Another book down.

Another book has fallen off the list.  Killing to Know my first NaNo project is now available for the Nook and Kindle.

The other part to this post is that I said I wouldn't shave or get a haircut until I was finished, as a way to push me along.  I got it up late yesterday and thus didn't have a chance to get trimmed. A day late is still better then nothing at all.

Me looking all rugged and such.

Now that it is over, I got a trim and ran a razor across my face, that scruffy was thicker then it looks, not if only it would grow together so I could have a proper goatee.

Me with a bit less hair.

Now who wants to guess how scruffy I'll look when I finish Breaking Overnight?

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

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