In this novel: Someone was dumb enough to lock a big old demon god inside a mountain, and then some other people were dumb enough to decide a train tunnel ought to go straight through there. Yet some other people are dumb enough to risk their lives to stop this tomfoolery. !Bonus zeppelins and rideable carnivorous dinosaurs.

Words today: 1,751
Accomplished: Added another supernatural mystery + toe-curling racism; or in other words, pissed off two main characters and scared the holybegerbil out of another.
Excerpt:

Juniper's stomach tightened, the way it had when he was a kid and he suspected he'd done something wrong.

Behind the scenes: I was writing this part down by the bay with my dog, and a skunk came running up to us, investigated about ten feet away for a little bit, showed me his tail in a blatantly threatening fashion until my heart rate was suitably raised (NOT THE LAPTOP, SKUNK, PLEASE NOT THE LAPTOP) and then scampered away. If I meet that stripey bastard when I don't have the dog tied to my belt or a computer on my lap, we are going to play a game called I Don't Actually Care About Getting Sprayed As Long As I Spray You Back With A Shaken Up Bottle Of Mountain Dew, You Little Jerkoff. And yes, I'll recognize him! I never forget an ass.

13673 / 100000 words. 14% done!

I'm aiming to finish the first book by the end of September, so I have October to recuperate before NaNoWriMo.

Chapter One is finished, and now I'm galloping through Chapter Two. I wrote one of these latter scenes a few months ago, and I think I'll probably rewrite it to suit what happens in Chapter Three, but for now it serves its purpose.

Immortal Showdown: 6015 / 100000 words. 6% done!

Words today: 1147
Accomplished: Juggling balls! (Mysterious shadow, bank robber on the loose, secret superpowers, and unorthodox mail.) And for bonus points, the star of Chapter Two is wearing a fake mustache.
Excerpt:

His paunch looked like he drank it there on purpose, as a shield against kicking horses and runaway freight trains.

This time it's a short story which is actually excerpted from a standalone bit of a collaborative novel I haven't written. But at least I have something, and it has pirates in it! And goblins! And a swamp monster!

Title: Untitled
Words: 2,527
Excerpt:

He'd stirred the mud so that it billowed through the water like wet brown smoke, rolling and blossoming and ruining any glimpse of the distant yellow leaves carpeting the bottom of the swamp.

108K as a bloated first draft. My guess is it'll lose 15K during editing. Said excision of my wordiness will commence soon... The ending is ugly and I want to fix it up, but I have to let it sit a few days before I can really rearrange it properly.

For now, I'm going to go stuff my face. To celebrate, I bought a big fat T-bone, which I will cover with mushrooms sauteéd in garlic.

108613 / 80000 words. 136% done!



...Fourth novel in a row that I've finished in one year or less. Whew. :)

100250 / 80000 words. 125% done!

TOO MUCH NOVEL.

6,224 words today. Two or three scenes left to go.

My Rainforest recap, with photos, is coming after I finish the novel. But look how close I am! (I'm so close I'm 14K past where I intended to be!)

94026 / 80000 words. 118% done!

Here's a 300-word excerpt from I Didn't Want To Go On Your Stupid Quest Anyway (working title):

I darted out as the two pirates were comically accusing each other of having lost the key. I couldn't have hoped for that to go better if I'd actually planned it.

I figured the mage had a cabin off the stateroom, like the captain. The screams had been muffled, but I was sure they'd come from astern. I only had ten feet to go across the deck, but it was right in the open, and there were thirty pirates lounging around, doing everything from whittling and drinking to actually sailing. I didn't have time to strategize—the other two were going to come up behind me any second. I'd just have to hope that they were all too busy, sleepy, or drunk to notice me make the short journey.

No such luck.

“Hey!” someone called sharply.

I threw one hand toward him and waved lazily. “Relax, they told me that dick in the red sash wants to talk to me. I'm sure he's going to kill me, so let's not make it take any longer, all right?”

Those within earshot watched warily, but they didn't try to stop me. After all, I was right about the mage probably killing me—why should they get in the way when he could clearly handle it on his own? I sauntered into the stateroom and held the door open a moment so that if Iziku was following, it could breeze in behind me.

After I shut it, I leaned against the wood-paneled wall and had about eight heart attacks.

Refreshed by the fact that I was probably already dead of panic and therefore had nothing left to lose, I looked up to find the mage and the captain staring at me. That couldn't have gone worse if I had actually planned it.

“Hi,” I said.

Also, I missed Weakly Story Club for the first time on Sunday, March 08, 2009. Still, I'm not going to let 1/10 turn into a worse statistic. There'll be some flash by this Sunday, AND a finished novel. (And then photos.)

Wait, do I hear you complaining that I'm here to write and that I should be doing so? Well, guess what? I am the hare! I am the grasshopper! Maybe I will get my comeuppance in the end, but for now, I'm kicking everyone's asses at 6000+ words today, and I'm not even done writing. The closest person on the scoreboard has only written half of what I have.

Have stats and an excerpt, because you've been so good:

Title: Deviltar Swale (working title)
Words:

13522 / 100000 words. 14% done!

Excerpt:

Elijah shrugged, giving Toby a once-over, as if he'd never seen her before. He turned back to Pauley and extended a hand, leaning in his saddle to reach the other bounty hunter. “I'll bet you twenty klad, Whipstaff, that Tuttle's stubborn enough to keep that thing as a pet just to spite you, for a week at least.”

“Make it fifty klad and two weeks, on account of she saw us make the bet,” Pauley said, blowing smoke through his teeth, “and you've got a deal.”

“Done.” They shook hands and turned expectantly to watch Toby chew more jerked venison for the chick's eager mouth. It wasn't going to make it four miles to town through rough, hot desert, though, not even with several mouthfuls of meat.

“Y'all got any ideas on how to get it to drink some water?” Toby asked.

The striker chick hissed, as if it knew she was scheming something it might find unpleasant, and they all got a good look at its collection of tiny but deadly teeth. The S.E. hadn't nicknamed them landsharks for nothing.

Grinning, Elijah pulled out his canteen and dangled it by the strap. “How 'bout one of us holds it down and you pour water down its throat?”

“Hold on!” Pauley protested. “No helping her.”

“If it dies,” Toby said, “neither one of you wins. In fact, if it dies, I'll charge both of you fifty klad for making it harder on me.”

I want to rewrite book one, but kaerfel said no and she's probably right. I should finish the trilogy once, with my crappy first drafts, and then clean them all up at once so they match better. Thank you, Chelsea, for being my self control. <3

I'm also still working on Noble Quest, and the plot snarl I encountered has been detangled thanks to dreamburnt. Thank you, Kit, for being my writey twin. <3

...But they're awesome and I love them all.

Two hours ago, my story was longer than it is now, but it's about to get longer again, and much, much better.

How this happened in three points:

1. On Sunday, as usual I derided my abilities as a writer, and as usual my friends pulled knives and told me to STFU or else. (Well, not quite like that. But they've been known to have a low tolerance for what I consider a rational assessment of my skill level and what they consider useless self-deprecation.) Their resistance to my point, this time, forced me to explain myself...

I make things easy on my characters, and while I'm aware of it, it's difficult not to slip them treats under the table. I like them too much. I think a mark of truly amazing writers is a willingness to bring real darkness into their work, to take away everything a character has, some of it permanently. You can't gain skills just by doing terrible things to your characters, of course, but the ability to make the reader cry, "Oh, no!" is valuable indeed.

2. I had a logic flaw in Noble Quest (it appeared because this is a rewrite of a significantly different NaNo attempt, sharing a partial skeleton, some characters, and little else). I posed it to some writer friends, who uttered several suggestions, some easy to implement, some difficult, some impossible.

And now for the best one:

3. They, especially kehrli, advised me to force my characters to do the thing I wanted them to do by using ramifications greater than their own possible deaths. And so I solved the logic flaw while convincing myself that maybe I am a hardass after all.

No treats under the table for you guys, NQ cast. Just blood, guilt and desperation. >:)

75742 / 80000 words. 95% done! (which is a lie, since it's going to be longer than I thought)

When I was twelve, my best friend and I collaborated on a novel.* She recently sent it to me.

My Mary Sue was a homeless teenager who carried a cat in a bag on his shoulder. Ha! I used "hula hoop" in what might have been the most inappropriate simile I've ever written. And most notably, I wrote the sentence: "My handwriting is very stinky."

But honestly? For twelve-year olds, we did a good job. I see a lot of work of this same quality from adults in writing workshops that require fees, both online and in real life.

I'm proud of Past Us. :)



* It's about 40k, so if it wasn't YA it wouldn't be a novel, but the characters are teenagers, of course!

I know this looks lazy, but it was quite difficult. If you don't believe me, you write a one hundred word horror story.

Title:Trapped
Words: 100 exactly, including the title.
First line:

I can't believe I've traveled long enough to be cornered by wolves.

I had so much fun tearing my hair out I am tempted to write more.

But for now, let me succor you with a brief excerpt from the Lovecraftian steampunk western novella:

I turned away and added another thin log on his fire. Something scratched at the canvas covering the window, scrabbling softly as it looked for a way in. My heart seized.

I had been a good enough shot, out there in the rain, but I had only the barest idea of how I might clean and oil my gun, and I was in similar straits when it came to reloading. Something told me that mucusy, moist creatures like these would abhor the clean sting of fire. I held onto the end of my log, letting the other end get hot and then burst into flame, as my eyes continually flickered back to the canvas.