Crackin’ Whips and Losin’ Face

It has been a long time since I’ve written 5,000 words in a day.

NaNoWriMo has started off good for me.  I decided to do what a million other people did, and that was stay up until midnight and get in a few hundred words before heading off to bed.  Once I was up I hit it hard again, and by the time the morning was done I had 2900 and change done on the story.

Then, like the crazy guy I am, I blogged about it, and rolled up another 660 words–because, well, why not?  ’Cause that’s the way I’m rolling these days.

Now, not everything was NaNo.  After I got my novel out of the way I started in finishing the formatting for the erotic story I worked on for a few weeks back.  I thought it might take until tomorrow to tie up–no pun intended–and I was wrong.  The title of the story came to me just about the time Trusty Editor^tm showed up.  While we chatted–there was no editing needing their attention today, so they were only being Trusty–I did the last of the prep work on the story, got it saved right, and set up the email to fire it off.  Trusty gave me a few words of encouragement, maybe call them a blessing, and I hit the send button.

Believe it or not, that’s the first story I’ve sent off to a publisher in about 20 years.  It’s in the hands of another power at the moment–the Editor.  We’ll see what happens.  The chances are very good that I won’t know anything about it until after the first of the year.

So after Trusty Editor^tm left–telling me that I needed to write my butt off–I fooled around a little bit, ended up doing the Soccer Mom thing for a while, and when I returned home . . . I wanted to write.  I had the next scene in my head.  So I pulled up Scrivener and had at it.

I didn’t flow out like I thought it might, but I was wrong if I thought I wasn’t getting anywhere.  I’ve always had issues writing action scenes, because they always take more time to write than the amount of time it would take to act them out.  But it was happening.  I was having issues writing (and I think I know why, something I need to adjust tomorrow), but when I did benchmark checks on my progress–I was running a lot faster than I imagined.

Yes, I wasn’t churning out the good at the rate of 1600 words/hour as I did this morning, but 1300 words in 59:30 . . . yeah, you can do the math.

And it was a good action scene.  Without giving too much away I blew up a guy with a bull whip–you can read about it in my excerpts–and when I finished up my writing for the night, I had another main character sprout claws and rip half of some suckers face off with one swipe.  I mean, there is some satisfying about writing, “He screamed, clutching what was left of his face—which, given that his cheek bone was showing and his jaw snapped free of his skull when the women ripped away the muscles and tendons holding it in place, wasn’t much,” and smiling warmly once you’re realized that’s a pretty chill moment.

So . . . 1300 more words for the grist mill, and here I come and do another 600 or so–yeah, about 5500 throughout the day.

Writing can be a living, and today, I feel like I’ve earned my keep.

Back at it tomorrow, NaNos.  See you in the papers.

Eruption

Tarkus; Pictures at an Exibition; Karn Evil 9; Nutrocker.

Yeah, it’s Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.  So I must be writing.

It’s NaNoWriMo, as if you didn’t know, and I started this trip just as midnight struck.  I threw on a live version of Tarkus, and 28 minutes later I had just over 700 words.  Off to bed, as I was tried–

And what happens?  I wake up at 5 AM with a pain in my right arm.  What the hell is this?  I had no idea, but I wasn’t about to go down the first day with a NaNo injury.  Put on a big pot of coffee and got out the Icy Hot, and slathered that stuff down right then and there.

Then up to the computer room to crank, my friends.

Scrivener really helps me when I write.  It automatically keeps track of my word counts, and once I attach a sub-card to the scene I’m writing, it’s simply a matter to stop writing when I reach the end of the song, record the time and figure out my wordage.  I don’t have to do that, I realize; it’s sort of OCD writing.  But for some reason it gives me a benchmark to work against, and it helps me focus my mind while I’m getting things down on the Processor.

And today I must have been focused, because not only did I crank out the words, but I finished the first chapter (or “scene” as I call it, because when I set up a note card in Scrivener, it’s easier to think of each chapter as a scene) of my NaNo Novel.  That was my goal for the first day, to get the first chapter out of the way.  It’s a set up, it tells you a little about the main character, and it leaves you with a cliffhanger into the next chapter.

And that’s when the stuff really happens.  I have some great special effects occurring in the next chapter, and I have no idea how many words it’s going to take to get it done, but I do know one guy will bite it Scanners style, and that’s all that matters.

So, now comes the Tale of the Tape, aka, What’s the Word Count, Kennith?

Last night I played a live version of Takrus that was broken into two parts: the main part of the song, and the 11 minutes jam that is Aquatarkus.  Word count of 713 with a time of 28:11 comes out to 1518 words/hour.  Not bad.

Then this morning I went with a couple of things that I could load on YouTube that would leave me to write.  Pictures at an Exhibition ran 43:49 and that allowed me to write 1123 words, giving me 1538 words/hour.  That gave me a good setup, and it carried on through Karn Evil 9, Part 1, 2, and 3.  29:40 later I was up another 897 words, for a total run of 1812 words/hour.

But I wasn’t quite done.  I was almost to the end, a few hundred words short, and I didn’t want to leave my main character with a splitting headache.  Since I needed something that was going to kick me in the butt I threw on Nutrocker, and 5 minutes later I was in for another 177 words, blazing away at a rate of 2124 words/hour.

And then I come out here and do another 650 or so more words just to show people how cool it is to be happy about your writing.

I might be done for the day; I might do another 900 words so I can say I did 3,000 for the day.  I know I need to finish editing my erotic story today so I can get it submitted and play the waiting game of “Will it get accepted, or will it crash and burn?”.  Either way, I’m getting that story published–I just need a good title.

And then I could think about the 2 or 3 works in progress that I have waiting for my attention–

Wow, man.  I’m starting to feel like a real writer.