The Lair Of The Male Lesbian

I've become increasingly intrigued by the idea of the official NaNo Night of Writing Dangerously. It sounds like a very nifty idea to write communally for one evening and spur each other on. Since I have not a hope of getting to San Francisco this year though, I was wondering if people might be interested in staging our own Night Of Writing Dangerously this Sunday. We could all meet up at the cottage and write from 7pm to midnight, with sprints and talking and challenges and added Haribo.

Would the Bath-based NaNoers be interested in this? I know it's short notice.

PJW

Day 20 and a secret is revealed.

I used "Suddenly a shot rang out" in the first chapter, so I may as well get my fill of literary cliches in while I can. Today's secret was a minor character detail that I had known since the very beginning of the story. Well, it started off as just a minor detail, but it's gradually woven its way further and further into the backstory, to the extent that the story could not be told the way it is without the character having this secret.

Okay, that paragraph's got waaay too complicated in a vain attempt to avoid spoilers (for any definition of vain). Let's talk about the writing.

Wrote 1,948 words today, which I am counting as a minor win. The success of my NaNo sprints yesterday gave me a false confidence and I'm afraid that I spent rather too much of my free time footling. I'd done one in the morning and did not have the energy to start another, so I faffed without really getting much done until time got away from me and it was time to leave for the inlaws. There then came the silly attempt to write in the car, whilst being an awful passenger to my exceedingly patient wife, resulting in me arriving in Essex with only 1,500 words done. A late night surge has pushed that up towards respectability, which leaves me with over a day's buffer. Huzzah!

However, I have decided that I am going to delete the buffer column from my spreadsheet. It's far too easy to see that I have achieved par and call it a day at 600 words, when I really should be kicking on. From now, I am going to continue my cricketting metaphor and focus on bringing that run rate down. Success for a day is now getting over the required run rate.

The story is trundling along nicely. It's looking possible that what I thought would be the turning point of the book may turn out to be the climax and start of the sequel, depending on how much more the characters have to say. That said, I'm already spotting loads of places where the editor's knife is going to go after I've finished. There's a whole page which is pretty much dedicated to an author shout-out that the word decimated should not be misused, which is definitely going to have to go, because it's completely self-indulgent and the actual story point could be expressed in a tenth of the words.

But it's wonderful to be making so much progress. I'm used to looking back to the last chapter and remembering I wrote it months ago, not days ago. And I'm at that wonderful stage in a story, where the world and the characters create the details themselves and you realise that this new thing fits in perfectly with what you've already foreshadowed and is actually the missing piece that you didn't realise you needed. I gained an extra 300 words today simply through needing to go back and put a simple Chekhov's Gun on the mantelpiece that turned out to have major interlinking with the backstory. It was perfect and, more than that, it was already there; I just had to see it.

Distraction of the day: Overconfidence.
Music of the day: Not a lot really.
Inspiration of the day: Suddenly realising the symmetry of the actions of my two major characters.

Day 19 and I'm back. Kicking bottom and then requesting information on the names that belong to them.

Today features experimentation with sprints. The idea behind a NaNo sprint is that you publically accept a challenge (whether set by you or by someone else) to complete x words in y minutes. And then report back after y minutes with the result. My sprint was self-set and I chose to do 700 words in an hour. I achieved 858.

It was wonderful, because it focussed my mind on what I was doing. Instead of an big bloated idea of writing 'lots' or even 1,667, I had to write 175 words in fifteen minutes. It was a target I could achieve imminently and so I focussed on just hitting those 175, instead of footzing around on forums or listening to music or staring off into space. I didn't want to give a progress report that said I'd spent the fifteen minutes eating bread and writing 23 words and I definitely didn't want to crawl back to the NaNo forums and say that I'd failed miserably and hadn't even got close because I was continually checking whether OotS or my blog had updated.

I did two sprints of an hour each and delivered over 1550 words. It made a huge difference and ended up with me hitting my stretch target of 3,000 words and thus having my most successful ever day. I'm very nearly a day ahead of target and, while I know a proportion of that will disappear due to in-law commitments on Saturday, it's wonderful to see the runs per over required come down so dramatically. It's only a short day of work tomorrow, so if I can get the same result from sprints and hit another 2,000 words, then it will drop beneath 1,500 words per day. 3,000 tomorrow and it goes beneath 1,400!

This is the period of NaNo where the stats fluctuate wildly with successes and failures. Down to the last eleven overs and my strike batsmen are at the crease. A couple of big overs and everything gets that much easier. A maiden or two and suddenly every ball needs to be clubbed out of the park.

I've just noticed that I'm closing on my longest ever piece of fiction. My first novel/novella, "For The Good Of The Family" reached 47,931 words after going through editing hell (to the extent that I count the current draft as 'unfinished') for the better part of three years."The Hole In The World" has tipped over 43,782 total words (including the 10,621 that I started NaNo with), with most of that being written in nineteen days. I'll probably have overhaulled it by the end of the weekend.

I'm beginning to think my $25 donation to NaNo was cheap, current money situation be damned!

Distraction of the day: A good friend entertaining me until 1.30pm and my book stealing away over two hours of my writing time to leave me at 3.55pm with 0 words. And I still hit the stretch target. Oh yeah!
Music of the day: PinkPinkPinkPinkPink. Say, have you heard that song, Bad Influence by Pink? I've listened to it once or twice and I think it's rather good!
Inspiration of the day: Sprinting. One bite at a time.

1) Post a list of up to 20 books/movies/anime/TV shows/video games/bands [fannish etc.] that you've had an obsessive fannish love or interest in at some time in your life.

2) Have your f-list guess your favourite character/member from each item.

3) When someone guesses correctly, strikethrough the item and put the name of your favorite character next to it (I'm also adding the ID of the correct guesser).

( Listy-goodness... )

ETA. There are no books on the list, simply because there are so many that I love, some of which are quite obscure, that I couldn't be certain that people on my friends-list would know them to answer the meme.

PJW

Day 18 and the plot has started to kick into high gear.

I've been amazed at how many words have come and gone without this bit of plot coming up. The character of the Tanas scout is the precursor of the arrival of the major plot idea that sparked the whole novel and is the beginning of my wholesale abuse of my characters. Amnotcute wondered how Phee was going to cope without going insane, which pleased me. I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon's writing and am of the opinion that characters need to be put through the wringer. This bit's going to be fun.

Writing today has been solid; I had the major advantage of an 800 word head start from writing at 1.00am this morning, but any thoughts of a big total were quickly wiped out by the news that I would have to stay in work for an extra two hours this evening due to a training session that I'd been volunteered for. Fooey. On the bright side, I managed to clear 1,779 words without much difficulty and have extended my buffer to 118 words. Day off tomorrow, on which I will need to write lots. Saturday will be mostly spent at my in-laws and I think will most likely need to be written off; I'll need a big end to the week to stay ahead of the game.

Numbers, numbers.

Distraction of the day: Hey, look, there are colours floating on the wall. Oooh, now the world's gone all spinny and wavey. Did I mention Nano's been severely reducing the amount of sleep I get?
Music of the day: More Pink. Got that song stuck in my head as well.
Inspiration of the day: John Smith. He's a character that I've explored more in another writing medium (Shadowrun), but he's been exceedingly fun to play with here. Everything he's doing at the moment is made more enjoyable by the fact that I know what's going to happen next!

And 900 words later, I'm out of the hole.

Amazing how quickly the game can turn in NaNo. I finished yesterday well below, having squandered a 319 word buffer and finished 116 words down from my overall target. Earlier this evening, I was considering going to bed early and starting tomorrow over a thousand words down, but with a fresh brain. Now I'm back above overall target again (by five words, but still excellent) and ready for the morrow.

I've made a joke out of my spreadsheets by comparing all of my statistics to the way that I watch one-day cricket, with one eye always on working out who needs to score what and when. I'm always particularly interested in how a quick four or a quick six turns an over and puts the batsmen ahead of the game, giving them a real chance to lower the run rate needed and take the pressure off future overs. Today has been the equivalent of losing six early wickets cheaply to push the run rate up to a silly level and then your tail responding by bashing the ball out of the park to bring it down under four an over.

And, now that I've lost 90% of my audience, I'll talk about the writing. The last two days have once again suffered from the awful pall of "Where am I going with this?" that actually reached its nadir in the horrible thought of, "My god, maybe I'm being really boring."

I took a minute to think about what was currently happening in the story and realised that the answer was 'not much'. It's been exposition all the way since Phee hit Glimmer. That may only have been a couple of days ago to me, but it's several chapters in the story and, while I've built a whole world, no-one going to be much interested in the scenery unless something actually occurs. So, I decided to make stuff happen. It was a very, very painful gear change to write, but I'm much happier with the way the story is going.

As can be seen by the fact that I have now written over 800 words of tomorrow's target. Huzzah!

Distraction of the days: The horrific discovery that I didn't like what I was writing
Music of the days: Pink - Bad Influence. Sadly for Caroline, I have found a new writing track to loop.
Inspiration of the days: Suddenly getting to the action scene and the words coming freely.

Otherwise known as: "This will all need to be rewritten."

I'm churning out rubbish. This section has gone to pot and will need to be the first thing hacked to pieces when it comes to editing. If I had time, I'd love to do it now. It's wandering, woolly and completely without focus. It reads like the fifth Harry Potter book.

However, due to my desire for sequential writing, I need to get my characters sensibly out of the literary quagmire that I have currently deposited them in and back to doing something interesting. If this wasn't NaNoWriMo, I would actually be tempted to consign the last two chapters to the "Notes document" and attempt to recycle whatever prose I could rescue in taking the story in a different direction.

.
.
.

Actually felt strongly enough about it to go back and look at how many words I'd lose if I chose to excise this chunk. On a second reading, it's not as bad as I thought it was. But today's words are still shite. They have achieved nothing new, at all.

Do I want to ditch 934 words, on the basis of them not going anywhere, doing anything, telling anything new? The answer is obviously no, especially after my spectacular fail yesterday, which saw me drop below overall par for the first time since the third day. But I can guarantee you that this will be getting a hefty rewrite come December/January/Next October.

PJW

Day 15, and I get the Muppet music. But only just.

Today wasn't hugely impressive in terms of writing. Our neighbours had something of a row, a proportion of which I could hear through the connecting wall. At one point it had someone hammering on the (unused and semi-sealed) connecting door between our place and theirs. I don't know whether they were trying to get our attention or whether they were just seizing the nearest thing to bang on, but it was mildly startling. The row concluded with someone storming out, followed by shouted imprecations and me double-checking the locks on our front door.

Anyhoo, this threw me off writing for most of the afternoon and I wasn't helped by being stuck in the quagmire that is my current scene. The pace was slow enough to be painful and for most of the day, I was focussed simply on getting to the 25,000 words that mean I am ahead of target. At one stage, I was updating my word tally every two words or so, focussing on getting through the next ten words, the next twenty, the next word. I did just scrape over 1,667 words on the stroke of midnight, but it feels a bit of a hollow victory given that this was a day off.

Ho hum. A win's a win; I have improved my buffer by five whole words and I already know how this scene is going to end in terms of plot development, so tomorrow should be mildly easier. I get the feeling that a lot of what I've done today and yesterday will eventually end up on the cutting room floor though.

The most important thing is that I've reached the halfway point and topped my 25,000 words. Quite apart from a celebration of a milestone, this now means that my words written are greater than my words left. It's all downhill from here and for once I don't mean that in a negative way.

Distraction of the day: The cacophony described above. Not to mention the fact that my internet has gone kaflooey and I'm currently using the mobile broadband dongle.
Music of the day: Howie Day - Collide. A little known gem of a track.
Inspiration of the day: Dr Google still had all the answers today. God knows how anyone found anything out without the internet. Did you know that there are websites where some kind soul has worked out the frequency of different types of employment in a mediaeval town as according to a census of Paris in the 1292. Granted, it's designed to be a reference for D&D GMs, but it was fantastically useful to me. Despite the fact that I'll probably never use any of the info I learned. I was surprised to find out that being a shoemaker was the most common profession. I know, I know, you all say cobblers, but really, it's true.

Day 14 and there will be no muppets singing Beethoven for me tonight.

In fairness, I originally had this day marked down as one where I might not get any writing done at all. My parents have come to visit; it's the last time I will see them before Christmas (my favourite family occasion which is, once again, like last year, being abused by my choice of workplace) and I've heard it's considered rude to take up one's laptop and tap away when someone had travelled 200 miles to come and see you.

So, taken in that context, 642 words for today constitutes a bit of a win. I'm still ahead of target by a good three hundred words and I have a day off tomorrow to try and build up my buffer again. Still, I had a good few hours for writing in the morning, which were very unproductive through oversleeping and snuggling to ignore the 7am, 8am and 9am alarms, followed by a huge chunk of inertia. Day off tomorrow, so hopefully will improve on this.

Askla's dive for centre-stage yesterday meant that I could put off the horrors of taking them outside the castle. Today, however, I had no choice and had to face the perils of... description! <gasp>

I'm not a fan of scene setting at all. It's my bete noire when it comes to writing; it's the bit where all of the fluency and drive that I have, from things like dialogue and characterisation, goes dribbling down the drain. I never know how much detail is too much, what bits people actually care about and, most importantly, how not to phrase everything like I'm describing a technical drawing to someone wearing a blindfold. I always end up with about five sentences that begin with the same words and follow the same pattern and this then leads to twenty minutes of shuffling them around and rearranging words and then rearranging them back because it's led to a really strange abuse of the passive voice. 540 words over the day on description and 100 in five minutes when the characters start talking again. Go figure.

Add into this the fact that I was trying to describe the exterior of a castle without having a clear picture of it in my head. I actually ended up drawing the damned thing on my tablet in an attempt to work out exactly what details would first hit the eye of an observer. Incidentally, I hear Apple are giving consideration to making a MacBook with a touchscreen. At some point in the future. When they feel like it might be their new zeitgeist. Pity that the choice available to PC users has allowed me to have one for nearly a year now; I might really have gone for that. </tongueincheek>

Distraction of the day: Parents, then playing rugby, then watching England play rugby. I wouldn't mind having the two hours the last one cost me back actually...
Music of the day: None. It's been a very quiet day, musically.
Inspiration of the day: Wikipedia is my friend. God bless the interwebs and the ability to just find information about castles whenever it takes your fancy.

Day 13 and I'm very nearly at the end of the famed NaNo second week o'death with a positive word count.

Not only that, but I managed to write 1,886 words today, which topped my stretch target. That's the first time that's happened so far this NaNo and it's made me happy, in my pants.

Once again, the day was made by the evening session of writing. It's becoming something of a habit. Tomorrow will be a challenge, as I will only have the morning session in which to write; my parents are coming down to visit. My morning and lunchtime efforts today yielded only 684 words, which put a little bit more pressure on the 8.30pm till midnight shift than I'd ideally like. Thankfully, I was saved by the character of Askla, who stood up and completely hijacked a scene that was meant to be nothing more than a transition from one place to another. I'll swear I had no idea that she was going to say all that she did; it just came straight from the magic place where the real Askla is shouting at me that I've got her all wrong and this is what she ought to say. I knew all about her backstory before today, but I didn't have a good handle on her character.

Distraction of the day: Actually, NaNo was the distraction. I should've cleaned the house and baked a pie tonight. Details, details...
Music of the day: Foo Fighters - Learn To Fly. This used to be my happy song, until I overlistened to it. Tonight, the volume is going back up!
Inspiration of the day: Erfworld. It's an online comic about a man who's sucked into a fantasy world to be general of an army that's facing a huge battle... I'm not derivative! I'm not!

Actually, I am; I'm stealing inspiration left, right and centre from a nascent idea that I half-wrote a few years back, waaay before Erfworld. But that's not the point.

The inspiration for today were the characters of the Archons, whose loyalty is sold by their leader. Completely different take on the situation, but it got me thinking.

Day Twelve and I'm back on my game.

Boy, I've missed having the day off from work to get my NaNo done in. It allowed me time to play badminton in the morning, score an epic-level screw up with Caroline's lift into work (or lack of it) and still recover in time to hit 2,000 words.

Today's writing was mostly sponsored by my sisters. This was the first scene since the very beginning of the book to show Phee and Jamie relating with each other without any external pressures present and I really enjoyed writing them. Phee is very heavily based from my own older sisters when it comes to her protectiveness of Jamie and it's very helpful to be able to just think 'WWToCD' (What Would Tor or Charl Do?). In addition to this, I got to drop more references to their background. I do know why they were on their own, what they were running from and what happened to get their lives quite so screwed up. I just have no idea if the information is ever going to work its way to the forefront of this story.

Distraction of the day: The morning's EpicFail. Boy, that was fun.
Music of the day: Jo McAfferty - Lady Day
Inspiration of the day: Tor and Charl.

Day Eleven and I have just screeched over the line as the clock struck midnight.

I wrote down two extra words and updated the NaNoWriMo website at the very last second of 11.59pm with my new total word count of 18,883, which made it a nice round 1,667 for the day. Considering both my morning and lunchtime writing sessions failed to yield more than 600 words, I'm quite pleased with that as a result.

That's now two days in a row of writing on a work day and still hitting my word target. I'm absolutely thrilled with myself and it's given me a real fillup to know that it is possible to do. I may not be as prolific as Emma, but by god, I'm on target and I plan to stay that way.

Today's writing was mostly spent trying to set up the next section of the story. I wanted to have Phee and Jamie at least part-way settled in their new situation and, more importantly, for them to actually talk to each other about what had happened. They've just been through a hugely traumatic and disorienting experience and I don't want them to keep just breezing along, bounced along the story by the unstoppable forces of PLOT. They need to talk to one another, as much to work out their own motivations as to explain it to the reader.

Distraction of the day: The knowledge that I've got a day off tomorrow and could quite easily make up any words that I slack off today... No! Bad Peter!
Music of the day: Here Without You - 3 Doors Down
Inspiration of the day: The knowledge that some of what I was writing today will have entertaining payoffs further down the line...

Day Ten and today there is more talking.

It's been good going today. I managed to hit 2,002 words for the day, despite losing a proportion of it to Shadowrun, and it's really put the wind back in my sails. I have had a day of work where I hit my word target, increased my buffer and got that damned average needed down. It's very comforting to know that such a thing is actually possible. I managed to write 600 words on my lunch break, which is unheard of for me. If I can do another 2,000 tomorrow and have a big day on Thursday, then it'll put me in a very good position going in towards the end of the second week.

I put the sudden surge of inspiration down to a thought I had while drifting off to sleep last night - What is this part of my story about? What am I heading towards? The first section was getting Jamie and Phee to Moritania. The second section was getting them to understand the situation. The third section (the last couple of days)... was blithering and exposition. The scenes I wrote made sense and were competent, but I didn't know what their purpose was. I didn't know what part of the story I was trying to tell.

In short, I knew the setup and where the story was going and was floundering somewhere in the pointless middle with just a few wishy-washy characterisation goals in mind.

I've solved this by introducing a character whose appearance I've had planned for a while. He's tied in with the places and events that I want this story to lead to and, while that's not going to be revealed yet (and in fact, this may be his only scene for a while), this appearance makes me feel like everything is linking together. The dialogue between he and Phee will almost certainly need some major, major work, but it is doing a solid job at the moment.

Shadowrun people may recognise the character. Their knowledge of him may add some humour to some of the sections. Speaking of which, full marks to anyone who manages to spot the two 'cultural' references and one NaNo challenge in today's text. They made me snicker at least.

Distraction of the day: Shadowrun. A pastime based solely around storytelling and characterisation? Wow, what a wonderful change of pace this month!
Music of the day: Very little today. I've mostly been writing to the hum of computer fans. Paparazzi is now starting to grate a little,
Inspiration of the day: Shogun, again. My favourite book of all time and one which constantly inspires me to do better.

Day Nine and the idiocy of the great NaNo plan starts to unveil itself.

I'm currently stuck in a scene. I've done everything that needs to be done in it, but the bloody thing will not end. I can't even go on and write something else, as I have to write in a straight line. My plot wiggles about far too much for me to even attempt to write more than a couple of sentences ahead. I've got a good 300 words sitting in my spare parts document, all of which were written for a conversation that was supposed to happen two scenes ago. It got left behind and now I'm looking for a place to reinsert it. That'll be a good day when I work that out.

Still staggering just above par on the word count. 1,383 today, which isn't bad, but is very definitely not 1,667. I'm going to need to have a belter on my day off on Thursday, three to four k, just to keep my head above water. I'm immensely proud of what I've done so far, but even with getting up early, working at lunch and working when I get home, I'm not writing enough. I'm really hoping that this is just a bad patch and things will start to flow again soon. At the moment, it feels like I have a second job.

This is made worse by the fact that today's scene actually has a swordfight (I know! First punching, then fireballs, then swords! This NaNo's turning into an action film!) and I wanted to make a Buffy reference. The problem with that? The character in question would've been three years old when the last episode of Buffy aired. 

Now I feel old.

Still, I want to be able to get to the end of the month, point at 50k and say, "Look, I succeeded." I may have failed at uni, but I'm going to do this. Off to bed to save energy for 7am alarm tomorrow.

Distraction of the day: Landlord's threatened attendance tomorrow. One day, I would like to have a landlord who asks to come around, rather than informs. Although this one is a step up in the informing stakes.
Music of the day: The entirety of The Long Road.
Inspiration of the day: Gottawritegottawritegottawritegottawritegottawrite.
Success of the day: Getting through it.
Success for tomorrow: Hitting 1,000 words. Shadowrun is a blessed release in the evening, but it will kill any chance of new words.
Quote of the day: Every event, war, movement and change in the history of the Domain of the Kraii can be traced to one thing – every leader must surpass his predecessor's deeds.
Total [new] word count: 15,214
Average word count: 1,690

PJW

Today's words to follow in filtered post. If you want to be in on the filter, comment here please.

Well, I've hit days 7 and 8. Otherwise known as "the wall."

It's not been brilliant; for both days I've been mired in another damned exposition scene. I've completely lost tracked of what's interesting and what's not and have been floundering in a conversational swamp between two characters for most of this evening. The only saving virtue of today was that I managed to bail out of the scene just before the end of today, probably tying it up with all of the grace of a stoned hippopotamus, but at least I am out of the damned thing. With any luck, everyone now knows how magic works, I've dropped enough hints for the varying Chekhov's guns and paving stones that are planned and tomorrow will be a new beginning, with appropriately fresh inspiration. Cause god knows I need it.

Over 700 words went bye-bye from my buffer today, with a grand total of 964 new words written (about 270 of those acquired when I discovered a c&p error had deleted a paragraph from an earlier day). Being at work did not help and it will be the test of my NaNoing as to whether I can get the words in around work.

If I can ask a favour of anyone who is reading these and who is on the filter, I beg that you please help me along. This will be the tough stretch of my NaNo; if I can get through this week and keep ahead of par, then I will believe I can do it. Please, if you have time to read, to comment, to urge me on, I will be eminently grateful.

Distraction of the day: Work. Ugh.
Music of the day: Dance Dance by Fallout Boy
Inspiration of the day: I honestly can't say I was inspired by anything at all today. Very depressing.
Success of the day: Getting anything done at all. Would've been very easy to tell today to fuck off and start behind the next day.
Success for tomorrow: 2,000 words. If I can hit that, it'll put a huge dent in the words needed column.
Quote Descriptive Passage of the day: Again, I can't think of anything that I'm particularly proud of here.
Total [new] word count: 13,831
Average word count: 1,729

PJW

Today's words to follow in filtered post. If you want to be in on the filter, comment here please.

Today has not been a good day for NaNo. Slept through all three alarms, so didn't write before work this morning. Work was hectic and my lunch break was the one that fell by the wayside, so no writing then. Now I have got home and I'm so tired that the words are coming.

End result? My net word count so far today: -1 words.

I did have a sentence earlier, but I deleted it. And another word from yesterday's that was getting in the way*.

That's it, it's time for the heavy artillery. I'm breaking out the Lady GaGa.

PJW


*Yes, I'm aware that this is against the spirit of NaNo. However, the spirit of NaNo can go fuck itself in the small of its own back. If I see something that's wrong, I'm damn well going to correct it.

Kendrick has been making a little bit of noise about a television show called Castle (starring Nathan Fillion, of Captain Tightpants fame) of late and he's normally quite a good barometer of what shows are good to watch. However, I haven't got round to searching it out yet.

This little clip may be the motivation I need. Pure, unadulterated fan-service to Firefly fans and very, very funny.



PJW

Day 6 and today has been bit out of little bits and bobs.

I've gathered at least two hundred of my two thousand words from going back over the old text and adding extra stuff in. It's little things, like clarifying an explanation, working out where a character goes after a particular scene, adding in extra detail for backgrounds because I want to reference something later (I tend to work on the principle that if Chekov's corollary works for the gun that goes off in Chapter 6, it'll work for the paving slab that sits quietly in Chapter 7).

The rest has been hard work setting up yet another expositionary scene, this time about the magic system of my world. I thought this one was going to go quite well, as I understand the guiding principles of the different paths of magic in my world, but I've discovered that the conversation would be flowing better if a character was there whom I'd deliberately evicted because I thought he'd get in the way.

Bugger.

Still, 2,046 words from today is heartening, especially as I feel like I haven't really accomplished anything. That puts my total on 11,194 words, or 1,194 ahead of the par score. It still won't compensate for losing a whole day's work and I'm worried about what going back to work on Sunday will do to my totals, but I've been as successful as I'd dared dream from my five days of freedom, so it's a good start in my book.

Distraction of the day: Knowing that I had a buffer. It does not help with motivation to know that you're doing better than you absolutely need to be.
Music of the day: Again again, Paparazzi by Lady GaGa. It seems like the perfect writing song.
Inspiration of the day: Reading Emma and Caroline's stories and considering that all of ours are of publishable quality; all we have to do is finish them. Wouldn't it be nice to make it big?
Success of the day: 'Tripping over the word target' just about beats 'Actually writing some goddamn descriptive passages.'
Success for tomorrow: Still looking to get ahead of the game by a whole day's worth. That'd be 2,141 words in the morning before rugby takes over the rest of the day.
Quote Descriptive Passage of the day: “She stepped through the entrance and onto a thick rug. Pale yellow fabric swooped across the ceiling, hiding the stone away and creating smooth curves in the angular room. There were brightly coloured ribbons strung across the walls and the bed was dressed in royal blue sheets that looked like silk. A low table in the centre of the room held four overturned silver bowls and also a pile of strangely-bound books, obviously well-thumbed. On one wall, there was a mantelpiece made of a dappled marble, upon which a vase of flowers and several small crystal decorations. The window was decked with thick blue curtains and something that looked strangely like a cross between a dreamcatcher, a chandelier and a windchime hung over the sill, twisting gently in the wind.”
Total [new] word count: 11,194
Average word count: 1,866
PJW

Today's words to follow in filtered post. If you want to be in on the filter, comment here please.

Leicester have just beaten South Africa at rugby.

For those of you without context, by Leicester, I mean Leicester Tigers, the domestic rugby team that I support. They've got a horrible run of injuries, with 13 first team squad players unavailable through injury and a further 6 unavailable because they're playing for the England national side tomorrow. They've been so blighted with missing players that they actually had to loan a player off Nottingham, a lower division side they have an agreement with, just to have a full bench. Most of the starting positions were filled with academy players.

By South Africa, I mean the South African national side. The World Champions. Tri-Nations champions. World 7s champions. No 1 ranked team in the world. Beat the combined British and Irish team when it toured there this year. Only lost one game this season. The best team in the world. Granted, this was a warmup match for them and so they didn't play their superstars, but this was an international team.

I expected us to be brave, fight well and end up with a respectable defeat by thirty points.

We just won.

A lot of those players will never, ever, ever play that well ever again. It was a performance of a lifetime. No-one took a step back, no-one gave up, everyone put everything they had into that game. Every man in that team played better than I ever dreamed they could. Craig Hammond, who came up from Nottingham, who's never even played in the Guinness Premiership was superb. On paper, we had no right to win that game, no right at all. With a full side, maybe. With academy boys, not a chance.

This is why I support a rugby team. This is why I support that rugby team: the strength, the kinship, the outright guts to say that you are going to surpass everthing you've ever done before because the man on your right is your brother and you will not let him down. I am so goddamn proud that I don't have words for it.

Well done lads. You're now part of history.

Puja

The room was stunning. Phee opened the door and was almost overwhelmed by the sheer variety of colour.

Before this, every corridor, every room, every piece of furniture in this damned place had been the same. Grey stone walls, dark wooden floors, hard chairs made of the same wood. It almost felt as though the author didn't like describing backgrounds and had been lazy in using simulacra of the same basic room over and over again.


In other news, I really hope my neighbours can't hear through this connecting wall. Lady GaGa is still acting as my muse and it appears to be my perfect song to use as background music. I sing along to the chorus, but I don't really hear it and it's like it's just a really long song that's playing once while I'm writing.

However, I'm sure that any outside observer might be getting a little sick of it by now after it's been on constant repeat for nearly two days now. They might be wondering if I'm deliberately commiting audio-based torture to them by now.

<Thinks for a moment. Then goes to put Macarena on>

PJW