Wednesday, 4 November 2015

(vol 2) Chapter 43: “NaNoWriMo – Day 4”

2015 WORD COUNT=                        71349

2015 NaNo WORD COUNT=               6968

2015 TOTAL WORD COUNT =           78317



And they’re off.

NaNoWriMo 2015 has started and words are being typed across the world at a truly exponential rate. Can you smell that burning? I can’t tell if that’s millions of imagination’s in overdrive, or millions of computer keyboards being put through their paces.

With five November wins, plus two CampNaNo victories under my belt, I don’t start these events with the same level of fear that I used to. It’s all excitement and awe now. I can’t wait to see what happens to my story before that first advent calendar door is prised open on December 1st.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What’s happened so far?




DAY ONE – 1897 words

I didn’t waste much time getting started. With the family up, breakfast devoured, and everyone dressed, I opened up the laptop middle of the morning and set to work on the second Chris and Mike story; CHRIS AND MIKE vs THE FOREST OF DEATH.

My entire word count today didn’t even stray near our main characters as I set about with a classic precredit scene involving a poor guy who’s night gets a lot worse. In a really creepy way. There are noises in the woods, a strange creature, a missing girlfriend and then . . . well that’s where the credits would roll. It was a nice TV style set up just to hook the ready and set the scene for things to come.


DAY TWO – 1728 words

The majority of my writing this year will be done inside of my one hour lunch breaks. I purchased a second laptop, a nice cheap little HP, so that I could take it out and about with me and not worry about it being our home computer. The little blue CreationStation is solely for writing. And Solitaire.

So on day two, as one o’clock rolled around, I set up shop in the canteen, a glass of water and some sandwiches to hand, and began work on chapter two.

This scene was all about bringing Chris and Mike together after the events of the last story. There’s fallout from the events of the undead uprising and things aren’t exactly cosy between the two. There be tension there; snappy dialogue and subtext. Some of the info dropped in the scene is also planted for people who may not have, for whatever reason, read the first story. It’s one of those ‘previously on . . .’ moments. I plan to tweak it carefully in editing so that it’s not too heavy handed.


DAY THREE – 1671 words

Another lunch break, another word target met. I really enjoyed the scenes today. A little round off from the previous days works, followed by a dark dream sequence, one that shows Mike may have been affected by recent events much worse than first thought. In fact he might be really f**ked up.

As the clock ticked away my precious writing time I suddenly did something that caught me by surprise. The chapter ends with a slightly scared Mike picking up the phone and dialing a number. We don’t know who he’s called but he wants to meet up. I finished typing that last line, a real TV episode cliff-hanger, and realised that I had absolutely no idea who the hell was on the other end of the line.

Figure I’d work it out before day four.


DAY FOUR – 1672 words

So day four rolled around and I still had no idea who Mike had phoned. So I went ahead and did the only thing I could; I wrote. I tried an obvious character, but it didn’t worked, so I deleted it. Then I tried someone else but that undid a subplot. Next I looked at some of the obscure characters that turn up in later stories and tried to see if their backstories could be amended to cross Mike’s path earlier in the saga. Short answer? No.
And then I tried a character out of left field . . . and things got weird. I think it’s a good idea. I certainly helps to bulk out a subplot in an unexpected way. At the time I was 50/50 on its inclusion. But NaNoWriMo is all about pushing forward and I just got on with it. Editing was later; right now I had to get 50,000 words down.



And that’s it so far. I’m confident, and I haven’t fallen behind at all. 1667 crossed every day so far; I aim to keep it like that.

Something I’m happy about this year is that I have a few more FlashDogs as writing buddies. I think last year I had two; this time around it’s nine. It’s nice to be heading into this marathon surrounded by a great group of friends. And I can’t help but smile at the irony that we all met writing 100 word stories, and now we’re aiming for 500x that.

And that is all. I got a nice little Honourable Mention for my Flash Fiction story KILL.EXE, the tale of a military designed robot who just wants to sit with the birds and watch the sunset, much to his designers chagrin.

I’m still planning to keep up with the Flash Fiction (I have an unbroken streak to think about) but this month it’s the big story. This month it’s all about CHRIS AND MIKE vs THE WORLD.

See you in seven.

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