Week One and Still on Track *knock on wood*

If you’ve been reading this blog (or even my other one) for any length of time you’ll know my usual strategy for NaNo is this:
Day one: Try to talk myself out of it
Day two: Cave in and scrounge around for an idea
Day three: realize I’m already three days behind and start scrambling to catch up
Remaining days: catch up, fall behind, catch up, fall behind, pull ahead, fall behind, cross the finish line with a handful of words to spare

But this year’s NaNo is pretty much like the rest of 2020 has been – surreal. Give or take a few words, I’ve been right on target. FOR SEVEN DAYS IN A ROW! *knock on wood*

Is it because I’m older and wiser and know how to pace myself? Is the idea I settled on conducive to a steady pace? Is it because I finished Blood Ties in a flurry of words and I’m still in high gear? I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care as long as it keeps up.

Now, a lot of people talk about play lists of music to accompany their writing. I never much thought about it before. The first NaNo I won was basically accompanied by all things Star Trek. I’d sit in front of the TV late at night and watch various Star Trek marathons as I wrote.

Lucky Dog I listened to mostly Celtic music – specifically a lot of Loreena McKennitt, but a lot of miscellaneous recordings as well. Blood Ties, however, especially the last 30,000 words or so, was written mostly to the Sounds of Nature we get on our TV, which is just what it sounds like. It’s birds or rain or crickets (or whatever), sometimes with music in the background, sometimes on their own. Don’t ask me why, but listening to the sounds of nature never failed to put me in the right mindset for working on Blood Ties.

The sounds of nature does not work, however, for Firestorm. I did try in the beginning, thinking because it was also a fantasy story it would be appropriate, but it wasn’t. What I have found works well is Two Steps From Hell. I don’t know how many CDs they’ve put out, but I have a lot of them. They’re mostly instrumental – think epic soundtrack – but it just seems to go with my story.

This is one of the reasons I’ve been spending a lot of time writing in the living room – it has a CD player that holds five CDs at a time, whereas in my office I have to get up every time the CD ends (unless I want to listen to it over again).

Anyway, the story is moving along nicely, even if it’s starting out in a different direction than I anticipated. But that’s just one of the joys of being a pantser (someone who writes by the seat of their pants instead of using an outline). My main character (who needs renaming badly) is a little different than I expected. He’s not as angry for one, although that may change. Or it might change during editing. You know, a few years from now. ;-)

Meanwhile, the story started meandering down a side path I didn’t like, so it being NaNo and all I just stopped and started the next scene back a few pages and sent it where it should have been. It’s still not perfect, but it got the story moving again, and that’s what counts.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

As I mentioned above, I’m pretty much on track to where I should be. As of the typing of this, I’m at 13,322, which is only 11 words shy of where I should be by the end of the day. And I think it’s important to note that during this time we’re having our kitchen renovated, so I spent a good part of last week unloading the cupboards so they can be ripped out. Who knew such a tiny kitchen had such a lot of stuff in it??

Goals From Last Week

1. Edits on Blood Ties – I actually did get some editing done, not as much as I’d hoped to, but you have to start somewhere.
2. Blog posts – even though this one is kind of late (I spent yesterday afternoon up in Peterborough so the evening was spent on Firestorm instead of this post) I still got all my posts done last week.
3. NaNo – so far I’m feeling really good about this year’s NaNo (*knock on wood*)

Goals For This Week

1. Continue working on edits for Blood Ties
2. Get all my blog posts done
3. Try and pull ahead with words on Firestorm

Two Steps From Hell - Never Give Up On Your Dreams