Nov 03 2009
NaNo Day Two Recap (In Which Your Hostess Has an Epiphany)
Day two ended with 1709 words written.
1709 of which will probably not make it to the final draft.
However, my current total is 3499, and I’m going to leave ‘em alone, as that’s what this month is about.
One note for those of you using gdocs for your NaNo project: there are… discrepancies with the word count feature. When I click tools->word count without highlighting anything, it tells me my total is 3522. When I highlight the whole doc, though, it gives me 3499 in the selection column and 3522 in the whole document one. 3499 is the correct tally, when I add up Sunday’s and Monday’s totals.
I don’t know where those extra 23 words are coming from; there’s nothing else in the doc, not even extra line breaks. It leaves me curious, though. I can’t help but wonder what those 23 words are, and if they’re some kind of magical, beautiful, perfect sentence that will hook readers in and make reviewers weep tears of joy at my genius.
Yeah, probably not.
Anyway, as I said yesterday, a lot of my problem getting started is how hollowly the beginning is ringing. If I reflect on those first 3500 words, my inner book snob cringes. It sounds, right now, like some kind of bad Dan Brown knockoff: “modern-day scholar of ancient lore uncovers government conspiracy that proves his theory oh noes!”
Which is not at all what this book is about.
Confession: I’m trying to port this story from a game I ran several years ago. My problem is not extracting the characters or plot from their original setting, believe it or not — by the time the PCs came back into my grubby little GM paws after having a few other GMs in between, their world had veered far from the setting of the sourcebooks.
So, no, it’s not a worry about intellectual property or copyright. The plot itself stands up fine outside of the game world. Neither am I worried about prosifying my friends’ PCs: they’re not in this either.
The problem, then, is this: when I ran the game, the person who is currently my main POV character was the one who got the PCs hooked. He already had the knowledge they needed, and sent them off on the chase for more. In this new incarnation, he only has a small piece of the puzzle, and someone else brings him in, filling in the blanks and hooking him along.
That’s what’s all coming across as infodump and Dan Brown knock-off-y. I’m trying to catch the reader up to speed at the same time Clay’s getting caught up, and more and more, I’m thinking that’s a big mistake. I’m thinking, y’know, fuck it. Let’s start with Clay already knowing everything he needs to and let the readers catch up on their own. Which also lets me start with the goddamned action, already.
Because I know it’d eat at me if I stopped mid-scene and started day three with a new one, I rushed the exposition to a close. It’s a silly psychological trick, I know, but ending the scene (as poorly written and glossed-over as that ending was) might keep me from going back and bashing my head off of it. I’m accepting that what I have is crap (and no, I don’t think that’s me being hard on myself. I told a friend last night that if I opened up a book in a bookstore and found this opening scene, I’d put it back on the shelf and wipe my hands on my pants, disgusted.) Now, though, I’m moving on to what I hope isn’t crap.
I don’t have any lines I’m proud of from yesterday (see: above rant). However, if I may bastardize a meme, my characters, let me show you them.
This was a ficly story I posted a while back. What’s important to understand is that this is not a scene from the book. It’s more of an alternate-universe depiction of Jack and Regina Fowler — this never happened to them in-game, either — but it’s true to their spirit.
The doctors pressed their faces against the glass like children crowding a pet store window.
Jack’s chubby-cheeked daughter sat on the exam table, paper crinkling whenever she shifted to examine a toy.
“She’s doing it again. Watch.” A flurry of clicking pens and excited murmurs.
Regina picked up a rag doll and ran her fingers through its blue-yarn hair. She traced the stitches in its nose, touched her own.
“Here it comes.” They held a collective breath.
Jack hated them.
The doll began… fading. It started at the edges and worked in, growing more and more indistinct until there was nothing left. Regina looked at her empty hands and began to cry.
“We’ll run some tests, draw blood, and…” They eyed one another and fell silent. What if the girl turned her attention on one of them? They’d already lost two nurses.
And her mother.
Jack shoved past them, into the room. Regina sniffled as he held her.
“Daddy’s here.”
(A digression, if you’ll bear with me: someone sequelled the story, which was neat and very well done. I’d only been sequelled once before, when ficly was ficlets. The beauty of ficly is that the next author can take the story in a direction you’d never imagined it might go. Still, that didn’t stop me from thinking “No no! Regina’s mother is named Lucy, and she’d never have screwed around with the King of Faries…” Though, the sequel author did nail the reason for Regina’s name in his comment.)
Tonight, then, I start in medias res and damn the consequences.
Coffeemaker update: still not acquired. Unless one last local place can save the day, we’re going to have to order online. At least we can do it through Lowe’s, who, at least as of today, isn’t part of the Price War. 
Writing-on-the-commuter-rail update: Ouch, my wrists. Those seats are NOT conducive to writing longhand in a notebook, unless I want to take a seat at one of the tables in the middle of the car. Only problem with that is, there are “regulars” on those trains who treat them like they’re reserved seats. The one time I did take a table space, I got to listen to snide comments the whole way home between a woman and her displaced friend. (“I know, it’s so hard to talk to you when you have to sit a row behind me. Tomorrow we’ll have to get here earlier so no one takes your seat!”)
Also, my handwriting is usually pretty neat, but on a moving, juddery train, it became chicken scratch. Impossible hurdle to overcome? No. Frustrating? Oh my yes.
Which means I priced out netbooks when I got home. Have to keep reminding myself they’re a luxury, not a necessity. (But oh, so shiny…)
