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Annnd we’re off… Day one of NanoWriMo Complete!

Nov2

First Line:
All of the legendary Empress Edaledalende Academy of Higher Learning at Ileltedez was stretched out in front of Tairiekie.

Last Line: “…And then you have to hold it. There are incentives the longer you stay at the top.”

4,121 words.
an average of 4,121 words/day <.<
at this rate, I will finish on November 13th.
(no, not really, but it’s fun to say)

If you have an interest in being on an Alpha (like beta but rawer) filter, please let me know!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/594512.html. You can comment here or there.

Nano and Balance

Oct31

As I step into my third Nanowrimo, I’ve been looking around and reading blog posts on “surviving nano,” “making it through/to 50K,” and so on, and I was struck that, if they mention your family at all, the general consensus is “your husband and children will not see you for the next thirty days.”

Combine this with advice to “remember to eat food, even if it’s Burger King and take-out pizza,” it occurred me that, not only is nano generally a younger person than mine’s game (oh, my, did I just say that? Hi, dad), but that it was sorely in need of a post on “balancing life, family, and nanowrimo.”

Then I wondered if I had done a sufficiently good job balancing those things in the past – my husband says no, but then he said I’d left him alone in the yard overnight and nobody had come to get him and he was so saaad, so I have to take it with a grain of salt (he’s also threatened to go feral).

So what I am going to do, gentle readers, is be mindful of balance over the next month of feverishly grinding out 2000 words a day in a setting I barely know. And I will report to you faithfully every Wednesday on my progress thereof. I might even get my husband to do a guest post (don’t hold your breath 😉

Stay tuned for the adventures of Balance and the Art of Nanoing.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/593681.html. You can comment here or there.

On Nano, a rambling summary

Oct29

I was reading – technically, having read to me, as Ri lives in my attic – Rion’s blog post on NaNoWriMo, which made me think about my own (far shorter) experiences with it.

I can remember hearing about Nano probably a decade ago, but my first strong memory of it is my friend Qlipoth’s “why I hate nano” blog post, which is only from 2009, so I could be wrong. Either way, it “wasn’t for me.”

I can’t remember why. I really, can’t. I just didn’t think it was my thing.

I do know that in 2010, when I played along without picking a project (Just aimed to get 50K words in a month), part of my excuse is “my other projects won’t wait that long.”

What I learned that year was that 50,000 words is a totally do-able goal.

2011 I did it for real. I took a short story I’d been playing with and used it as the jumping-off point for a novel. That was The Deep Inks.

I learned that I could, indeed, write a novel, but my idea of plotting was pretty haphazard and three chapters of architectural detail was probably not a great idea.

I won. I really don’t remember much about it, but I won. The stats say I won with 50,289 on the 27th. I was inches from the climax. Still haven’t finished that thing… <.<

2012: The states say I finished on the 29th with 50,511 words (I do not like this trend!) I’m not sure how much I learned, but I did it.

The one that really got me was this summer’s Camp Nano. My goal was 43,500, and I made it on the last day of the month. But what I learned…

…I learned, gentle readers, that I like outlining. I really like writing to an outline. I like plotting ahead of time. It makes a more coherent novel. It’s just more fun.

And now we come to 2013. I’m outlining a whole new sub-setting and a new type of story. I’m pre-prepping my novel out the wazoo.

What will I learn? We’ll have to see. But I hope to have fun along the way.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/592499.html. You can comment here or there.

Nano Resources?

Oct28

I’d like to do a comprehensive (or as close to as possible) post of nano resources.

What are your favorite links that everyone should know when attempting to write a novel in 50 days?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/591129.html. You can comment here or there.

Eyebrows, a story for the Real World Prompts

Oct27

To [personal profile] thnidu‘s prompt: Look in the mirror and realize you’re losing (or have lost) your eyebrows.

I stole the first half of my story from my husband, with some of the details changed. My immigrant grandfather/g’grandfather were farmers, not steelworkers 😉

I don’t know when my grandfather lost his eyebrows.

I know how, of course. He was a steelworker until his joints failed, until his legs and his hands would no longer let him do the work that had built our family.

But I don’t know when. He had, as far as I’d known, never had eyebrows. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I realize that other people’s grandfathers did have eyebrows; my grandfather’s brothers – as well as two of his sons and seven of his nephews – had all been steelworkers as well.

It was that sort of town, where I grew up.

So that is the memory I hold when it comes to eyebrows: looking at my grandfather when I was fifteen, and for the first time seeing that he had no eyebrows.

And then, fifteen years later, I looked in the mirror and realized I had lost my eyebrows.

We’re not a fair family, and we’re not prone to thin eyebrows. I had to have been losing them for months, maybe longer than that. Black eyebrow hair after black eyebrow hair, falling out, never noticed. Until they were all gone, and I stared at my grandfather’s face in the mirror.

Younger, of course; I had never known my grandparents as anything other than people in their sixties, seventies, eighties. But with the eyebrows gone, the chinline was so clearly his, the nose the one he’d brought over on a boat.

“I didn’t want to say anything,” my best drinking buddy confided. “I figured it was like losing your hair, you know?”

“If you hadn’t noticed soon, I was going to say something,” my girlfriend allowed. “Here’s the WebMd page. Unless you’ve been plucking your eyebrows…”

“You look good,” my mother smiled. “Like my father. Have you lost weight?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/590787.html. You can comment here or there.

Inner Circle (and-a-Gladiator-on-Top) test intro

Oct25

This is a draft/test/idea that came to me in the shower. There are questionable things in it, but this is how it started so far.

This is the Kink Setting, by the by, not the Steam!Goats setting, this one tentatively called Inner Circle.

“Kneel, Taslin Altreka.”

It was not the first thing the man had said to her; it was merely the first important thing.

He had begun, as law and conscience dictated, with the standard disclaimers and explanations. “You understand that once you take a knee, it is not something you can take back? You will be committing to ten years, or to death, or until a member of the first circle calls you to service.”

Taslin had nodded. “I understand.” Other cities had less rings, and thus less years of service. But she had been born in New Indapala, and her family lived here.

“You understand that one out of five who take this route die in service?”

Again, she’d nodded. “I understand.”

“You understand that two out of three who do survive are maimed or crippled?”

“I understand.”

“There are easier routes up the Ladder.”

Taslin had finally looked the man in the eye. “I have a little sister and a little brother.”

“Aah. Then we will continue.” And they had. “Kneel, Taslin Altreka.”

She took a knee, her head bowed. The man snipped the cord that had been around her neck since childhood, removing her ID chit. Her neck had felt empty without the light tug there.

That had lasted only a moment. Those who knelt did not wear their ID on a cord, but they wore it nonetheless.

The collar was the thinnest metal she had ever felt, jointed like mail. It moved with her, but at the same time, it pressed against her.

“Rise, Taslin Gladiator.”

Thoughts: I know how the names work, at least. That’s a whole post of its own.
Ten years seems ridiculous, but I wanted New Indapala (which is also a question, I need a name there, but I’m not sure how that one flows off the tongue) to be a large city, and thus a large number of rings.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/589433.html. You can comment here or there.

This one at least moved past the architecture for a bit…

Oct22

Unnamed Kink Setting Worldbuilding 2: Inside and Outside

Travel between cities is rare; caravans that do so carry twice as many guards as they do passengers, and are prohibitively expensive. To travel on your own, or with a couple guards, is to risk, in order of likelihood:

* Attack by “bandits;” groups who live in tiny walled settlements and range out as far as they dare in search of prey, whether human or otherwise.

* Death by thirst or starvation if your supplies run out, if you get turned around in one of the wild storms.

* Death by wild storm.1

* Transformation or twisting – or engulfment – by a Lantern.2

* Attack by a Creature3 or a mundane beast.

* Being shot down by the guards of your goal city.

The cities are the primary population centers; farmers live outside the walls, but close enough to flee within them if any of the aforementioned threats attack. Bandits, too, the occasional marauder, and a few tiny, terrifying settlements also exist outside cities, but they account for less than 10% of the total population of the continent.

Inside the cities, the population follows a structure as tiered as the concentric walls, and, indeed, marked by and inspired by those walls.

    1. Wild Storms are just what they sound like, massive storms – dependent on the locale, tornado, hurricane, sandstorm – with the added benefit of sometimes having magic twisted up within them.

    2. A Lantern is someone who lost control of their magic, and are now simply a conduit for the power. The power spurts from them in unpredictable bursts, or sometimes just flows out until the human at the core is entirely lost. The only plus is that Lanterns are generally stationary.

    3. A Creature is, well, a creature, one that has been warped by proximity either to a place of power4

    4. A place of power is assumed to be an opening from the magic to our plane of existence, although nothing but magic ever comes through.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/587761.html. You can comment here or there.

Trolling / For Books, a story for the Real World Call

Oct22

For [personal profile] elliemurasaki‘s prompts to my real-world call:
Farmer’s market.
New job.
Bookstore trawling.
“I’m not sure if this counts as a job.”

Jessica’s mother was frowning. She was often frowning, but now she had her forehead pinched, her lips pinched, her hands pinched… she was holding on to Jessica with every part of her body without actually bothering to touch her daughter.

“You said that about the Farmer’s Market job, too.” She was almost done packing. She opened the bottom drawer of her dresser again. She didn’t want to find she’d left anything behind.

“Standing behind a table selling vegetables all day? It’s not exactly career-forwarding, is it?” Jessica’s mother had a lot of opinions on career, as long as it wasn’t her own.

“Well, one, it was an entry-level position towards a sales job there.” Until her mother had a conversation with Jessica’s manager. “And two, all the trust says is that I have to be working.”

“And I don’t think this counts as a job.”

“The trustees do. And that’s what counts here.”

“You shouldn’t talk to your mother like that, Jessica.”

“I’m sorry.” She didn’t bother putting any emphasis on the words, because it wouldn’t matter anyway. Talking to her mother was like shouting down a black hole.

“Trolling around old book stores… living on the road… no supervisor, no defined hours…”

“But I’ll be getting paid a salary.” Jessica checked the back of the closet one more time, and tucked the old teddy bear she found there into a pocket of her suitcase. “They want my skills.”

“Your skills.” Her mother sneered it, but the sneer seemed to dissolve into something more open. “You don’t have to leave, you know. You could stay here, get another job like the one at the Farmer’s Market. You don’t have to pay rent.”

Jessica checked under the bed again. “I’ve got to go, Mom. I’ll keep in touch.” she kissed both her mother’s cheeks and made sure she had all her bags before she left.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/587495.html. You can comment here or there.