NaNo Update

I've decided to do something a little different with NaNo this year. Because Tuesdays and Thursdays are obscenely busy days for me - I have a spare hour in the middle of the day, which isn't enough for me to plink out 1,667 words in - I've decided to take an alternate track to writing SubRosa. By the way, I've decided to change the novel name. Why? Because SubRosa doesn't adequately foreshadow the problem. From now on, my NaNovel will be called Ex Machina, which, if you are one of the nonexistent lucky people to read it, will make considerably more sense.

Ahem. As I was saying, I'm taking an alternate track to writing Ex Machina. I plan on writing 2,381 words on every day but Tuesdays and Thursdays. And based on that solution, I am actually ahead of schedule. I have written (notice the number on the handy sidebar) 5593 words in two days of writing, while I only needed to have written 4,762. You can imagine the great sense of accomplishment I feel.

My chapters are turning out to be shorter than expected, with more telling and not enough showing, but I plan on coming back and elaborating on that once I have the story outlined in a draft.

NaNoWriMo

"If a Wrimo is a measurement of literary quality, how good is a NaNoWriMo?"

I fancy myself an author, from time to time. The past few years, I have, unsuccessfully, competed in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writers Month. For the very few of you who may not know what this is, during NaNoWriMo, writers from around the world attempt to write 50,000 or more word novels in the course of 30 days.

I completed it, once. It was a great piece of avant-garde fiction. It made little to no sense, but I felt a great sense of accomplishment.

I had no plans to compete this year. My horror/supernatural novel from last year, Sub Rosa, petered out right around day 10, when I realized that I had made my Eldritch Abomination so powerful and so sneaky that: 1. My active hero had no way of discovering what the problem was, and 2. had no way of solving the problem.

And that, folks, is a huge problem when it comes to writing novels. If you can't unveil the conflict, let alone solve it, you're in for a really bad book. Not, of course, that this year's book will be any better.

But I have an exciting announcement to make. Last night, I had a case of reverse Fridge Brilliance. If you don't know what that is, go to tvtropes.org and look it up. Anyways, last night, I had a flash of inspiration. Yes, you've got it, friends. I figured out how to defeat the Abomination.

Don't mention the fact that I have no names for the characters in my story. Don't mention the fact that I just lost a valuable NaNo day by not writing. No. I am going to give this story my best shot. And for the record, my word count is now 2,169.

I'm on a roll.