NaNoWriMo 2015 Roundup

 Yeah, I know this post is a fortnight late, I know I only put up one NaNo post this year, I know I've basically been letting Doug run my blog with his The Apprentice posts lately. I know, I know.

 But enough about that, let's talk NaNo.

 In the end, I managed to get twenty five thousand words done during November, which is still pretty good. It's brought my total word count up to forty seven thousand, which is almost halfway to my minimum word goal for the novel.

 Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't manage to get the fifty thousand, but I don't seem to take the transition into winter particularly well.

 During this NaNo I had to change my plans, especially when it comes to the protagonist's relationships.

 There is only so long you can have a character be oblivious to someone else's feelings before, well, I'm sure it'll be annoying to at least some readers regardless, but before it becomes so ridiculous that it's really infuriating to everyone.

 Besides, this is a first person novel, there's only so much she can see but not notice.

 Especially when a scene like this happens:

“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that it’s a personal matter that killed it?” Tracey asked, putting a hand on Pankaj’s shoulder.

Pankaj nodded.

“Yeah, man, I do not blame you. Somebody being a dick about that is gonna kill any friendship.”

“You are my brother in suffering Tracey.”

“You’re my sunbae in suffering, Pan.”

Pankaj laughed, deep and throaty.

“You know, that’s really cheered me up, Tracey. Thank you.”

“No problem, sunbae.”

Pankaj shook his head with an affectionate smile.

“I think we should talk about this later.”

“Yeah, probably a good idea,” Tracey agreed.

Tracey likes Jane, this has already been established, so you can see the problem.

Yeah, I suppose that I could cut this stuff out, but having written it, I realised that my original plan was going to be difficult to pull off, so it was best to change tack.

I don't think sticking slavishly to an original plan is a good idea, you've got to be able to change your mind when the draft organically throws up issues with that plan. Unless your plot is heavily dependent on whatever it is that's changed, don't feel like you need to get rid of it.

The other reason to change tack is that it adds more conflict.

 Wonderful, delicious conflict.

It's a writer's bread and butter and dessert all in one.

As it stands, I'm not going to be able to get the first draft done by the end of the year, which is sad, but I'm still doing quite well, I think, all things considered.

Oh well, I should get some writing done.

NaNoWriMo Chronicles - Week One

 I'm already behind.

 By about a full day's word count.

 With that out of the way, let's cover what I'm writing this year (largely to avoid this becoming the 'Murphy talks about The Apprentice funtime blog', at least any more than it already has, that is).

 Of course, my focus this year is Herd, because I will finish that novel if it kills me.

 I'm about ten thousand words into the NaNoWriMo attempt, but I do have over thirty thousand with what I already wrote, which is about a third of the way through my word goal for the project. So NaNoWriMo has already been a massive help.

 If I can manage to get fifty thousand by the end of the month, then I'll have knocked off about three quarters of the project, which would be exceedingly useful.

 If I can't, well, I'll have still knocked out a good chunk of the novel.

 Of the chunk I've done so far this month, here's an excerpt.

The next gallery was more things about the founding of, and early history of, Park City, the one after was the portrait gallery dedicated to Jason Park.

The picture Syed’s group had shown us had a large oil copy prominently displayed in the exhibition. The artist had taken a slightly more impressionistic approach (according to the information card), but it was still a good likeness. I liked the slightly dreamy approach.

But as nice as that painting was, it wasn’t the real reason why we were there.

There were a lot of paintings and photos of him as a young man.

He was gorgeous.

Boyish good looks, fluffy black hair and a smile that could melt anyone’s heart.

My favourite portrait was of him in a traditional formal hanbok (Maxwell explained) looking to his side out of a window.

“I look good in a hanbok too, you know,” Maxwell pouted.

“You’re not wearing one right now,” I pointed out, not looking away from the painting.

“You’re tough to please,” he teased back.

“I don’t ask much, just found a city and constantly wear a hanbok.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he smiled.

We emerged from the museum after an additional half an hour talking discussing Jason Park’s impact on history and stunning good looks.

Park City Lives Up To It's Name, But Mostly By Accident (NaNoWriMo 2014 - Two)

 Ah, this year is not going particularly well in terms of the old word count, I'm not going to lie to you.

 I'm going to keep it up and try to get to at least 25,000 words, if not more. In order to help accomplish this goal, I'm going to dedicate Fridays and Sundays to writing Herd.

 Speaking of, I have a little extract for you.

Enjoy.

Herd (Current NaNoWriMo Word Count:2380)

 Our journey ended when the coach entered a gated off street that had police guarding each end.
 
 There were a few in a fancier version of the same uniform standing in formation around the entrance to a particularly large and incredibly ornate building in the middle of the street.
 
 It was unlike most of the buildings I’d seen in the city so far, it bore no resemblance to Chinese architecture at all. In fact, it looked like a building from the Victorian period. The first one.
 
 It reminded me of home.

  A smiling man in some kind of traditional South East Asian dress and a heavy mayoral chain was standing on the steps leading into the building and smiling at us broadly.
 
 Like Doctor Bazan, it was hard to pin him down to just one ethnic group, at least, to any I was familiar with. He was rather a bit paler than her, with a broader nose and much curlier black hair, dotted with grey, that was pulled back into a plait.
 
 We were invited to leave the coach and we spilled out onto the street, the police were stationed near the fences at the ends of the street, trying to block off too much gawking from the people crowded on the other side. Although there were some photographers in the street taking photos at a respectful distance. They were smartly dressed, in suits and clothes much like the mayors.
 
 Peter and Calanthia tracked us down in the small crowd as we huddled together nervously, as the mayor cleared his throat and began his speech.
 
 “Gentlefolk of Vault Mingo, as Mayor of Park City is it my pleasure and honour to welcome you to our fair city on behalf of our founder Jason Park.”
 
 Oh. Well I felt daft.

Let's Ramble About Writing

 I'm not going to lie, I am having a hard time getting things down on Herd.

 Using a word processor wasn't helping at all, so I resorted to writing it by hand. I've actually got five hundred words done so far this way, which is better than nothing.

 I guess it's partially my pretentious streak (which I try to kill, but always seem to fail to) that's caused me to take up this method, and partially just because I really like foutain pens and have a bunch of really nice ink.

 I don't think liking fountain pens is pretentious, they're a nice way to write, and are generally more environmentally friendly than biros. While disposable fountain pens do exist, they're far rarer than disposable ball points or gel pens and most fountain pen owners don't seem to use them. The kind of people who use ball points tend to use diposable pens, which makes perfect sense because they're convenient and it doesn't matter if you lose them or they get stolen. It's just not super great for the environment.

 The pretentiousness comes in because I started doing it because Neil Gaiman uses fountain pens.

 I'm pretty sure this is how he does his first drafts.

 (Which means he must have better handwriting than me, I have to type it up straight away because my handwriting is so bad that I wouldn't be able to read it if I didn't.)

 It was kind of a 'well, if it works for him, it'll work for me' decision.

 Not to mention that I have a lot of ink and I need to use some of it up before I can really justify buying more.

 (I'm already eying up some as we speak, but let's ignore that, shall we?)

 Previously I was just writing in my diary every night, so this two pronged approach should help work through my ink stocks.

 So, enough of the mechanics, what's going on in the story?

 I'm still in the early stages, so I'm working in more Vaultite characters.

 So far I've introduced Calanthia (Wilson's guardian) and Raoul (another teen Vaultite).

 I'm kind of regretting Raoul. Not because of anything to do with the character, btu entirely because the main character refers to Raoul in a really odd way.

 Basically, Raoul is genderfluid, because of this, the other teen Vaultites always use Raoul's name when referring to Raoul.

 You read that right, no pronouns.

 It's been two hundred words and I'm already regretting this.

 I'll keep going with it, I can always take it out later and resort to a traditional pronoun. Probably 'they', or it'll vary between Raoul's appearences. Possibly based on what they're wearing.

 Haven't decided.

 I haven't written a genderfluid character before, so this is going to be a learning experience. I... can't imagine it'll be that hard, if I'm honest. It's really the pronoun configuration that's giving me cause for concern.

 Well, you live and learn, right?

 I've also finished introducing Katherine Ennis, a character who was initially conceived as a terrible joke, but is fitting in pretty well.

 She doesn't like Jane, which is great. Conflict is a writer's bread and butter.

 I'm hoping to introduce another genderqueer character soon. I'm not sure that's the right term really; he's a bloke after all, it's just that nature didn't seem to agree with him on that point. Science, on the other hand, did, so now everything is going pretty well for him.

 He doesn't have a name yet, but he's a character I very much like.

 That's all I've got so far, so I'll see you guys tomorrow for the FF8 post!

Nine Over Five Writes Herd: Research, Research, Research

 Herd was supposed to be easy, you know.

 This is why it has a white protagonist despite being a science fiction book by me. There's no in universe reason for her to be white, unlike with the Berlin Project (code name), it was just for the sake of convenience.

 I worked on a diverse cast to make up for this shortfall, but it still wasn't meant to be a research heavy novel.

 But then I got into the world building.

 Which was always going to take a little research, but now it's more research than I was originally planning on.

 Hopefully it'll be worth it in the end...

 I'm not going to lie, I'm not very good at researching things. It was a miracle I managed to write such good essays in university.

 It's not research on a single subject either. I'm going to have to research a few different things in order to have this world be fleshed out in the way that I want.

 Ah, the price of accurate multiculturalism in fiction. Worthwhile, but time consuming.

 One of the areas of research is the Seneca-Cayuga.

 The reason I need to research them is that the vault is named after the Mingo tribe who once lived in the state of Ohio in the rough area I wanted to set the story. The Mingo were/are members of the Iroquois Nations and due to the moving around of native people by the American government they ended up down in Oklahoma as part of the Seneca-Cayuga tribe.

 Right now, this is more or less all I know.

 As I want a good chunk of Vault Mingo (at least one fifth) to be members of the Seneca-Cayuga and the planned culture of the Vault to be built around them, I need to know what the hell I'm doing.

 This is already incredibly important, and becomes more so because Kyle is a member of the Seneca-Cayuga, as is his guardian. (Let's face it, if one of Jane, Wilson and Kyle weren't, I'd rightfully be a laughing stock.)

 Right now I'm on the hunt for resources.

 I'd prefer books, but I'm willing to take whatever I can find.

 Well... I say that, but some of the books I've found are quite expensive, so I may need to dedicate a day at the Birmingham Central Library to find the kind of information that I'm looking for.

 An easier task will be the research of South Korean culture, which is relevant for the city in the story and will probably turn out useful for the Berlin Project too.

 There's some geographical stuff to look up and a few other things that will remain undivulged.

 Including a Miss Marple book I've bought for research purposes.

 I have a lot to look up.

 Wish me luck.

 And if you happen to know of any good resources on the Seneca-Cayuga, please, please tell me about them.

Camp NaNoWriMo Update - Part Three (Kinda)

 Still ill, still barely wrote anything.

 -sigh-

 Since I've really got no news on this front, have an extract of what I did manage to write.

 As ever, comments would be appreciated. I can use all the encouragement I can get.

Herd

This entrance was a large and breezy garage, like a bus terminal.

Which was an apt comparison, there were buses parked there. Single decker and wider than the type usually seen, or that used to be seen, in cities and towns. They also looked like they’d had some kind of shielding attached to them and there was a railing around the top, like people were intended to stay up there.

The other members of Vault Mingo were starting to mill around outside the bus, looking nervous and scared.

Probably because of the three people in bulletproof vests with guns strapped to their backs and what looked like gas masks slung around their necks.

They looked cheery enough, though, all bright smiles and chatting to some of the other city folk who carried clipboards.

“Why are there people with guns?” Peter asked Dr Jones quietly.

“It’s for your protection, there’s been a few problems outside of the city walls lately.”

“Problems with who, exactly?” Peter demanded.

“Some bandits, there’s a community of them nearby. City hall is currently in discussion on what to do about them.”

He seemed very calm about the whole situation.

“They’re pretty easy to deal with, just keep them out. We’re generally concerned that they present a danger to themselves.”

Camp NaNoWriMo Update - Part Two

-Gross sobbing noises-

I have had no impetus to write this past week.

The depression and feelings of self loathing have not been helpful. I really should jump around more in order to keep the enthusiasm going.

So, since I have nothing new to show you guys, I'm going to show you an extract from what I wrote before Camp started.

Oh, just before that, though. I know I promised on my tumblr that I would be following up my FFXV post with another a month later, and it's been a month now. So you can expect a bonus post about that tomorrow.

It will be such fun.

But anyway, have an extract!

Herd

Where’s Peter?

I tried saying that too, but my throat was so dry and disused that I couldn’t even give you a vaguely correct transliteration.

“What’s she saying?” someone asked. Someone with a strangely androgynous voice, I couldn’t decide whether I thought they were a man with a feminine voice or a woman with a manly voice. Either way, or neither, they sounded quite nice and soothing.

Which was probably why they elected to be the one to tell me things would be fine.

“My money would be on ‘where’s Peter?’.” This was definitely a man, or possibly a bear who had learned to talk.

I tried to sit up and someone put their hands on my shoulders to hold me down.

“That might not be such a good idea,” the androgynous one said kindly, “we’ve had the odd problem with nausea.”

Now that they mentioned it, I did feel a little ill.

I made a face.

“Have I just made you feel nauseous?”

I nodded carefully.

“Here.”

Mr Bear handed me a bottle like object.

It was cold.

“It’s got water in it, have a drink and you should feel a little better.”

I sipped it as instructed and the feeling of cold water in my mouth helped me wake up.

I moved suddenly with surprising force, sitting up and spitting out the water. I scrambled out of the cryo pod and tried to run.

“Wait! Stop!” AndrogynyPerson called as I staggered at top speed away from the pod, blinking against the painfully bright light as I opened my eyes for the first time.

There were people all over the place, people of all shapes, sizes and colours, but all with the same unifying trait.

They all had long hair and that marked them out as other.

I realised that the exit was actually further away on this side than in the other direction, and that meant more chances to be caught.

Shit.

I decided to try my chances in the other direction, skidding to a stop and preparing to run back the other way and dodge AndrogynyPerson and Mr Bear.

No one beats me at British Bulldog.

Camp NaNoWriMo Update - Part One

 It's not going super great.

 I've been ill, as you all know from the lack of proper posts for the last few days.

 However, I have got some done, and what I've got, I'm happy with.

 So have an extract of what I've written.

Herd

Peter was waiting outside, gathering stares from the Park City people. He did cut an imposing figure, tall, dark and handsome with his hair cropped close to his skull.

Compared to them, he was an almost defiantly masculine individual.

Some of them whispered about us once we joined him.

"She clear then?"

"She's clear. The picture of good health, as predicted."

"Told you, she's a tough girl."

Dr Jones laughed, "I never doubted that for a moment, Mr Howe."

He gave me an affectionate pat on the shoulder as he said it.

I couldn't help but smile.

"So, follow me and I'll take you to Miss Wilson and Master Stoppard."

He walked ahead and Peter and I shared a mildly amused look as we followed him.

The foyer started to have more and more members of the vault in it, we nodded in greeting to people as we passed.

Dr Jones stopped to talk to one of the people in white coats, this one had a blunt cut fringe and streaks of pink in her hair. She told him where to find Wilson and Kyle and he took us to a cubicle.

"Miss Wilson is in here, I'll go and fetch Master Stoppard for you."

True to his word, just after Dr Jones left, Wilson emerged from the cubicle.

She was wearing her standard tracksuit bottoms and pastel pink top with a big bow on her shoulder, but she still managed to look radiant.

I got a little anxious about my own appearance. My hair wasn't cropped close to my head like hers was, so it was probably a tangled mess.

I tried to subtly run my hand through it as she practically rugby tackled Peter into a hug.

"Peter! Jane!" She squealed, "you're okay!" She pulled away from Peter and turned to me, "girl, you look fine," she scolded as she dragged me into a hug. "We can do something about those shorts later."

I smiled and hugged her back.

"What happened to you two?" She asked as we separated, "some of these guys were saying there was a fight?"

“Jane punched one of the doctors in the face when she woke up,” Peter explained.

“How hard?” she asked.

“He looks like he’ll get a black eye.”

Wilson gave me a friendly punch in the arm, “‘atta girl.”

If you want to be an absolute darling and help me out, you could leave a comment telling me what you think of the characters and setting in the extract.

Also, regular posts will recommence on Tuesday as planned. I'm finishing up one tonight so it's ready to go.
So make sure to check back for that.

Nine Over Five Writes... Herd

 Since this is a writer's blog before it's anything else, I thought I should actually talk about a novel I'm working on.

 Silver Crosses has been placed in the vault of 'stories I will write at a later date' along with my last NaNoWriMo project. Although in the case of that one, it's because I wanted to give myself the best chance to be published and give the series the book is for the best chance it could have not to be wildly inconsistent because I've changed as a writer since starting the first one. AKA. avoiding Harry Potter syndrome.

 So, in aid of both of those things, I've started a stand alone novel called Herd.

 It follows the lives of a group of people who were trained and frozen to survive the apocalypse, only the apocalypse wasn't as severe as predicted. Now society has rebuilt itself and they're living in a world that doesn't need them.

 To make matters worse, they're confined to a walled city because a plague rages outside its walls. A plague carried by a group known as the Outsiders, who are the reason that the city is so well defended.

 Three pre-apocalyptic teens have to make their way in this brave new world, and figure out what the right thing is to do about the Outsiders.

 The three teenagers in question are Jane Moore, Angelique Wilson and Kyle Stoppard (although this surname is currently provisional. Stoppard is just what I first came up with).

 Jane is the narrator, but it's very much about the three of them. I'm challenging myself to have more than one protagonist in a first person pov story. I may fail, I may succeed, but it is worth the effort either way.

 (Why Jane? Age before beauty, I came up with her first.)

 Here's a sketch of her:

Jane Moore

 She's half Welsh and half English, and one of only two English people in the vault she's in. So she feels alienation in regards to where she is, as well as the time she now lives in.

 Peter Howe is her guardian, and they're both quick to point out that he's not her dad.

 The reasons shall be revealed another time.

 I'm feeling pretty confident about this one, although I am having a hard time with it for a number of reasons. Most notably that I've been quite ill, so it's been pretty slow going.