NaNoWriMojo

Heyyyyy there, fellow NaNo fans and curiosity seekers!  Gotta say I was geared up to hit the ground running and my excitement did not let me down.

I had decided on a daily goal of 2400 words. I have a contest deadline/campaign to run at the end of the month, so I decided I wanted my 50K goal to strike by the third week of November so I could run some drafting that last week.

5,550 on the first day in!  I had stopped at the 2,730-word count, but on the way to picking my nephews up from school, the scene came back to me with screaming clarity and I was desperate to get it down. (If you're friends with me on FB, you've already heard this part.)  Talk about mojo...

One thing I absolutely love/hate about my muse is that if I work with her, she kicks ass for me.  She's not always showing up at my convenience and she leaves a lot of empty coffee cups and candy wrappers (yup, blaming that on her, no takebacks). But damn, when she hits, she doesn't take prisoners.  Blood on the walls, sweat on the sheets, and I need a cigarette-- THAT kind of good.

Even now, I'm reining her back a bit and she's settling for being filtered into a blog post.  I like to stop right when a new scene is gaining ground so slow starts don't make her clumsy to warm up and that is where I stopped-- after that juicy scene that battled with my footsteps for priority and leading into the next revelation for the characters.

I can't vouch for the quality of the words right now, but I have to get the big ripe fruits on the page and worry about plumping them for juicing later.  Really, I can't wait to get this story out to you.  It's such a departure from any challenge I've ever taken and yet it's so authentic in both the integrity of my vision and the research I've done on the target audience of the genre. 

I've done quite a bit of introspection and I saw a line on a blog post that rocked my perception of success as a writer. The full blog post is here, but the intro is what stuck.

Yes.  All the way, yes, and I feel this really speaks to me. On self-inspection, I see myself as a little better than okay.  Not quite good, but better than okay.  It's not for any lack of technical skill or story-telling.  I do have a healthy amount of doubt, but I always put enough care and editing into my work to know it's not terrible or incompetent.  It needs work and it always will, but I also don't need to overhaul my style or alter my voice, I just need to hone what makes it work best. I began writing for myself, but as I continue, I find myself wondering how to reach other audiences.  I have no intention of writing entirely for others, but I do feel as if I strive to prove to myself that I am up for the challenge of reaching further.

One thing you will learn about me is that I am one hell of a planner. Games like Skyrim and Dragon Age are worlds that I know better than the neighborhood I grew up in.  These complicated worlds full of lore that I often labor over intensely and only bits and pieces ever become relevant to the story.  Nevertheless, whether you use that richness or not, it has to be there.  The steel beams that hold up skyscrapers are often hidden but vital to hold it up. The writer can never be as shocked as the characters by what holds up the world around them, even if we don't drag the readers through the fantasy equivalent of textbooks of lore built behind it.

Even in my shallowest stories, I always build on a frame and I very rarely fly by the seat of my pants.  I love to plan and drop little easter eggs to hatch later. I love making a jigsaw puzzle become that big beautiful picture at the end.

And I love my departed aunt Shari for making that metaphor all the more beautiful. You know my aunt was famous for throwing 3 or 4 jigsaw puzzles in one box and putting them together face down? She also had Down's Syndrome, which didn't stop her from being terrifically brilliant.

As they say, never judge a book by its cover.

Although I gotta say, I do some pretty awesome covers...