NaNoWriMo ‘07

… to put it simply… I WON! OMFG!!! I WON!!!!

Day 26 - Life got in the way; I ended up going to an Epicure party with two beautiful pregnant women… in the first snowstorm of the year. It was nervewracking so my nerves were shot by the time I got home. Did I mention I drove the two pregnant women? *dies*

Day 27 - After a bit of deliberation as to how I was going to end the story, I got a jump start on the penultimate chapter (Chapter 14) and managed to whittle away quite a bit of it; churning out around 3000 words and putting me at 45K. The final lap is coming!

Day 28 -  I struggled a bit with this day’s wordcount but by the end, I’d managed to pull off an impressive 2000 words. Day 29 will be my final day. Not only will I finish this year… I will finish early. Woo!

We’re winding down the end of the journey, ladies and gentlemen!

Day 23 - I was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic; like this novel was smothering me. I needed to get away from it and pretend it didn’t exist. This is becoming a love hate relationship!

Day 24 - After a productive morning of barely 1,000 words (because of watching the Santa Parade downtown), I managed to pull my head out of my ass and have the best word count yet at around 3600 words. Did I achieve this from Starbucks? Nope. I went to my PC upstairs, put my big headphones on, and used the Q10 editor for two hours. It was glorious.

Day 25 - Another wonderful word count of around 2800 words so that I’m completely caught up for the beginning of today (with change). This, however, was a Starbucks endeavour. I love the atmosphere of sitting at the bar at the Columbia Square one; it’s nice not to be bothered by people getting up and moving around all the time. That, and the baristas are very entertaining.

As it stands, I have a little over 8000 words left! WOO!

Day 20 - I wrote a bit today but nothing wholly significant. I was struggling on this day to concentrate on the task at hand, instead of on The X-Files playing in the background.

Day 21 - Had work to do today for a web client so I didn’t have a lot of time to write. The stuff I did end up writing was completely irrelevant to the flow of the story (character development) so really, today was another zero.

Day 22 - After struggling for the majority of the evening with my story at home, getting distracted by the warmth of the living room and the softness of my Big Comfy Couch, my fiance suggested that I take the show to Starbucks to see what I could get done. I wrote like a freak! In the span of an hour and a half, I churned out over 3200+ words. I guess I’ll be writing at Starbucks from now on.

Every year that I attempted NaNo up until this year, I had it in my mind that this was too great a challenge; that somehow, I simply wasn’t able to finish a 50,000 word novella in one month. 30 days.

Seemed freaking daunting to a teenager in high school (also daunting to a teenager in university).

The one that’s seemed to help me is this: write-ins. Personal, group oriented time that allowed me to focus on writing when other people were around. Yes, I turned on my iPod and listened to my NaNo soundtrack for the majority of the time but it was the sense of warm bodies around me that somehow fueled my creative energies in ways I didn’t think were possible. Of course, I draw my inspiration from real life surroundings and from scenarios that I’ve either read or played out (in Shadowrun, especially), but characters are the hard part. The story comes naturally to characters that are well developed and interesting; at least, that’s what I find.

So, I began to draw inspiration from the people around me (including those that I would encounter at said write-ins). Characters became pieces of people I know or knew at one point in time. The flaws and strengths of acquaintences, Wrimos, friends, family, and even those I’ve never said a word to became potential characters for my novel.

Jackson was created out of a stereotype and made into a whole person this evening. Lyra is an arrogant, sadistic bitch whose personality is not dissimilar to the Elle character from Heroes with an Eastern European twist. Raxi is everything that my inner self wanted to be for a long time. Spyder is everything I could never be - she reminds me a lot of a particular woman from my Wrimos. Rafe is my father. Ziera is a hybrid form of my mother’s strength and courage mixed with some badass “Domino” attitude. Ulrich is a combination of every geeky guy I’ve ever known with the sometimes feral anger of my fiance. Patch is my brother.  Glitch… well… no one really knows much about Glitch yet. Not even me. He won’t spill his secrets.

But I draw inspiration for my characters from people - real people or not - and because these characters are real, the story lives and breathes in a mode of its own.

That makes this year different from all of the others: the story is a living, breathing entity that thinks for itself. It is the marble and I am its Michelangelo - I can only carve what is already there. The characters speak and tell me what they want to say… if they don’t speak, they never get fully developed and therefore can never be a true part of the bigger picture.

I just hope that while the characters tell their story, I don’t get lost in the background, waving my hands wildly and begging them to behave and tell the main story.

Here’s hoping.

Since I started NaNo this year, I’ve been steadily chewing through the reading list that was provided on the Science Fiction forums on the NaNoWriMo site.

Book 1: Idoru (William Gibson)

I enjoyed the flow of this book almost as much as I enjoyed the story. The imagry sometimes left a little too much to the imagination but for the most part, it was an excellent start to my journey into cyberpunk.

Book 2: Holy Fire (Bruce Sterling)

Finished this book last night and it was one hell of a read. I think I loved everything about this book: the language, the descriptive settings, the character development, and the incredibly enjoyable story. I think that I’ll eventually have to seek this book out and add it to my collection.

Book 3: Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)

Still in the midst of reading this one but since I know that this is a must-read for the genre, I look forward to finishing it soon.

Book 4: Neuromancer (William Gibson)

Have yet to start this one but I’ve heard mixed reviews; of course, Gibson and Sterling pioneered the genre, so it must contribute in some way or fashion. I’m assuming that because I enjoyed Idoru, I’ll enjoy this one. I’m going in with no expectations.

This was the first day in a long time where I really didn’t feel like writing anything coherent(or remotely relevant). I contributed nothing to my story and instead worked on 700 words of character development that doesn’t really count towards the end goal of 50K words. Essentially, I should have a little over 33K tonight (meaning it’s another night of 3000+ words) so I’ll be hitting up Starbucks and staying there for a couple of hours to try and churn out many words.

Also, I managed to get the Loopy Wrimers website up and going last night, though it’s still not all that pretty and functional; it has an events calendar, which is super awesome. I’m still adding stuff as I go. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some more input on it from the rest of the Kamloops Wrimos when we see each other on the weekend.

11 days left, ladies and gentlemen. 11 days to make it happen.

Day 16 - Only 300 words written on this day; my life makes me tired.

Day 17 -Managed to up the ante on the word count on Day 17 but I still haven’t managed to catch up. Again, life makes me tired.

Day 18 - After a short drive to Kelowna, I ended up spending the day in a really adorable Blenz coffee shop on Pandosy. It had tons of character and the tea was great (I tried the London Fog Latte). Even though only one person showed up to the write-in (thanks Jason!), I had a really great time and managed to churn out a record 3000+ words. Wow. Needless to say, I caught up.

Day 13 - Didn’t manage to hit the bare minimum, unfortunately, but it’s not the end of the world. Felt really exhausted from work so I mostly just slept.

Day 14 - Much of the same as the day before. Barely made 1,667. Feeling a bit disheartened by my lack of energy but still loving the novel’s direction. Each character is becoming more and more unique every day (to me, anyway).

Day 15 - I wrote a lot on this day; I spent the majority of the evening at a Starbucks near my house and I found that having no free WiFi was more of a blessing than a hindrance. I managed to hit the 25,000 word mark on the day I was supposed to, 1 word over. I’m psyched to continue with Chapter 10 today, hoping that I’ll make a bit of progress on the plot front; so far, it’s a bit incoherent. I can’t wait to edit this and make it into a really solid novel.

Well, we’ve gotten this far into it, and I haven’t introduced any of the characters formally yet. So, let’s do that!

Telraxia (Raxi) Fairwater - Main character; demolitions and data extraction specialist with dabbling in bot engineering. Sister to Rafe Fairwater. Spyder’s best friend.

Rafe Fairwater - IntraMatrix, virtual reality, augmented reality, and hacking/cracking expert. Brother to Raxi Fairwater.

Spyder (Sylvie) - Security specialist. Raxi’s best friend.

Ziera - Chairperson of the Undercity (NWTech); weapons expert and infiltration specialist. Ulrich’s lover.

Ulrich - Prelims scout. Patch’s cousin. Ziera’s lover.

Patch Murphy - Mechanics specialist. Ulrich’s cousin.

Lyra (Illyria) - Corporate bio-engineer with expertise in bioware memory implants.

Jackson -  We don’t know much about this guy, aside from the fact that he likes to dress in expensive Italian suits and smile a lot. Follows Lyra around. Possibly a well-dressed corporate goon.

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We have yet to meet a few more characters, truthfully, so keep an eye out for additions to this list.