Monday, November 07, 2005

Day seven

Ran into a small problem yesterday when I realised that the calculation I'd used to set my minimum daily target was slightly out and that if I stuck to it I'd finish around December 4th. I was already panicking slightly as the story was slowly grinding to a halt for lack of plot.

And yet somehow it continues, and even starts to rise above its origins as an excuse to get snarky about the plot holes in Harry Potter. Although I am quite entertained to find that the character who was originally intended to be the class bully, the Draco Malfoy equivilent, is becoming a running gag so that whenever he catches our heroine alone, before he can do any bullying something dreadful happens to him. The first time they meet Candy punches him in the face and the second time she throws up on him. I'm so bad.

One of the laws of NaNoWriMo is that the first week goes great but by the second week the novelty has worn thin and it's tough to keep the momentum going. For me the opposite seems to be occuring. The first week was a drag, setting out the furniture and introducing the characters without much real inspiration bar the odd Potter dig, but as I hit Day Seven I am all excited about the first big fight scene which I should be tackling today, and which, if all goes well, should shoot my word count well ahead for the first time. We shall see.

In the meantime, here's a snippet from the unfolding adventure:

Candy’s face burned as she spluttered. “Is this really the time and place to enquire about my sex life?” Then she thought for a moment and did a quick sum in her head that went unicorns plus virgins equals...

“Um, okay, I can see it probably is in fact. So, um, no I haven’t actually…” TMI, she thought. To Much Information. No need to give it the Director's commentary. “Uh, yes I’m a virgin.” The word “technically” she left unspoken and decided that this was not the time to debate the specific shading of the term, and hoped that the unicorns weren’t too fussy.




Update: Completely stunned myself by writing three thousand words today, which puts me up to 12,501, and ahead of the minimum daily target for the first time so far. Go me!

1 comment:

Gina said...

Good job on getting over the MDT!

novel sounds good so far -- and aren't you brave for blogging the process!

all the best of luck!