Blood Routine: NaNo 07

KT Literary seems to be my first choice for an agent.  She publishes a bunch of my favorite authors, and I’m hoping she’d enjoy one of my projects.  She might not like the current progress, but I’m going to spend a good three months at least working on making the theme clear throughout the story.

Glazed Guilt is done.  It feels so refreshing to be finished with something, to take the deep breath, and send something out.  The query letter still needs to be written, but I’m less worried about that than I am about the fact that I wrote “counted” and “discounted” in the same sentence unintentionally.  There is a problem with this.  That’s fine when the word choice is intentional.  When you make a boo-boo of that nature after checking every verb tense, you tend to feel a little bit silly.

Chapters 9 and 10 are very firmly started.  Adri’s taking a pizza break I didn’t anticipate, but she can’t very well sneak out under the big bad wolf’s nose, now can she?  Ange’s mom is going to remind her that life very firmly revolves around the elder Zheng.  And an unset chapter came to me last night, basically an interaction between Eden and Dani that needed to occur.  I’m going to get a bit of data about the unseen magical government out, and some of Dani’s fears about her soul and religion.

Oh, you know, and the dryad who tried to kill her five years ago.  Minor details.

I went through the manuscript this morning.  I discovered several unpleasant things.  At least three chapters don’t belong in the novel, along with three characters.  I salvaged one–by combining her with another character.

I tried getting sympathy from Jessica, but she wasn’t going to coddle me.  “I don’t know what you’ve heard, Amy,” she told me, “But writing a book’s hard.”

With my whining finished, I crossed out chapters and names, and salvaged the one character that I could.

If you think on the bright side, Eden’s getting a lot more page time.  Ally’s starting to make more sense.  She’s got a more mushy, motherly side, while Dani’s the no-nonsense, friendly motherly type.

I started writing from Ally’s POV.  It’s going well.  I think I’m going to do that, since I’m failing at video games tonight.

Well, it’s begun.  I printed out the manuscript, so I can start revising the chapters that are done, figure out where the scenes that need to be added go, and so I can have something cohesive to read from.  I have been informed I am giving a reading on Christmas day.  How that’s going to work, since I may be working?  I don’t know.  We’ll see how it goes.

I am still meeting with Jessica Tuesday mornings to edit, plan, or write, but we get in a good two hours of writing each week.  Tomorrow, I am taking my 100 page manuscript, and tearing chapters apart into short scene descriptions, and figuring out how it should be laid out.

Problem being? I found out, after I printed all hundred pages, after I ran out of black and half out of color ink, after I grew so frustrated with the computer, the internet, and modern technology; that I didn’t update the newest version of the novel.  This isn’t necessarily the worst thing ever.  There’s always kinkos for next time, and the only scene I know is missing is the one in the prologue introducing the girls before their world collapses.

the capcha plug in isn’t working, so I deleted it.  We’ll see what happens.  I think I’ll take the journal off google, and hope that limits things.

All right, it seems I get more spam courtesy of Google than I get actual comments.  You can now register an account, and comment safely.  I’ve also installed some plug ins that should cut down on spam.

All that in the way of webmistress updates.

Yes, my blog titles get increasingly bad.  I blame this on the lack of time.  Work is amazing, but the holidays approach, and this makes both workers and customers crazy.

I should probably move these posts over to the main forum, now that nano is over, but I will wait until January, when I am floating in the free time.

I have some game related news that a handful of people who may or may not still read this will understand: I will hit 66 tomorrow in WoW.  I got 25% of my level in last night, and 50% in tonight.  Both times, I didn’t expect to get that far.  This is not life of death information, but it’s still important to me, because I spent three hours being killed, having my corpse camped, venturing back into life, and promptly getting killed again.  Nagrand: The BC version of Stranglethorn Vale!  I went there, got killed repeatedly, and ran around the rest of the world to avoid that zone.  This time, I’m sticking it out.  I want 70.  he girl who avoids conflict on a pvp server.  Not the most intelligent choice I have ever made, but it’s where everyone I know is, so I deal.  A friend’s offered to show me how to counter rogues, which will probably cut my dying down by 50%.

In writing news: I didn’t outline Blood Routine.  I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that before or not.  I just started writing, with a rough idea of where I was going.  A group of people trapped in a dance studio for a couple of days (ended up a month) who come out with flame throwers and fangs to get their city back.

Well, not outlining was a bad thing.  I got asked a couple days ago what my novel was about.  I didn’t want to say zombies, because that brings to mind the stereotyped movies.  While Shaun of the dead is amazing and hilarious, my novel is somehow serious, despite the fantastical things inside it.  In fact, you barely see the zombies.  You see them when they get locked up, and you see them when the kids go out to fight them.  I think I need to have some of them break in about halfway, just to remind you that they’re still out there.

Anyways.  The story’s not about salvation.  I think Eden’s cover story of Wicca gets more page time than Danica or Ange’s confused view of religion.  I think people would relate better to the latter, just because religion is confusing and seems to be malleable in this nation, but it didn’t end up being a plot point.

The story boils down to this:  Six girls are thrown into a life or death situation with their friends.  Only one ends the book with an eternally committed boyfriend.  She sacrifices a lot for that, and never asked for it, either.  The other five are screwed, in various ways.  One ends the story still unable to accept affection for herself.  One finds love, and has to give it up, because of the zombies.  Another discovers that killing the person who ruined love for her doesn’t make her okay with boys.  Eden, who is much more of a major character than I ever counted on, doesn’t deal with romantic love at all.  She embodies the studio that protects the characters, and her love is more protective, more friend related.

While that still doesn’t fit into one sentence, and can still be misconstrued as stereotypes, it’s a better blurb than, “Zombies, werewolves and vampires, oh my!”  In fact, I’ve been looking at LuLu for when I finally finish this first draft, and I want to have it really professional looking.  A good bio pic for the back cover, a blurb about the story, and an actually decent title.  Blood Routine is better than Zombie Dance, but I think I can come up with something a little better.

As usual, it is two AM, and I have work in the morning.  So I will leave off on the updates here.

The story’s slowly coming together.  I got a sense of the younger group of dancers, and now I get to introduce them to Tommy, and see how they interact together.

Double spaced, the manuscript is currently 165 pages.  This is nowhere near a complete page count, as about three chapters need to be finished, past their initial paragraph or page.

Well, I ran into NaNoWriMo blind.  I wrote no outline, because I rarely finish anything after I’ve outlined every detail.  It just takes the fun out of it.  It turned out fairly well for a mad rush through the plot line.  The first chapter was twice as long as it needed to be, but I’ve decided the middle of it is the perfect place to change perspective, and introduce a different set of characters.

So I’ve started outlining.  I installed a more format friendly text editor than Q10 now that I don’t have a daily word count to worry about (well, I do, but I’m not worried about reaching it)

I redid the prologue.  I saved the original as a B-side, in case this novel actually gets into a form that’s publishable.  As a reader of Stephenie Meyer’s, I love the excised scenes she puts up on her web site.

I want to at least have starting paragraphs on all the chapters I’m adding, but after that, I fully intend on printing it all out double spaced, and putting it in a three ring binder.  That way, I can tell myself the goal for the week is to finish, rewrite, and edit that particular chapter.  Some of them, from the beginning, are pretty decent.  The first chapter was 9k, and you have a real feel for Danica’s character.  So does Adrienne’s revenge at the end of the book.  All the others are either not written yet, have beginnings but not fleshed out, or were written crappily fast in order to get onto the next scene, the next character.

But hey, it’s 2 am, and I have to get up for work in five hours.  Ole!

I finished NaNoWriMo 2007 with 50,465 words. I caught up about 20k in the last three days. This is amazing, and I am greatly pleased.

I found two new forums to help me continue working, and hopefully keep writing, and start editing this into something amazing. Here are the links:

http://www.nanofimo.org/
NaNoFiMo is all about finishing the novel you started in November. Because honestly, 50k rarely finishes a novel, unless you’re writing a children’s chapter book.

http://nanoworld.suddenlaunch3.com/
This is a site dedicated to wrimo styled writing challenges throughout the year. It’s just started, but there is a category and sub forum for everyone.

And now for another excerpt. This one is spoilerific, so click if you enjoy spoilers! (more…)

Zombie Dance has finally suggested a new title to me.  Something that doesn’t immediately spoil what the entire novel is about.

I’ve come up with Blood Routine.  It’s not perfect, I’ll need to integrate the title in a couple of key scenes, but I’m coming to the end of the story, and it fits a lot better, than a silly filler name for the sake of NaNo.

3k left to NaNo completion!  I’m already registered and posting in FiMo forums, so don’t expect me to be done just yet.

I wrote close to 7k yesterday, and today, through much badgering, and a stomach cold, I wrote 9k more. I am now more or less back on track, needing only a little under 4k to finish. I have scenes that are out of order, in the wrong person’s point of view, but I actually want to carry the story through to them leaving the studio, and fighting the undead.

Spoilers again! (more…)