Decisions, Planning, etc.

Well, I think I decided I’m going to go for the project with the working title “A Wizard’s Work,” mainly because I want to get away from European-esque fantasy and castles and do something a little different. So we’re going to be writing in 1880s America.

The only real problem I have is that I don’t seem to have an antagonist, which I, well, need. I know what they do–I just don’t know who they are. I toyed with having it be the protagonist’s mother, or someone posing as her, but I just don’t know what their motivation is. And I’ve only got three days, so it’s time to think fast.

Wordcount Bribery

AKA: A good use for gift cards, Y/N?

10k: How Can We Be Silent, BarlowGirl
20k: Hourglass, Kate Rusby
30k: Girl Genius, Vol. 1
40k: Whatever the heck I want, because it’s 40k
50k: NaNo T-shirt

I figure that’s pretty good intervals. Last year I had them clustered at the beginning because I had no idea whether I was going to finish or not–but now that I know I can theoretically do it, I’m spreading out the incentives over the whole 50k.

Working on roughly what era to set the story in. Think I’m going to go for a slightly different geographical setting, just for interest.

Busy

Have been very busy lately, but I think I’ll be prepared in time for NaNo. If I can even manage it this year with my schedule, that is, but if I have to drop out, that’s okay. (I can still say that I’ve won once, anyway.) I’ve been doing some outlining for the various ideas that I have bouncing around in my head, and a couple of them are starting to solidify, so that’s good news.

Now to come up with some wordcount bribes for myself to get me to 50,000…

It’s that time of year again…

And I’m working on the ideas I’m holding in consideration for this year’s NaNo. (Script Frenzy kind of fizzled out after the first 10k, by the way.)

Current idea list stands as:

• Crown: Probably the frontrunner. About a farmgirl who finds a magical, sentient, evil crown that everyone else wants and how she saves her country, doesn’t die, and kicks some serious butt. Not set in pseudo-medieval times, but rather in late 19th-century-esque fantasyland!
• The Good Princess: Recycled from SF, in which the princess, blessed to be graceful, beautiful and airheaded comes to her senses with a fairy’s engagement gift and starts revising her own life.
• A Wizard’s Work: Something I started playing with a few months ago about a Victorian-era world where you can get a degree in wizardry–and the first woman to get one.
• Operation Cinderella: Yet another fairy-tale retelling, in which Cinderella is a revolutionary set on overthrowing the king and the monarchy, and ends up at the ball in an attempt to kidnap the prince to back up their demands. However, a wrench gets thrown in the plans when the prince turns out to be a lot more reasonable than she suspected.
• Something Else I Haven’t Thought of Yet.

I’m pretty sure Crown’s the front-runner–there’s a lot of good stuff there–but I still have yet to outline it and prep. Updates to come.

Ling Does Script Frenzy

Woo, I managed to snag one of the clearance NaNo shirts! Go me!

So I decided to go ahead and sign up for Script Frenzy. I think it’ll be interesting and fun (and plus, I won’t have any school!). I’ve worked out some potential plots from stories that I’ve been playing around with…

Miss Sensitive: A girl regarded as the most insensitive, aromantic girl in existence secretly runs an online advice blog where she gives out really good relationship advice. However, some of it begins to run a little too close to home–and not to mention begins screwing up her own life. (Because there should be romcoms about INTJs.)

The Good Princess: The princess was blessed at birth to be pretty but air-headed, which suited the King and Queen fine. However, when they forget to invite a malicious fairy to her betrothal celebration, the fairy decides to remove the “blessing”–bringing out her true nature. Now the princess (now a savvy, intelligent young woman) must decide for herself what’s to be done. And there’s that problem of the very handsome captain of the guard, too…

Miracle: That one I was saving for writing a comic book. Magical girl-type superheroine Miracle goes to college, and finds out that superheroes there are governed by a Council. When she goes to register, however, she finds that the rules aren’t so much to her liking (nor the people, for that matter) and joins up with a bunch of super-powered, rebelling-against-the-man type college kids to form a new team with a new mission that begins to bring the city into a sense of community.

Miss Sensitive I’m dying to write in some kind of media; the Good Princess might actually transfer pretty well. (I love fairy-tale send-ups.) I’m not sure about Miracle, but I love superheroes, so I might go for that, too. (BATMAN BEGINS = WIN.) I have a couple weeks to figure it out, anyway.

Day Twenty-Seven Report

Coming in at 46,545, over 1.5k over where I need to be! Yesterday I managed a lot of words, ending up at over 1.7k+, which is pretty darn amazing for me. Currently I’m looking at having to write just over 1.1k every other day until Thursday.

So NaNoWriMo’s drawing to a close. This is it. This is: THE END. I’m hoping to have the team get their acceptance letter before the end of November, which may happen. I also finally figured out what Maureen does, and it’s pretty cool, although I’m going to have to go back and change a few things. (Note to self–people able to see magic of other family members; accounts for Maureen not being seen as unusual by own family.)

I think things are falling into place.

You know, I never thought I’d get this far. Before I started I told myself, “I’m fine if I make it to 30k. 20k, even.” And now I’m less than 4k away from the big 50.

I’m proud of myself. If I can do this, surely I can do anything! (Now all I have to do is figure out how to finish this monstrosity.)

Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four

40k! 40k! 40k!

This is altogether too exciting.

Current word count: 40,804.

Anyway, over the last three days I’ve forgotten to post because of one thing or another. I’ve been writing a bit less because I can slow down my pace a little bit, but am still making over 1000 words over where I should be nearly every day, just in case there’s a day where I really have too much to do in the next week.

So, news in the novel:
-They have finished the bake sale.
-Inge and Anabelle are still on shaky terms.
-Anabelle is prepping Coraline to write the essay, and figuring out who she wants on her team.

I’m still trying to figure out why Maureen is on the team. She has no magical talent… so what’s her special skill that would be of immense use in a magical showdown? Ability to neutralize magic would be too deus ex machina, and it would also take the character in the wrong direction–I want her to have nothing magical about her. Hm. I’ll have to think fast. Or, alternatively, draw the novel out long enough that I don’t have to figure it out until after I hit 50k and can write at my leisure.

Day Nineteen Report

Day nineteen and still right on track–and a little ahead. Although today had a bit of a slow start (curse you, Pokémon Crystal!) I had an advantage from finishing over a thousand words ahead last night (!!–2315 words, almost a record) and have so far managed about 1650 for today, meaning I’m over a thousand words ahead now and in the green at 32,829. Apparently at this pace I should be finishing even a day early, which I wouldn’t mind. More time to start editing, because now I have people who actually want to see this monstrosity.

Today I wrote an amusing and painful segment in which Anabelle and Coraline are magically passing notes in class through an spell Coraline put on their notebooks where Coraline has really atrocious spelling. It hurt to spell words wrong intentionally, but I managed. I came up with her half-literacy late in the planning, just a little before NaNo actually started, and it’s kind of an interesting side to her character. She’s so levelheaded and clever, but yet she’s way below grade level for reading and writing. Later she and Anabelle work on spelling together, Anabelle making magical self-correcting worksheets, my clever attempt to work more actual magic into the story.

Tomorrow Anabelle’s going to have to swallow her pride and admit that she was a little overzealous and can’t do everything. And then she’s going to get what she wanted in the first place, and there will be many celebrations. Hopefully I’ll be getting to the scene where Inge and Coraline’s bet is revealed in a few days–I managed to work in a nice set-up line in today’s writing where Anabelle asks why Coraline wants to help her all of a sudden. Coraline replies that if she doesn’t, Anabelle will rant about it for the rest of the year and drive her mad–but that, of course, isn’t the real reason. Ooh, sneaky.

I’m beginning to think that I may actually achieve 50k on this. I’m not sure I’ll have it wrapped up by the end of the month, but that’s what NaNoFiMo is for, right?

Days Seventeen and Eighteen Reports

Forgot to update yesterday — hit wordcount, albeit late at night, with 28864 at the end of the day. Didn’t quite get 1667 for the day, but I was far enough ahead from the day before that I was 500 ahead at the beginning of today anyway. So far today I’ve written 1042 words, and have a total of 29,906 words total. I’m going to make 30k!

In the past two days, Anabelle has suddenly developed a group of friends among the first-year girls after her befriending of Inge. My favorite line from this is: “At first it was sort of creepy, but eventually she began to remember that this was what her life was supposed to be like.” Yes, aha. There are still girls that are skeptical of her attitude, though. I randomly created a character I named Lindy after Captain Hallaoun from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha of all things who is one of these skeptics, just as a bit character, but over the last chapter she’s turned into something of a bigger player than I anticipated. She and Anabelle have made a magically-reinforced bet that she can’t get Professor Sharpe to help them within a week.

It’s really interesting, writing off the outline. I’ve had trouble with it before, so I outlined about sixteen chapters of material, which have been condensed into about eleven in the actual writing. But now I’m off the part that I’ve outlined, so I’m essentially making stuff up as I go. And I think it helps that I’ve got momentum, but it’s actually going along. Huh. I don’t even think I need wordcount bribery any more.

Scenes that I’m really excited to write in the future:

• When the team goes to the tournament and Maureen meets her twin sister, who’s on the Coronet Academy team
• Anabelle having a bake sale to raise money for the entrance fee
• Anabelle giving Madeline (Maureen’s twin) a severe talking-to
• Coraline and Inge revealing that they had a bet running on whether Anabelle would manage to pull off getting the team into the tournament

Day Sixteen Report

Surprisingly, still on track despite a very busy day. I feel finishing in my future. Currently at 27,218 words.

I feel like my characters aren’t using enough magic for being at a magic school. Maybe I need to stick in some more classroom scenes. Or have Professor Sharpe do some real flashy magic, which she hasn’t really done yet, except to break up the badly-choreographed Anabelle vs Inge fight. I’m terrible at fight scenes.

On the other hand, Anabelle and Inge had a really nice heart-to-heart over detention. I realized that I skipped one of Anabelle’s detention scenes that had some really good Maureen development. I may have to go back and add that in, or change a couple scenes. Or maybe I’ll do that after I hit 50k. Decisions, decisions. Hm. I’ll probably do it after I hit 50k, mostly because I can’t afford to re-write when I need to be producing new material. Besides, what else is December for?

I’m beginning to really think that I’m going to do this. Wow.