NaNo weekly update

We are in the home stretch, I just finished 40k words yesterday, and got the edits for Killing to Know back. So this week I am going to blitz though the last 10k words.

No more daily goals, just that last 9,400 something words then I shall clam victory and move on.

That is all.

A meditation on killing Characters

One thing that I have learned from the school of Ice and Fire and pay cable over the last few years is that when there is a real chance that characters can die, a story has more weight and the consequences feel more real. And I'm not talking red shirt number one or viper piolet third from the left, I'm talking the big main my name is in the openning credits people.

It is a lesson I have taken to heart and when the fancy strikes me while building a story I won't hesitate to kill somebody, especially when I am outlining, I will just off people like it is going out of style, or like I am about to be canceled by the network. So it was a great shock to me yesterday when getting close to the end of the outline for Bodies under 95, that when the notion crossed my mind to kill somebody my pen hesitated, and I couldn't do it, I couldn't be the ruthless killer of my creations that I usually am.

I was taken aback by this, thought about it, and made a choice, you will just have to read to see what happons, but it was the first time that I struggled with the dessition to kill somebody. The person is central but hardly major, and not anybody I am horribly attached to so I can't say why I dithered on the call to end their text based imagenary life.

Maybe i am just learning to be less ruthless, or maybe the story just didn't demand their death I don't know, but it is interesting, and rest assured that more and more people will die I'm not going completely soft.

National Write a Novel Month week two

Week two has ended and the third has started. Yesterday I crossed the half way mark, waking up with 24,000 and going to work with 27,000. The outline problems have been solved, and I am almost done outlining the book, but I am still a good ten chapters ahead of myself so I'm not quickly approaching the end of what I have laid out in writing.

The goal by the end of next week is to be in the low 40,000 I think I can do that, if I can have one or two days like yesterday I should be golden. As of yet I don't have a target for how long this one will end up, but I am feeling based on the outline that I will get into the 60,000s again like with Breaking Overnight.

So not a long update this week, just me plugging along trying to knock out the words before the impending deadline knocks me out.

As always you can follow my progress here.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/seanathin23

Earth Dog, otherwise known as Gaius goes nuts.

Far warring this is a post about my dog and the one sport that I run him in, among all the sports that Gaius does in his little life.  That one sport is Earth Dog. Here is a wikipedia link for those who really want to long form nitty gritty about the sport.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthdog_trial Basically Earth Dog is a test to see how your dog preforms in tracking underground. the AKC limits participation to most terrors and dachshunds, so that is right up Gaius' ally. The Dog runs into an underground tunnel, with turns and at the end is a rat in a cage. The dog has a set amount of time to run to the rat, and a set amount of time that they have to work the rat, work being anything that the judge can detect from above ground. Then in senior which is where we are, I have a set amount of time to call Gaius out of the tunnel after the rat has been removed.

Gaius and mommy waiting for his turn to bark at the rats.

The trial was held on a farm about an hour or so from Richmond, making it the perfect day trip. We woke up early and headed out because registration closed at nine and I completely forgot to register before hand, thus we were at the back of the line which Gaius was not happy about. Being at the back isn't a horrible thing in senior though because so many of those people are also running master that if you wait up by the entrance you can usually cut in front of the no shows. 

Once it is your turn you walk though a small wooded path, taking everything off you dog because they have to run the course naked. The fear is that in the dark their collars or such might get caught on something and then the only way to remove them would be to dig up the run, the same consideration would be taken in real life in he was in the tunnels of game that was being flushed out.  Once you get to the line, you hold you dog giving him a few seconds acquire the sent of the rats. The whole tunnel is laced with rat pee so that the dogs have something to follow. Once they have locked on you let them go. 

On Saturday Gaius decided to do a bit of overland tracking and ran strait for the judges, and was shooed away. Eventually he decided to go into the hole and found his way to the rat and worked. He worked for his whole time and then once the rat left, he went exploring, popping out the false entrance and running back to me. We failed because he didn't reach the rat in time, otherwise we would have passed.  

Today though was a different story, Gaius ran right into the tunnel barking like a berserker, and he then preceded to work the false den and then the rat, burring up all his time, then once the rat was removed he kept working the empty area until I came to get him out. So all he did right was to work. I can take this weekend because he hadn't done Earth Dog in a while and did run in, did work and had a hell of a lot of fun which is really what matters. 

I love just how beautiful central Virgina is, especially in the fall.

National Write a Novel Month week one

Time for a status update on my second trek through NaNo.  I have logged just over 16,000 words so far, which is above par, but less then I wanted to have with three days off from work at the start of November. 

I had outlined but wasn't feeling the story for a bit, as I had a large narrative issue that I had to get though, so I could make it to the rest of the story that I understood, and had planned out.  I just solved that problem, well call it my bodies knot, since Hobbs doesn't take a trip to Merereen. (For the non Ice and Fire enlightened, http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/37635-so-what-is-this-meereenese-knot-martin-is-referring-to-on-his-not-a-blog/)

Now that I am past that, and with Liz working nights, which leaves me with oodles of quiet time, I should be able to get deep into the 20,000s by the next time that I update the blog about this project.

Another issue that I was having, was building Hobbs back up after some of the stuff that I did to him in Killing to Know, which I won't go into to much detail about, because you know spoilers and such.

Looking at my outline now, I don't think I am going to run out of plot before I reach the 50k mark like I almost did with Killing. I need think of my mysteries more as books and less as movies if I want to get any appreciable length to them. Though I like the speed at which they move so I don't think I will change that.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/seanathin23