Spontaneous ∂erivation

When you’re writing a mystery, there comes a time when you need to work out the math.

If no word count pops up tonight, that’s because I’m working on figuring out who killed her.

Not as good as I would have liked it to been, and definitely not 20k. I’ll have to try for 20k on Friday or something.

Articles of Retransmission threatens to stretch to more than 80k. Which is probably for the better.

First line of the block:

I didn’t know what to say. There aren’t exactly any greeting cards for the occasion where someone finds out they’re just a bruising in someone else’s temporal lobe. So I went with the default.

Last line of the block:

No boredom on my end as it turned out, during our internet excursions for the first few days.

Graph!

Feathers on my breath…

Nope, didn’t make the 20k today either.

On the other hand, it did make me wonder how I’d gone from “500 words today is too hard, 5000 will take forever!” to “5000 words was easy, and now I’ve hit the dreaded point in the book where The Characters Take Over and Do Unwise Things”.

Starting line:

“Succinct. Not that original. Possible mythological reference. Otherwise a little bit on the sparse side…but that’s intentional, of course.”

Endling line:

“No.”

Putting this number up for now, because I have no idea when the plot thread will ground itself again tonight.

Graph!

I don’t know why people want to slam NaNoWriMo. If nothing else, it teaches you that you can write over 1500 (or more) words a day and not kill yourself.

Short and sweet.

Pass it on.

The night is not young when you eat a very large dinner that you spend an hour digesting. You’d think I’d have learned something from all the folks eating Thanksgiving dinners. Yet another writing tip: do not eat large meals, eat multiple small ones that won’t remove power from your brain and redirect it to your stomach.

That said, I did go through some amount of words; over 10k, which is not great, but at least I had fun. We’ll go for 20k tomorrow. Sigh.

Starting line for this block:

The headquarters of the opposition loomed out of the wheat fields surrounding it, visible as a white mansion from several miles around it, thanks to the ultimate flatness of the land of Kansas.

Endling line:

“Secret passage,” I said. “We’ll hide. This is the key. I’ve got ammo. Do you have hope?”

Graph!

Got to be more careful, people….

The night is young, but not that young, because it’s the Pacific Northwest.

My inspirational song of angst is currently Walter Reed.

I’m the walking wounded
I’d say it to your face
But I can’t find my place

So tell me now, what more do you need?
Take me to Walter Reed tonight
Baby, I’ve lost the will for fighting
Over everything

There’s a few things I gotta say
Make no mistake, I’m mad,
‘Cause every good thing I’ve had
Abandoned me.

A sad and lonesome me.

That is all.

I need to do this three days in a row. I’ll be happy if I can do it for two days and still write on the third.

Far, far behind the current leads. I need to hit 160k this weekend just to stay barely ahead, and as wild and crazy as I am, I don’t think I can quite hit 20k a day, but I’ll try and see how far I can get.

Right now chapters are steady at 4k, and outlining is not as necessary, but still nice to block out a chapter briefly before diving into it. I need to find another set piece to focus on.

Starting line of this block:

He paced back and forth in our cell. He had declared first dibs on the space, which was not very much, and while I wanted to pace too and had already established a history of needing physical distraction, he turned out to be a merciless arm wrestler, so I sat in the corner of the cell and watched him, trying not to go crazy.

Ending line:

“I know, I know. Our only hope is that you get over it before your ‘love’ progresses to a terminal level.”

Graph!

I wonder who Walter Reed is?

A little bit better. I’m not done for the day yet, but I wanted to get a number out there before lunch.

Hope to write 8000 more today, and maybe even 4000 more tonight. Somehow it was 8000 in three hours, not four.

My cards seem to expand to more than 2k these days.

Thanks, House, M.D….

For a while I thought you had killed my ambition to write my mystery novel because you are so good.

Then I realized how much I had learned.

The new plot I just found is much more mature than the original.

I will now write, while worshiping the greatness that is House, M.D. during my commute. Hallelujah!