Don't you miss that ticking clock?

All through November, I was aware of every hour, every day going by, knowing I had to write X number of words, or if I was ahead or behind of my daily goal at any given point. It's like "mindfulness" theory applied to writing. Now... now... that sense of urgency has evaporated. Well, at least as far as writing is concerned. Now it's urgency about "HOW many days is it until Christmas?" and getting holiday shopping done and mail sent out and events to go to, etc. Writing? Err, what's that? Yeah. Bah, humbug!

What am I doing now? What are my characters doing? I have no idea. Spending money, I suppose.

New story disease...argh...

And not just one, but three story ideas have burned themselves into my brain. It's three stories from my "Future History Channel". At least they're not completely new ideas, they're just things from a future history that I wrote up that I decided would make decent stories.

• Upaya, or the Road to Hell: In which the "worst criminal in human history" explains why she had to save humanity by destroying it.
  
• The Gate of Eirene: In which a despised cyborg observer first watches everything go to hell, and then decides to steal an experimental starship and take a group of surviving humans to safety out among the stars. And fails. Or does he?
  
• The Peace War: How the humans colonized an inhabited alien planet while fighting off the enemy they brought with them.
  

I even started writing "Upaya". Couldn't help myself! Argh! Here's the opening:

The prison is an anonymous ship drifting silently in the asteroid belt, its location a closely-guarded secret. The prisoner is the only human aboard. The crew and staff are all machine intelligences, as they were deemed superior in reliability, patience, and detachment, with their emotions dialed down to their minimum settings. The machines don't care about the crime; they only care about the optimal operation of the prison.

Over the past twenty years, security has only been breached four times, and only once did the would-be executioners get so far as to board the ship. The hull still shows the scars where the assassins blasted through the airlock door.

Today's visitor is no vigilante. She has official clearance from the Screening Board to be here, in person, on this prison ship.

"Ah, so you've come to see the monster, have you?" The prisoner bares her teeth at the visitor in an approximation of a smile.

The visitor squirms and clearly doesn't want to look at the prisoner, even with the bullet-proof glass wall that separates them. She mumbles, "It's merely a formality."

...and just reading that much makes me wonder, why bother trying to board the ship? Why not just blow it up from a distance? But the ship must have sophisticated and powerful anti-collision systems/weapons/detection/whatever, as a stray hit from even a tiny rock could rip it open, so it would be well-defended against missiles. But then how could attackers get close? Traitors aboard? Not likely. Confuse the AIs and sneak in? Hit it with an EMP? (They defended against the possibility.) Overwhelm the defenses with a swarm, hope something gets through and hits? But you'd detect the swarm before it got that close and take evasive action. We're assuming the assassins can't get ahold of a whole fleet, which is true. They're the lunatic fringe of Solarian citizens. (Should I even be calling them "Solarian citizens"? Eh, what the hell.) So yeah.

Looking forward...

...to revising? NOT.

It's been about ten years since I last sent stuff out to be rejected. I should get my act together (and a working printer) and try again. The idea of revising an entire novel makes my head explode, so perhaps I'll go back to writing short stories.

This time, I WILL learn MS Word, and it WILL obey me! Ten years ago, I made the mistake of doing up my stories in Latex, which worked great for setting out a bunch of complicated equations, but not so great for printing out stories in standard submission format. The trauma! Arrgh! I got two stories rejected in rapid succession from one editor, who told me not to right-justify the damn thing (on the first story), and then told me on the second one, "I told you not to right-justify them!" (or words to that effect). *headdesks* Well, he did include a comment on one of the stories, so maybe he did read some of it. Ha ha ha!

The other thing is that these days I don't really have the patience to read big long epic novels. I read children's books (short!) and short story collections and non-fiction mostly (if I'm reading anything at all.) Mysteries are good, too, in not dragging out forever and ever. Also Chinese swords-and-almost-sorcery books, which I read at the rate of ten pages every few months or so. :-P So if I can't even manage to read anything long, I can't expect to be able to write/revise one, either, can I?

So um. The plan. I has a plan? *chokes* I will work on short stories and revise them into submission and then send them out. Starting in January 2010.

50K!

There, it's only half past midnight and I managed to drag myself to 50060 words. The story isn't quite finished yet, and I'm not going to finish it tonight, but it's nearly there. The Big Bad is defeated. We just have to do some mopping up.

The ending was totally anticlimactic. Magical powers out of nowhere, and "bye bye, bad guy!" Bah! There must be some way to make it seem more reasonable (and not just look like I wrote myself into a corner), but I'm too tired to think of one now. I'll just sit back and enjoy the purple purple bar for awhile.

I'm done with NaNoWriMo for this year! Thanks to all you fellow WriMos out there for the moral support, and to my family for putting up with me through November!

What giant mecha?! WTF? *headdesks*

I'm not sure why there's a giant mecha now stomping its way into my story, but there it is. Then again, perhaps it was inevitable. (No! No it wasn't! You're delusional because there's only 2 more days of NaNoWriMo left!) Every story needs a giant mecha! (NO! It does not! Shut up! You've lost your marbles! Oh wait, there's two still left in my pocket. That's all right, then. When your children like to play with marble-run toys as much as mine do, you ALWAYS have some marbles in your pockets.)

Um. So anyway. Got to 47K and I'm taking a little break. And then I really do have to get this thing done. I'm relying on the Kodo drummers to see me through. (Best writing music I had all month. Ha! Ha! Ha!) If I can get 1000 words per iteration of their "Best of" album, that's only 3 more times to listen to it! Whee! (Thinking about it, my actual writing speed is more like 700 words per iteration. Still, close enough.)

Onwards to... the climactic Giant Mecha vs the Zombie Goddess showdown! Mwah ha ha ha ha! (In theory. In practice it'll be something dull and anticlimactic. Goddess says: "Go away!" And he does. Because really I have no idea how you're gonna defeat a giant mecha without the massive application of explosives, and they just don't have any available. Pity, that. Well, maybe cause its nervous system to seize up. That's probably the best they can hope for. "I can't stand the confusion in my mind!" (Ob Doctor Who quote))

43K words

...leaving me 7K more to go in the next three days. I supposed if I really tried, I could finish tomorrow or the next day. Hmm. I'm such a plodder. I have a terrible time trying to increase my output. I tried "Write or Die" and just couldn't do it. Bleah. My mind totally froze up and I couldn't type anything.

Will the end of my story coincide with 50000 words? Hmm. I'm trying to make it do so. I'm at the point where the sort-of-villains have morphed into SuperMegaHyperBadness, and the protagonist then has to do much the same thing, and they have their big face-off. Also I have a literal deus ex-machina: I just have to arrange to have the characters rendezvous with the machina part of that. As we already have two gods running around, one more popping out of a machine won't seem that out of place.

I have this thing about creating gods and destroying them. That's THREE novels now with that theme (last year's NaNo, this year's NaNo, and this year's NaNo that I wrote in an alternative universe where I picked the other plot). What can I say? They were different gods, created in different ways, and ... uh...ok, two of the endings aren't that different... um. Ok, but they're wearing different clothes, so to speak! (Not a new obsession with me. Remember when I was, what, 13 years old and I tried to start a cult with my friend, but we really wanted to be gods...? No, of course you don't remember, unless you happen to be that friend I tried to start a cult with.) At least no one in my "Salt Gang Chronicles" has any ambitions to godhood (universal domination, sure, but not godhood). Whew!

Day 27: A New Hope!

...or something like that. I'm at 40K (10K more to go!) and there's only a few days left. I can't wait until I can blow up the Death Star, er, the "Ark"...yeah...that's it...

Oops, I got distracted (did laundry, ate breakfast, watched a few YouTube videos, thought about picking up the thousands of dollars in Monopoly money strewn about the house) and forgot what I was going to babble about. The world may never know! The world doesn't want to know...

(Wow, these little kids are talented!) What was I on about? Oh yeah. Something about staying off Da Intarwebs and concentrating on getting a few thousand words of my novel typed. The plot and I had a reunion early this morning (after I woke up and before I got out of bed). Now we'll see if it has the stamina to make it to the 50K mark.

(I wonder what my kids are building with the LEGOs...hmmm...) This blog post is completely pointless. Even more so than usual! Except at this point I really need to push on and get to 50K. Because I know I can. I just have to STOP WASTING TIME, DAMMIT!