nano_writers | NaNoWriMo 2009 Day 3

Day 3 - 27 days remaining

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

- Toni Morrison

A good writing day, Nano Writer?

First, I would like to welcome all the brand new members that have come on board since Sunday to the Nano Writers Community! This month we're running in NaNoWriMo mode (see this post) so I'll wish you good luck and leave you to it!

Today the number to beat is 5,000. What was the first thing your protagonist said today? Excerpts? Concerns? Questions? Hugs?

Remember to keep writing, Nano Writer!

Image credit: svilen001

Current Mood: excited

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

peoppenheimer

Excellent quotation from Toni Morrison.

From:

ladyseishou

Thanks. I've always liked it too.

From:

geminianeyes

My protagonist said "That ought to hold you for a little while." She was referring to the trap she had made to hold the supervillain for a short while.

Not quite I thought what she would say. Am way past 5k (somewhere around 6k today) and hoping to have time tonight to hit at least 8k. What about you?

From:

ladyseishou

Great progress that!

Me? A bit over 10K.

Ummm (*checking through last night's haul*), here's my protag's last line:

"That may be Sergeant," Alric said softly. "But let's not make a habit of it shall we?"

I'm trying something a little different this year in that my protagonist is not my POV character. For some reason this seems to be really working for me (*knocks on wood*). My chapter ended with the POV's thoughts:

He did not envy her the task.

...referring to the above "Sergeant" babysitting her superior Lord Alric the Protag.

From:

geminianeyes

From the last line itself, I can imagine a lot of fun things may happen. :D It's a wonderful recipe for disaster!

From:

sonjadenise

The public transportation here is unavailable because of a strike, so I have no way to get to school until...it stops. Guess I'll have more than enough time to write today.

From:

ladyseishou

Yes! Ummm... sorry to hear about the public transportation being out... but yes! Write!

From:

juliet

5,850 for me (1,717 today, although I wound up putting an extra and arguably extraneous paragraph to manage it). Slow and steady... (The good news was that took less than an hour, which is better than I'd hoped. In theory I probably could get some more words in later on today, but I tend to do better by just matching my targets.

How's yours going? Thanks so much for making these posts - they're really helpful!

From:

ladyseishou

Thanks! It's always good to hear! ^__^ Sometimes I worry that the posts may be annoying/nagging/(or worse).

Your word count is great! And you know what they say about slow and steady. Don't fret about what's "extra" or "extraneous" now. That's for later, right? Everything goes into the stew in November! You never know, some "extra" bit may actually give your story an interesting twist or flavor to consider later.

And my story so far is going pretty well (knocks on wood) for me this year, thank you for asking! Today I get to stage a Murder-Most-Foul... it should be fun!

From:

lexicalcrow

Hello. I be one of the n00bs to the comm, but not to NaNo. I just managed to break 10k today, which is a nice little buffer.

First thing my protagonist said today? *goes to check* "Oh, hello there. I was hoping you might turn up. We're back home now. I'm setting up my old workshop."

He is talking to his magical radio. Somehow, in experimenting with transmitting devices, the magic went wrong and he connected with some tiny radio station in 1973 where this bloke works as a producer/engineer. So it's basically him and his mate from 1973 having conversations about nothing in particular. It is good for word padding though. XD

I'm, er, writing steampunk. Or supposed to be writing steampunk. I am not sure it will be steampunk by the end of November, but we'll see. I'm letting it go where it wants to go, so it could end up as sci-fantasy-alternate-dystopic-historic-steampunk-of-doom for all I know. XD

From:

ladyseishou

A very good buffer indeed! Genre mashups are fun! I'm working on a fantasy/mystery thing myself or at least it's starting out that way - as you say, I plan to follow the muse where she take me!

From:

lexicalcrow

Oh yes, especially with all the work I have to do this week to finish off the last couple of assignments for uni. And I've tried fighting the muse and the muse always wins. So I don't bother anymore. Writing is much easier that way, generally speaking.

From:

murdering

I love DST. I am actually sitting in that early class I haven't been able to get out of bed for since three weeks ago.

I'm at 2009 words right now, after about one sentence for the day. I have to figure out exactly what I'm going to do to make it to 5000 before the day's end. Aaand I just remembered I have a sorority thing tonight and tomorrow, so that's taking a few chunks out of my time.

Excerpt, I guess, since I'm tapping away:

There was something nearly transcendent about the sensation of drowning.

It was a silly thought, at a time like this,; she wanted to breathe, of course, but with a ridiculously strong hand knotted in her hair, forcing her face beneath the icy water, Brenna didn’t have much choice in the matter. She exhaled as slowly as possible, trying to time her breathing so it would last until she was allowed to surface once more. He was watching the surface, however, and when the last bubbles rose and she could breathe out no more, he did not relinquish his hold. Her lungs began to burn, chest aching. At last, she couldn’t maintain her calm, and she began to struggle. Just when she thought she was going to drown, that he would let her die this time, he wrenched her head back into the open air.

From:

murdering

Ended the day with 2992 words. Not bad, but not amazing, either.

From:

ladyseishou

You've added almost a thousand words! That's very good! But I suspect that your protag is still in trouble - what is she going to do now?

From:

murdering

She spends the majority of the story in trouble, and... will not end up getting out of it in one piece. To put it lightly.

From:

ladyseishou

Scary! Nice detail that paints an intriguing picture of your protagonist in the midst of such peril!

From:

ceirdwenfc

I'm sorry about the confusion and thank you for the posting access. I can't figure out how to fix the response problem. If you have any insight, I'd appreciate it.

Enjoy your November.

From:

eien_herrison

Hmm, first thing my protagonist said today:

"Out of all the people I’d expect to be here today, you were not one of them."

My MC's a spy, and has had to infiltrate a sporting event (sounds better than it is :P). The intention was for him to qualify for the next round, but managed to be goaded by a fellow competitor and trashed the competiton. This comment is to a co-worker when he returns to his organization's building, and he proceeds to get torn a new one by said co-worker.

Total word count: 9,441, of which 3,191 were written today. I seem to be seeing a pattern: no matter how long I actually spend in front of the computer, I still average the same amount of words.

From:

ladyseishou

A fantastic word count! Oh, a spy! Your setup sounds fun - for the reader anyway (I suspect your protag has a different opinion after said words from his co-worker). And patterns are good - you can better organize your writing days.

From:

eien_herrison

Thanks - I can't take all the credit, I'm doing a re-write (extended scenes, more characters/deeper characterization, and more) of an almost-decade old TV show.

Patterns are definitely good -- despite having gone to see a movie, I'm still confident I can write another 3k words today :)

From:

dragonscrawl

First thing my protagonist said? "You hired a woman as chief engineer?" In an "Are you nuts?" kind of calm voice to his friend and second in command, and within earshot of said woman. She's not amused.

This stemmed from a snippet of writing done just before/during class, so it's not been connected in yet, but it shall be.

I'm currently at 5334 words, which is actually behind where I want to be and I'll probably write more this evening.

Today's excerpt (more Tamid):
Tamid closed his eyes, hand rising to rub his chin thoughtfully. In that moment, George noticed dark shadows around Tamid’s eyes. They weren’t usually there, suggesting the man hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep. While it was easy to think of one reason that might explain them given Tamid’s...inclinations, George wasn’t inclined to write them off so easily. He couldn’t in good conscience, not when he was offering the position he was.

“I think I can do it,” Tamid said, drawing George’s attention back to the task of crewing Samuel’s airship. “Determining which cannons to fire and when, setting up the crews, keeping shifts for crews…I think I can do that.” He opened his and looked steadily at George. “If you’re offering the job.”

“You’ve got it then. I don’t know how many crews you’ll need or be able to have, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do. You take care of hiring them.” He raised an eyebrow. “Think you can handle that?”

“No trouble.” Tamid grinned. “I know what to look for, after all. I’ll get the minimum crew the company’d operate a ship with, start from there. At least then there’ll be something to work with if I don’t have time to hire as many as I’d like.” He turned to go, but George stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Tamid,” he said, “are you alright? You looked tired.”

Tamid’s grin only broadened as he laughed. “Not much sleep, my friend, but for excellent reasons.” He gave a broad wink, suggesting that George understood just what he meant by that. Still laughing, Tamid slipped his arm from George’s grasp and walked away.

From:

ladyseishou

You're right on the money with your word count! Great job! And I like your excerpt - there's a good flow to the exchange between your characters.

From:

twistingthetale

Sounds as if everyone's doing well :) I didn't check in yesterday, but now that I've finished today's writing session I'm on a total of 6318 words (which is better than at this time last year). Yesterday's word count wasn't as high as Sunday's, but still above the 1667 average, so I'm hoping to be a little way over 10k by the time I finish writing on Thursday night.

Forgot to post the first thing my protagonist said (concentrating on Alexander and some of his backstory for today's chapter):

“Billy, it’s Alexander. I need you to stay calm and take deep breaths while I help your father. Can you do that for me?”

He's not a typical vampire, bless him!

Edited Date: 2009-11-04 12:11 am (UTC)

From:

ladyseishou

Good to hear from you! Your word count is excellent! And it's a great line to take you into your next writing session.

From:

sonjadenise

7,742, though I'll bump it up to 9,000 later tonight...it'll just be technically the next day by then.

First thing my protagonist said: Seizing the opportunity, I shrugged, and said, "I didn't feel like going."

Not so exciting out of context.

From:

sonjadenise

9,196 just a few minutes before midnight! Even though the NaNoWriMo site thinks it's already the 4th.

From:

ladyseishou

I guess that it's the 4th somewhere in the world. Have you set your local time in your profile at NaNoWriMo? It might make a difference. BTW, love your word count!

From:

sonjadenise

I did set the local time, but it's a few minutes ahead for some reason, every year. Good thing I never write until midnight on the 30th.

From:

ladyseishou

Oh but for me I wonder why she takes advantage of the situation...

From:

lei

Just found this community; glad to be here! I hope it helps with getting me to write, I've been battling procrastination.

"So you think, but you will soon see what you are capable of."

Followed by a bit of fire-conjuring. :D

I'm at 5001 words and hope to get ahead tomorrow.

From:

ladyseishou

Welcome! Great menacing line and fire-conjuring! Sounds like your protagonist is in it too deep for you to slow down now! Your word count is good! Keep it up!

From:

insomniac_jack

Hi! New guy here.
~~Today~~ Yesterday: Got myself caught up, after a very unproductive day two. It is now technically day four, but I haven't slept, so my brain hasn't quite rolled over.

Anyway, excerpt. Wherein my dear skypirate has accidentally spilled his drink on a Navy fellow in a bar, which becomes a very serious situation when the Navy fellow recognizes him. And we see exactly what this pirate's voice-of-reason first mate has to put up with on a regular basis.
***

One of Asher's particular flaws, as Jensen was being keenly reminded, was his inability to see when it was a good idea to stop talking. Which meant people very often pointed it out for him, and not gently either. This Bill was opting to do so by jerking him close, clutching his wrist so tight that Asher cringed and sort of wilted in the grip.

"You 'ave any idea what's the sentence fer comittin' piracy on that scale?" he hissed. Asher squirmed.

"I'm very much aware, yes. But come, now, that was - that was months ago. And very far from here. For that matter," he mused, fixing the sailor with a quizzical glance, "how do you know that was us? The Osprey, that is."

Jensen knew the answer to that one. He wished he didn't. "We told them, captain."

Asher twisted around to face him, plainly curious. "We did?"

"You did." Jensen's memory of the whole incident was clear enough - clearer, at least, than Asher's seemed to be. He almost envied the captain his ignorance right then.

"Why on Earth," Asher asked simply, "did I do that?"

"You wanted them to remember who we were," Jensen sighed. "In fact, I think you explicitly suggested that they go back and tell their superiors what a fine and daring crew we were. Or something."

"That does sound like something I'd say," Asher admitted with a thoughtful little half-nod. "Yes...that's right, the Kensington. I remember now. You know, in my defense, it seemed like a perfectly fine idea at the time."

"I hope you're at least re-evaluating that theory now."

"Very much so, yes."