant as I currently think it is. Volunteers may apply for the post in the comments below.

(oh, yeah: National Novel Finish and Polish Month)

NaNo 07: the aftermath

Final NaNoWriMo word count: 51,713
Current word count for book: 100,753

So, I achieved my objective of writing 50k words in November, and my other objective of getting my WIP past the 100k mark. And now I can sit back and ponder on whether the sweat was worth it.

And on the whole, I don't think I've done too badly - I'm quite proud of how my characters have grown their own independent lives, and some (much) of the writing should glint nicely once it's had a good polish.

However, one massive problem has emerged as I bring this behemoth of a first draft of a first novel to a close: I don't actually have much of a plot. I've been concentrating so hard on getting my characters to do things in various places, and I've unleashed such terrible grief on them, that all they seem interested in doing is surviving - which is a bit of a bugger because I now find myself struggling to bring the book to a close.

Without some sort of quest to achieve, I can't think of a way to finish the book with an adrenaline rush of triumph. Most of the books I've read seem to have a quest element: kill the ring; find the murderer; thwart the baddies. I've managed to get to a stage where the pay-off is going to be the leading female having to choose between two men, one of whom will go off to the Old City to revenge his brother's death and (possibly) become the next Emperor, while the other will head off into the jungle to escape the evil clutches of the empire and start a new society.

It's got human interest. She's pregnant by one of the men, but doesn't know which - and it will be noticeable when the baby is born as one of the men has horns. But that happens after this story ends.

Like it or not, I'm missing a quest.

Is my poor book doomed to commercial failure before it is even finished?

Rik in shock NaNo Triumph!

You heard it here first!

Spontaneous celebrations break out in small areas of Hackney.

NaNo 07: Week 4 update

Watch Rik's scramble towards the finish line

Daily words:
2.0k words on 22 Nov
0.0k words on 23 Nov (big oops)
2.0k words on 24 Nov
3.0k words on 25 Nov
2.5k words on 26 Nov
0.8k words on 27 Nov (little oops)
2.4k words on 28 Nov

NaNo word total: 47,436
- leaving me to do around 2,600 words over the next 2 days
Book word total: 96,476
- and an extra thousand words to break the magical 100k barrier.

So, what have my characters been up to this week? Well, they've split up into two groups: the first group is sitting around recovering from the plague and discussing what new dangers the city faces and how to combat it. The second group are being far more active and have finally (yay! finally!) left the city and headed into the jungle following the bidding of the mad fanatic religious woman.

And that is really all that's happened action-wise. I've also been doing loads of infodumping and backstorying - well, it's about time I explained how come the golden dye has made the city rich (and how it's harvested), and why the various religious beliefs are so important to the story, and how exactly does a person walk with alien beasties and not get attacked.

Talking of attacking, my cat Mr Dolly made an appearance in the novel, though I wrote him as a dangerous beastie ten times bigger than a normal pussy, and 50 times more active.

2 more days to go. I'm feeling a little light headed with wonder that I might just succeed in this mad ambition to finish writing a book ...

More Special-ness

Can you see a theme emerging here? Can you sense a touch of word-avoidance in the air?

There's other versions of this song I prefer, but the Specials video is one I remember from my kiddie years, so the Specials version is what you get:

Rudy? Who Rudy, huh?

Desmond helps Rik avoid NaNo

... with a bit of you can get it if you really want ...

More anti-NaNo goodness ...

... courtesy of the Ramones

NaNo relief: Specials ska!

'Nuff said:

NaNo 07: Week 3 update

Rik's contemptible week 3 NaNo efforts:

3.1k words on day 15
1.8k words on day 16
1.7k words on day 17
0.9k words on day 18
0.0k words on day 19
2.8k words on day 20
0.1k words on day 21

Total for NaNoWriMo: 34.6k
Total for the draft: 83.6k

So not only have I managed my two best daily word totals, I've also managed to log 3 of my 4 worst daily word totals. For instance, yesterday's excuse for not writing was confusion about moons - I'd mentioned them in earlier chapters and wanted to mention them again, but suddenly felt the need to work out their current phases (for consistency, of course). Two hours of fun ensued, after which I couldn't be bothered to actually write more than a couple of paragraphs.

Then again, the storyline has entered a bit of a depressing arc. Plague rages through the city and characters are keeling over at an astonishing rate. I think some of this writing is of good quality - comparing it to the stuff I was writing before NaNo, I can see stylistic improvements in the dialogue. Bit there's no getting over the fact that describing death for three chapters can drain the spirit and will.

On the plus side, I've finally managed to force half of my surviving characters out of the city and into the jungle, and thus heading towards the series of climaxes I have planned out for them. I've also managed to weave some worldbuilding descriptions - the layout of the city, production of the dye on which the city's fortunes are based, the critical importance of goats - into the narrative. Oh, and one of my characters has finally had an encounter of the homosexual kind: huzzah for Shapeis!

NaNo 07: Week 2 update

(with apologies for the lateness of this report)

My report from NaNoHell (week 2)

Words written:
2.2k words on day 8
2.3k words on day 9
1.6k words on day 10
2.6k words on day 11
1.7k words on day 12
0.1k words on day 13 (oops!)
1.1k words on day 14

More importantly, I've: killed off a minor character and given him a very nice funeral; added a semi-detached myth-type story which explains the origins of some natural disasters; had lunch, and a very interesting conversation, with the Emperor's mistress; detailed various comings and goings at one of the city's classier bordellos; and introduced plague into the city, which is destined to kill off at least half of my characters, including one of the main ones.

And I'm still on course (just) to write 50k words in a month!

NaNo Goodies

or even



The red blobs are the days I didn't manage to post my wordcount in time, not the days I didn't write any words.

This post was inspired by Scavella, who's managing to write too many damn words when she should be prevaricating and displacement activity-ing like the rest of us mortals.

NaNo 07: Week 1 update

I'm proud of my progress. I'm not racing away, but neither am I lagging behind. As of the end of today's writing, I am about 900 words ahead of schedule - if I continue at this pace I should have written 50,000 words by the 28th or 29th of November.

For the statisticians, I wrote:
1,777 words on day 1
1,714 words on day 2
1,966 words on day 3
1,378 words on day 4
1,693 words on day 5
1,569 words on day 6, and
2,441 today.

I have also managed to write through a betrothal ceremony, introduced some alien creatures, got the betrothed couple to have sex on a hillside, described the city where the story takes place, killed a man, have the captain of the guards and the commander of the Imperial army discuss how to dispose of the body using the alien creatures, and written a myth story detailing the death of the archetypal man and how plagues came to be. Oh, and there was a scene in a brothel that - miraculously - did not involve sex in any way shape or form!

Now I get to eat pizza. Yay me!

Monkey rats in NaNo shock

I think one of the most important lessons I've learned about bookwriting in my (extremely) short career to date is that good stories are about people. It doesn't matter how weird the setting - how disfigured the laws of physics, geography and biology have become in your story's world - the book only becomes interesting when you put "real" people into the scenery and let them deal with "real" problems such as gathering food, searching for sex and keeping their loved ones safe.

Now this is a bit of a bugger for me because one of my great pleasures in life (apart from food, sex, etc) has been the development of my constructed world within which I've always planned for my stories to take place. I have maps. I have alien biology. I have sweeping histories of nation building and the destruction of empires. But when it actually comes to writing the book, it all becomes background material - something mostly hidden from the reader as the characters get on with their everyday, ordinary lives in this alien, extraordinary world I have created for them.

It's a real bugger, I can tell you!

So when I do manage to work out a way of introducing an alien creation into the novel, you can imagine my joy. For instance, I blogged about monkey rats a couple of years ago - an alien creature which appears to have three separate sexes, and yesterday I finally worked out a way to slip the wee beastie into the NaNo novel.

The big trick (of course) is to get the characters to react to the alien creature as if it is something they've known about, and lived with, all their lives: it's not alien to them at all. Yet at the same time I have to introduce a completely alien "monster" to my readers, show them this beast, explain to them what makes it a proper, alien creation rather than some sort of chimaeraic creation - beak of a bird, pelt of a fox, tongue of a snake, etc. And I have to convince the reader that it could exist outside of the bounds of the story.

Why? Because for me the alien biology of my constructed world is real. If I can't write about this world as an alien place in which humans live, then I'm failing myself as a writer.

So then, how does my writing match up to the targets I set for it? That, dear reader, you'll have to judge for yourself. Say hello to the Giant monkey rats of Burramesh:


The track was well worn: in some places it cut into the surrounding earth and in the steeper parts steps had been roughly cut into the bare rock. In several places it doubled back on itself in its climb to the top. Loken took the lead, eager to reach the brow of the hill, not taking much notice of the vegetation as he strode by. Only when the path levelled out did he stop; he could see Delesse below him, holding the shrunken woman's hand as they negotiated the trickier parts of the climb.

"God's teeth! You've got monkey rats up here!"

"Don't go too far," Delesse shouted back. "They're dangerous!"

Turning around, he could see that the hill formed a massive Y shape, with the city below nestled between its outstretched arms. Northwards, the slope of the hill was much gentler. The ground was a flattened swirl of rusts and greys, littered with rocks and boulders but little in the way of vegetation. Nearby to his right a stone hut had been built – he could see two guards sitting in the shade of its over-large roof while a third sat on top. All three were watching him; he waved a greeting to them and felt a touch of relief when they raised their hands to acknowledge him. None of them seemed to be carrying weapons.

The only vegetation of note was the monkey rat trees. They were huge – the largest reaching almost five metres from the ground. He'd seen such trees before: monkey rats were quite common, even in Stal, but few grew above man-height.

"Magnificent, aren't they." Delesse had reached the top of the hill and was walking towards him. "The Governor before my Father had a monkey rat tree growing in the Reception Courtyard, but it was cut down when we moved in."

"Why?"

She gave him a quizzical look.

"No, I mean why did he have it cut down?"

"These aren't normal monkey rats. They're venomous – even the trees carry the venom."

"Can we get closer?"

She pointed over to a smaller tree growing near to the stone hut. "We can have a look at that one, if you like. I think the guards have developed an understanding with its queen. Are you coming, Maeduul?"

The shrunken woman had sat down on a small rock as soon as she had reached the top. On hearing the question she turned round to look at them, shielding her eyes from the sun's glare with a flat hand.

"No, no, little kitten; I've seen the barby rats before. Do you think the guards will have some water?"

"You ought to sit with them in the shade, Maeduul."

"Gyano-ten made me put some cream on – it makes me sticky, but I'll not burn."

Delesse shrugged her shoulders, then grabbed at his hand to lead him towards the hut.

"Who's gyano-ten?" he asked her.

"It's Maeduul's name for my mother."

"Do you allow all your Servants to talk to you like that?"

"Yes. Why? Shouldn't I?"

"It doesn't seem, well, right."

"Do you have Servants?"

"Well I suppose we do, but I rarely see them. You don't even put collars on your Servants!"

They were coming close to the tree, now. One of the guards had stirred himself onto his feet and was walking towards them.

"We do things differently in Burramesh. I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable if I had to give orders to a Servant forced to wear a collar. I think we'd better stand here."

They stopped about 10 metres from the branches of the tree. Looking, he could see the four roots at the base, and just above their join what looked like a large, half-lidded eye set within the bark-skin. The main bole stretched up, the backbone clearly visible on either side as it helixed around the trunk from which emerged the great, black, pinnate leaves stemmed in their pairs to fan across the sky in search of the sun.

"So where's the – queen?"

She shaded her eyes with her hand, scanning the tree. "There!" she pointed. "She's sitting right on top of the growing arch."

He copied her actions, but could see no sign of the creature. Then it moved.

It was much, much bigger than a normal monkey rat. Rather than the sparse rust-coloured fur he was expecting, this queen had a luxurious pelt: alternate stripes of black and dark charcoal running slantwise across its flank. Two eyes, forward on its head, above a shortened snout and beak gave it a curious, human quality. He could see no ears; a row of stubby spines running the length of its back, coloured red, were visible, as were the claws terminating each of its paws. It was sitting as if relaxed on its throne, yet its black eyes were trained on the two humans as if to dare them to move closer.

"It's beautiful!" His voice was a whisper.

"She's beautiful," Delesse corrected him.

"How do you know its a female?"

"The queens are the big ones – each tree has its own queen. The princes are much smaller – no bigger than a common monkey rat."

He continued to stare at the creature. "One of my tutors once compared the Empire to the monkey rat: the tree was the land; the leader was the emperor; I was a guardian in this story. He said that when the leader died, one of the guardians would have to become the new leader, for without a leader the tree would die."

"And you believed him?"

"Oh yes, for a while. I was only seven at the time."

"I remember the tree that grew in the Reception Courtyard had no queen nor princes. I also remember it screamed horribly when it was cut down."

"These trees have voices?"

"Oh, yes. And eyes and blood. Can you see the eyes?"

He nodded.

"Velledue – he was my tutor – told me that these monkey rats were created specially by God to test us. He called them prison trees because they have eyes to watch our every blasphemy. I used to have nightmares that the trees would see my every sin and send their queens to hunt me down and poison me."

"He wasn't a very nice person, this Velledue."

She caught his hand in hers: "Oh, he has his little peculiarities."

Loken gave her a swift look; she had shifted her gaze away from the tree towards the northern horizon. He could see that some strands of her hair was beginning to work their way loose from the knot of plats pinned to the base of her head. He squeezed her hand.

"So why do you tolerate these creatures so close to the city, if they are as dangerous as you say?"

"They're very, very good guards. They'll attack any large creature that enters the grove. And the queens attack in packs, you know. I think they're quite intelligent."

"Ah," he said, looking around him. "That explains why the wall doesn't completely circle the city."

She smiled at him, returned his squeeze.

"But surely fire would destroy them?"

"They're very resilient – at the first sign of danger the trees furl their leaves up tight and the base sinks into a hole in the ground. The queens can run away of course, carrying their favourite princes. But they seem to make an effort to keep the grove clear of burning material. Anyway, they only cause us problems when they spawn; there's not much room up here for new trees so the obvious place to go is downhill ..."

"Straight into the mansions and compounds we walked past earlier?"

"That's right! Every second equinox we have a festival where everybody comes up here to clear our side of the hill. The little ones aren't as poisonous as the big ones. The person who bags the most monkey rats becomes First Citizen for the next year."

"My, you are a strange race of people! Where shall we go next?"

"Let's fetch some water for Maeduul, then I'll let you choose the next destination."