Deadly Light - Day Five

Much better today. This was the first day since the start of the new novel that I really felt focused and 100% on top of the game. Quite an improvement from yesterday.

The result was a 2746-word day, putting the overall total at 10,799. There’s that safety cushion I’ve been missing. If I can string together another couple of good days, I might actually start feeling comfortable again.

Deadly Light - Day Four

The first below-quota day of the Deadly Light project. Also the first time I’ve fallen behind overall pace, which I never did even during the slowest periods of Deep Mist.

Sigh.

It might not even have been so bad, but I had to re-adjust the writing schedule after coming up with nothing at all on Christmas (understandable I suppose) and the day after (less so).

Sigh again.

Do better tomorrow.

Deadly Light - Day Three

An uneven but overall successful day. I got an early start on writing this morning, hoping to hit quota before the day’s activities commenced. We have a set program of movies and holiday specials we like to watch on Christmas Eve, and I didn’t want to interrupt that to write. On the other hand, I wanted to keep on pace. Stephen King says 2000 words per day, weekends and holidays included. So that’s the standard I’ve set for myself.

For awhile it didn’t look like I was going to make it. I was nearly 500 words short when I had to stop this morning and run a last minute errand. And I couldn’t make myself go back to it. Facing the prospect of coming up short because I didn’t feel like writing (a rare occurrence during the Deep Mist challenge), I sat back down at the keyboard after Scrooge concluded the media marathon. And managed to meet and beat the 2k standard.

By odd coincidence, my daily total was exactly the same as Monday: 2191 words. The novel currently sits at 6384.

Deadly Light - Day Two

Today felt less like creative joy and more like a job. Maybe I’m letting the holidays get me down.

I made quota by the narrowest of margins, finishing with 2002 words on the day. Even that was scraping a little, as I reached the end of the first chunk with another 20 or so words left to go. A little extra detail here and there and it was time to call it a night.

The novel currently stands at 4193 words.

Deadly Light - Day One

And so it begins again. I thought maybe I’d let the novel thing sit for awhile, maybe do the revisions for Deep Mist before proceeding on to another project. But the time seems right, and I’ve got this story in my head. Also, I need a project to focus on.

It’s off to a reasonably good start: 2191 words. That’s a slight cheat for three reasons: first, the opening 111 words are the quote from H.P. Lovecraft that supplies the title for the book. Second, I did type a few words over the weekend, just furtively playing around with it rather than commencing the project in earnest. And third, I’m working from a preexisting rough draft.

Frankly, it doesn’t seem to be much of an advantage. Other than the awkward conversion from first person in the draft to third person in the current work in progress, it isn’t a hindrance. But it doesn’t seem to be making the words flow faster, either. Well, once the first section of the novel is complete, I’ll be back to working without a net.

Many more thoughts on this, but they’ll save for tomorrow. For now I’m tired.

Deadly Light – Preliminaries 2

I spent a chunk of the evening fiddling with character sketches and reviewing the old draft of “The Spanking Machine.”

I think it’s time to start writing.

Deadly Light - Preliminaries

Time to start another one.

At the conclusion of Deep Mist, I vowed that it would be the last one I wrote strictly for fun. From here on out I’m working a combination of personal pleasure and market potential. With that in mind, Deadly Light will be much longer (perhaps three times the length) of anything that could be written during National Novel Writing Month.

The new project will be composed of three parts, following a set of characters as they grow from children to adults in a small town with some terrible secrets.

Part one will be an adaptation of a novella I’ve drafted at least twice already. It’s called “The Spanking Machine,” based on the childhood belief that schools possessed disciplinary devices – spanking machines – for punishing bad kids. The characters begin the tale in the springtime of their fifth grade year.

Part two – “Childish Things” – follows the characters to high school. The foursome of friends grows apart only to be thrust back together when the darkness that first found them as children returns for them on the edge of adulthood.

Part three – “Homecoming” – reunites three for the funeral of the fourth and a final showdown with the deadly light.

And yeah, I’ve got some idea of what happens in the first part and pretty much no idea at all about the second and third. Even the first needs to be around three times the length of the last draft, which means it needs a big bunch of extra character development and subplots. But as I learned last month, sometimes not having a plan is a good thing.

With that in mind, I’ve begun with character sketching. And that was the activity for today, the official commencement of this big new step.

Deep Mist – Conclusions

Yesterday I printed the book, all 177 pages of it. Though this is small in novel terms, it looks big as a stack of paper on my desk. Double the length of my previous fiction writing record, and then some.

So here’s what I learned from participating in National Novel Writing Month 2014:

1. The project is a good idea, though the web site occasionally has problems.

2. Though my average for the project was just shy of 2000 words, I feel like my natural pace is a bit faster than that. When I could really sink my teeth into it, I cleared 2k easily and sometimes even topped 3000.

3. My writing is plot intensive. Actually I suspected that before I started. But most of my writing before this has been short stories, which by their nature tend to be mostly plot. This is something I need to work on for novel-length stuff. Longer form writing needs to have more character development. Or at least character descriptions. I know what all the characters look like in my mind, but I don’t think I described any of them.

4. I don’t need to fanatically plan every last detail in advance. This was a shock to me. I’m such a control freak, I was uncomfortable with parts of the story at the outset. I knew what points A and D were, but points B and C were unformed at best. By some miracle, when I sat down to write, those intermediate steps seemed to come naturally, popping out of nowhere when I needed them to.

5. I seem to be comfortable writing from beginning to end rather than hopping around in the plot. That also surprised me. I assumed that I’d write the big scenes I already had planned out and then fill in the gaps later. I’m glad I started at the start and motored on to the end. It worked well.

6. I write better in the evenings.

7. I write better at my desk at home.

8. I can actually do this.

Deep Mist Day 26 - Novel complete

It’s finished. I topped 50k late in the afternoon and completed the novel around 8:00 in the evening.

I need a little time to process this. I’ll try to come up with some concluding comments sometime in the next day or two.

In the meantime, here are the final numbers:

51,626 words total
177 double-spaced pages

The bracket ran 4899 words
The Depths was 22,549 words
The Mist was 24,178 words

I averaged 1986 words per day. On my best day I made it to 3520 words. Three times I topped 3000 (including today’s total of 3014).

And of course I finished with four days to spare.

Deep Mist Day 25

Argh! So close! I know how the story ends, and I’m two scenes from finishing it (not counting the epilogue for the bracket). Still, I can’t push too hard just because it’s close to the finish. Besides, in all honesty I could use one more night to sleep on it. With luck I’ll be able to dig into it tomorrow morning and have smooth sailing straight to the end.

At this point “The Mist” is less than 1000 words short of the total for “The Depths.” The plateau will certainly finish longer than the sub, but not by as much as I thought. The revision process will be interesting. I’ve noticed that this first draft is almost completely plot. Character and exposition are kind of awkward wedges into the tale. I’m betting that will change when I go back to revise, but what that will mean for word count or overall structure is anybody’s guess.

The numbers: 2319 words for the day, 21,629 for the section and 48,612 for the novel. With merely 1388 words to go in the Novel Writing Month challenge, I should be over the top by this time tomorrow.

Deep Mist Day 24

I hoped to write 3000 words two days in a row, and I almost made it. Unfortunately I hit that awful wall where the right thoughts run thin. Rather than create a mess I’d just have to back out of tomorrow, I opted to give up the hunt just shy of the mark.

Still, today did yield some good news: I now know how the story ends, and I have the path to the ending almost completely mapped out. The rest of “The Mist” is now merely a matter of typing.

The numbers: 2858 words for the day, 19,310 for the section and 46,293 for the novel. I’m 3707 words away from the 50k goal.

Deep Mist Day 23

Sundays seem to be the charm. This is the second time I’ve made it over 3000 words in a single day, and they’ve both been Sundays. The first one was the first Sunday of the project, and with a little luck I’ll be done with the novel (or at least past the word count goal) before the next one rolls around.

I’m hoping to get another three strong writing days in before Thanksgiving itself hits. We have family stuff on Thursday and friend stuff on Friday, so I probably won’t get a ton of writing done then. Thus I’d like to be as done as possible before the weekend hits.

The encounter in the woods ran longer than I thought it would. I managed to get the characters halfway up the wall of the plateau before losing steam for the evening.

The numbers: 3222 words for the day, 16,452 for the section and 43,435 for the book.

Deep Mist Day 22

I cleared the 40k mark today. This is the third straight day I’ve hit an above-average word count (the first time I’ve had a streak that long since the first three days of the project). I’m not sure if that’s because the end at least somewhat in sight (back when I was a runner I always liked to do a sprint at the end of a distance run) or because I’m actually getting excited to find out how it turns out. How dumb is that, to get cranked up about learning the ending to your own story?

I’m right at the edge of starting the “night patrol” episode. The story should be a fairly clear path for the next day or two. After that, well, we’ll just see what happens.

The numbers: 2041 words for the day, 13,230 for the section and 40,213 for the book. Which of course means that I’m now less than 10,000 words from the goal.

Deep Mist Day 21

Thanksgiving break is now officially upon us, and writing-wise it’s off to a good start. I figured things might go a little smoother once I got the chance to stop fretting about classes. It also helps that some big things are happening in the story. I started this afternoon with “the interrogation” and wrote all the way through “the well.” Next stop: the edge of the mist.

Today’s totals: 2560 words for the day (my third highest daily total since the start of the project), 11,189 for the section and 38,172 overall.

Deep Mist Day 20

Two thirds done with the month. A little better than 70% of the way to the 50k mark. Another day without as much progress as I’d like during the day but then a burst later in the evening. I have the characters into the hostile village now. Boy has this part of the tale taken some twists I wasn’t expecting. Almost miraculous, because not only do they make better sense in the overall plot but they’re also spookier than what I’d originally planned.

And tomorrow things will get even worse. I plan to grade papers in the morning and then spend the rest of the day marathon writing until I can’t write anymore.

Daily totals: 1850 words for the day, 8629 in the section and 35,612 in the novel. Less than 15,000 words to go, at least for the Novel Writing Month goal. Who knows how much farther the story will go beyond that? Current guess is somewhere between 50 and 60, though I couldn’t be any more precise than that.

Deep Mist Day 19

Another low count caused by another late start. I ended up writing for an hour and a half later than usual just to make sure I at least managed to clear 1000 words.

In the story I’ve passed the Valley of Death. Next stop is the hostile village. That should run for a couple of pages anyway, and I want to see if I can sneak in a little character development before I get there.

Current totals: 1062 words for the day, 6779 for the section and 33,762 for the book.

Deep Mist Day 18

I find myself greatly amused at how the story is and is not progressing exactly the way I expected it to. The overall plot is sticking fairly closely to how I had it mapped out in the outline. Right before I started writing, I added a couple of plot points that I thought might be fun to play with. But now I’ve taken them back out again as obvious disruptions to the flow of the story. In retrospect I think I might have been fretting about padding the plot to make sure I hit the target word count, something I’m not as worried about at this point. Perhaps later I can go back and work them into a stand-alone short story.

On the other hand, some of the characters are taking on a life of their own. The Army’s interpreter was originally intended to be an abrasive, self-righteous fundamentalist, but that isn’t how he’s turning out at all. In the past I’ve thought other authors strange for talking about their characters as if they were real people with lives of their own. Now I can at least see where one might get that impression. It makes me a little sorry I removed one of the characters from the list right before I began work on this section. It was the right decision, because the cast was getting cluttered. And when I asked myself “why is he here?” I couldn’t come up with a good answer. Still, it would have been interesting to see how he developed. Again, maybe I’ll use him for something else in another story.

Today was a strong writing day, with a good writing session in the afternoon and another one after dinner. The daily total was 1893 words, bringing the “Mist” total to 5717 and the overall total to 32,700 even.

Deep Mist Day 17

Another slightly sub-par day (much going on at work, and bad sleep last night had me napping in the afternoon). Still, I got over the 1000 word mark by a reasonable margin, finishing the day at 1232. That officially puts me over the 30,000 word total by 807 words.

Plot-wise, I have my characters on the ground in Laos. A little more character development, and the games will commence.

Deep Mist Day 16

And so it begins. Again. Today I started “The Mist,” which I’m guessing will turn out to be the longest single section of the book.

I first had the idea for this tale many, many years ago. In fact, I wrote it up as a screenplay for a screenwriting class I took (manuscript I assume long since lost). For some time now I’ve been meaning to write it up in novel form, but this is the first good opportunity I’ve had to actually get it done.

At this point I’m 2592 words into it, my second highest daily total since the start of the project. And thus far I’m not even done with the groundwork. It may take me another day (or two, depending on workflow) to really get the story kicked into high gear.

The overall project sits at 29,575 words, nearly two full days ahead of schedule.

Deep Mist Day 15

Midway through the month now. Fortunately for me, I’m nearly 2000 words above the halfway mark in word count.

This evening I completed the second leg of the bracket. It took an unexpected twist – or at least a twist I wasn’t expecting until maybe 15 minutes before I wrote it – at the end. My intention is to hold off on the final leg until after I’ve written “The Mist.” That way I can write the novel’s concluding coda after the rest of it has been safely committed to print (or at least Word file).

My word count total stands at 1719 for the day and 26,983 for the month. That’s a current average of 1799 words per day. And so far only one day since the start where I wrote less than 1000 (Election Day, naturally enough).

Deep Mist Day 14

I got a super late start today, not even sitting down to the task until after 9 p.m. As a result, I lowered my daily expectation a bit. Normally I like to write an absolute minimum of 1667 words per day. However, this evening I contented myself to merely make it into the four digit range at all.

The good news: my overall total of 25,264 words officially put me over the halfway mark (and earned me a badge on the web site). A lot of the coaching from the experts makes it sound like the writing process is a mountain and thus the second half is all an easy, downhill slope. Though it’s nice to recognize the milestone, it’s also important to acknowledge that I still have a long way to go.

Deep Mist Day 13

Here I begin work on the bracket, the story that will wrap around the two main parts of the novel. I’m dividing this tale into three chunks. The first will be the novel’s lead-off. The second will go between the two major parts (and introduce the protagonist of the latter), and the third will provide a coda to the whole thing.

Today I finished the first leg. It came in at 1555 words, a smidge less than I’d prefer to write in a day. But it was close enough for government work. I’m kicking myself for letting movies run while I wrote in the afternoon, because I know that slows me down. On the other hand, the end of the section did make for a nice stopping point.

The current word count total is 24,104. That’s just over the 24,000 words I estimate as the length of “The Spanking Machine,” previously the longest work of fiction I ever wrote. I have to guess at the length because its Word file was eaten in a serial hard drive crash a few years ago. Fortunately I still have a printed manuscript, on which I’ve scribbled some revisions. I intend to rewrite and retype it at some point, perhaps as my National Novel Writing Month project for 2015. For the time being I’m too focused on the current project to plan anything else.

Unless I seriously slack tomorrow, I should make it past the halfway mark.

Deep Mist Day 12 - Section One Done

I’m stopping early today. As the title of this post implies, I’m at a good stopping point.

Indeed, this is usually the point at which I’d drop writing for a little while, walk away and do something else just to clear my mind a bit. To be sure, the novel is far from done, but all three sections function as discrete stories on their own as well as parts of a larger narrative. Under other circumstances, it would be nice to take a break and shift gears.

However, I’m dedicated to the 50,000 word goal. National Novel Writing Month has taken me this far. I’ll stick with it at least until the end.

Speaking of the web site, this week has brought a flood of motivational messages about the week two doldrums. It sounds like a lot of authors can keep a start-of-project rush going for the first week but then lose steam. One of the emails had a line about the poor, unfortunate souls who were still above quota and would thus never experience the rush of a come-from-behind victory.

Evidently whoever wrote that (and it was someone in the metro area) isn’t a Royals fan. If there’s one thing I learned from the postseason last month, it’s the tremendous value of claiming a lead early in the game and then doing absolutely everything possible to hold onto it.

With that in mind, my current overall total is 22,549 words and my daily total (even though I’m clocking out early) is 1812 words, both above quota.

And here’s an odd coincidence: the now-complete section of the novel is almost exactly (within 200 words) as long as Grandma Gilman, my current record holder for longest published work of fiction.

Deep Mist Day 11

I just hit the 20,000 mark. And in less arbitrary measures of progress, I also just finished the big showdown. All that remains of the first section of the book is the wrap-up, in which I try to find a non-contrived way to partially explain anything that still requires explanation. And provide the setup for part two.

The new total is 20,737. That’s 2415 for the day, 2405 ahead of pace. I’m guessing there’s somewhere between 1000 and 2000 words left in this section. With a little luck I’ll hit another strong streak tomorrow and finish it up.

Deep Mist Day Ten

Another drop. I felt ill most of the day – called in sick and everything – and didn’t start writing until later in the evening. The good part was that once I actually did sit down at the keyboard things went smoothly.

For the last couple of days I’ve been at a transition point in the story, the stage between “The Island” and “The Final Showdown.” Not that I’m literally naming the sections in the text, but if you read it you’ll be able to see exactly where I am.

Going into the experience, I had a much vaguer idea about these transition spots than I did about the big, action-packed bits. Thus I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how smoothly they’ve gone. Though some days I write more than others, at no point (at least thus far, knock wood) have I gotten stuck with no idea at all what to write. It gives me at least some understanding of why the ancient Greeks thought art was inspired by Muses. Sometimes it does seem a little supernatural how the story seems to keep flowing, even in the parts I didn’t have planned in advance.

So that’s 1072 words for today, bringing the total up to 18,322. That’s ten words or so shy of a day ahead of schedule. With luck I’ll be feeling a little better tomorrow and ready to get back up to speed.

Deep Mist Day Nine

Not a dramatically awesome day, but at least I kept up a finishing pace. That’s 1773 words for the day, bringing my total to 17,250.

Honestly, I don’t feel too bad about not writing thousands and thousands of words today. As much as I’d like to pile on during the weekends, it’s also important to not get fatigued by it.

Deep Mist Day Eight

One week down, three to go. Honestly I didn’t think I’d make it this far.

Which is a good point of discussion at this stage: the biggest thing I’m hoping to get from this experience is a simple sense of what novel writing is like. Despite my substantial experience as a writer, almost everything I’ve done up until now has been short form, nothing longer than a novella (which I suspect is a short word either for “overblown short story” or for “novel that I ran out of steam on”).

My first curiosity was about what it would be like to work on something that on the one hand couldn’t be written over the course of a day or two but on the other hand couldn’t be stretched out for months and months. Of course technically writing a novel can in fact be stretched across months or even years. The first book I ever read on the subject was called The Weekend Novelist, an instruction manual on how to perform the task using only time off on the weekends.

However, I like the Novel Writing Month idea of pushing to get it done in 30 days. A longer schedule builds in too much space for “oh, I’ve got plenty of time, so I’ll watch old episodes of Lost now and work on the novel later.”

The big thing I’m learning at this point (other than the mere possibility of doing it at all, which as I said was something of a shock) is that I have a poor idea of how long stories are. In my current situation, I figured that the novel should finish up at around 50,000 words (because hey, that’s where the web site set the finish line). I also calculated that the first big section of Deep Mist (the part set aboard a U-boat) would likely be no more than 30 percent of the total length.

However, the first section (the only one I’ve done any writing on so far) is currently sitting at 15,477 words. Though I can’t pinpoint exactly where I am (as I said, story length is turning out to be a trip), I’m fairly sure of two things: I’m past the halfway point in this part of the tale, but it’s also far from over. Even ballparking it at a final of 20,000 still makes it a whopping 40 percent of the 50k total.

So does that mean the other big section (the one set in Laos) will turn out to be shorter? Or will it run the 35,000 or so I projected? Or will it turn out to be much longer than originally planned, just as the first part did? And if it’s much, much longer, how much beyond November 30 will I have to work in order to finish it up?

As the saying goes, only time will tell.

By the way, 2325 words for today (might have gone longer if I hadn’t stopped for an unusually long nap in the middle of the afternoon). That’s an average of 1935 words per day, currently 2145 words above the required pace. The web site projects that at this pace I’ll hit the goal on November 26, which is the day before Thanksgiving.

Deep Mist Day Seven

Got a late start today. I thought I’d get most of the day to write, but alas it was not to be. Other than a few words (no more than half a paragraph) early in the afternoon, I wrote nothing until after 9 p.m.

Once I sat down and got serious, however, I did manage to make some progress. I got past a key development in the plot and the death of one of the characters (about which I should say no more in case any reader of this blog might want to read the story itself in an unspoiled state).

Word count for the day was 1118, not my best day but not my worst either. That’s below daily average quota but still a measure above the required overall pace. I’m hoping tomorrow and Sunday will be more fruitful. At this point I’ve got a fairly firm fix on what’s going to happen for the rest of this part of the novel, so now it’s details and typing.

Deep Mist Day Six

That’s better. That’s much better.

I got a quiet moment at work and thought I’d see if I could write in the office. Oddly it went okay. It’s nowhere near as pleasant a place to work as my spot at home (I’ll have to work on that between now and when I start doing creative work at the college next fall). But it at least got the ball rolling. When I got home I managed to follow up with a good writing session in the afternoon and another brief sprint when we got back from our post-baseball-season celebration at Room 39.

The final total for today was 2496 words. That’s my second highest total since the start of the project, and it puts me back to considerably more than a day ahead of schedule. It also puts me over the 10,000 word mark, which earned me a badge on the web site.

Next stop is 25,000, the halfway mark.

Deep Mist Day Five

Still not good, but at least a little better than yesterday. I managed to squeak in just over 1000 words. Clearly that’s not up to the pace I need, but I still have some extra words from opening weekend to keep my average from dropping dangerously low.

I’m also hoping to do better tomorrow. Today I still had the blues pretty bad from the election results. Following so close on the heels of the World Series loss, it left me with a profound sense of pointlessness. Not exactly conducive to fiction writing, all too easy to slip into the whole “everything’s failing and I’ll never finish this novel and even if I do nobody will ever read it” mode. Rationally, however, I know these things don’t last. If I can bust out of this depression, I should be able to get back on track.

Tech-wise, the Novel Writing Month site appears to have overcome its throughput issues. Just in time for Blogger to fail (to be completely accurate, I’m writing this entry the morning after the time stamp says it was created).

Deep Mist Day Four

My first setback. Well, I knew this would happen. Perhaps it’s for the best that I got it out of the way early and that it wasn’t a total, crushing defeat.

Today I felt ill in the morning. Between resting and stressing over the election (which as of this writing is going badly) I wasn’t in the mindset to write. Even so, I managed to pound out a quick 763 words. That’s my first dip below the 1,666 per day pace, but thanks to my above-pace writing for the first three days I’m still more than a day ahead of schedule. I hope tomorrow I’ll be able to get back on track.

I also want to add at this point that the National Novel Writing Month web site is plagued with some really annoying technical problems. They don’t have it set up to handle the web traffic for 100,000 people all trying to enter their results at once. If ever there was a case for scalable servers and bandwidth, this is it. They need next to nothing for 11 months out of the year, and I’m guessing that once people get discouraged and fall away that they won’t need quite so much even a week from now.

But who am I to tell them how to run their show?

Deep Mist Day Three

My first weekday writing was a moderate success. Early in the afternoon things weren’t looking good. I came home tired and fell asleep in my chair before I could type a single word. By the time I woke up and shook away the cobwebs, it was time for the usual dinnertime tasks.

Fortunately after dinner I caught a second wind and managed to type up a couple of scenes. I managed to top my daily goal by more than 100 words (1782 to be exact), so I’m still well above pace for the month.

If I can keep this up, this may actually work. Fingers crossed.

Deep Mist Day Two

Lesson for today: don’t let movies run while you’re trying to write. Around midday I started X-Men: First Class, which I hadn’t seen in awhile. While I juggled the picture and lunch, I wrote no more than two or three paragraphs. But once it ended and I switched back to my non-attention-grabbing music from Pandora, I hit a strong writing streak.

Today’s word count total was 3520, bringing me to a total of 5969. That’s nearly 1000 words more than I needed to have written by the end of the day tomorrow in order to stay on pace. And that’s a good thing, because tomorrow will be the first test of how much writing I can get done on a weekday, particularly a weekday devoted to a lot of paper grading.

The best part was that I actually hit the point in the narrative when things start to happen. Up through the first 5000 words or so it’s mostly been set-up. But now I’ve gotten the protagonist through his first nightmare. The plot pace should start to pick up from here.

Deep Mist Day One

Wherein I undertake to participate in National Novel Writing Month, known also by the hideous contraction NaNoWriMo, a word that will never again be typed by me, at least not if reasonable alternatives remain open.

I’d heard about this in the past and had some vague inclination to check it out. But then earlier this semester one of my photography students mentioned it. After exploring the web site for awhile I got hooked on the idea and decided to give it a try.

The novel I’ve begun is called Deep Mist. It was originally a tale of Lovecraftian horror set during the Vietnam War, something I dreamed up for a screenwriting class when I was an undergrad. The incarnation I’m working on now combines that old plot structure with another war/Lovecraft mix set aboard a U-boat during Operation Monsoon, a plan that sent a handful of subs to the Indian Ocean to harass British shipping.

November is novel writing month, which is a good time for it. The semester isn’t exactly winding down at this point, but by now everyone is either used to the routine or gone from the class. That gives me a little leeway to focus on something else for awhile. Plus I’ve got the entire week of Thanksgiving to play catch-up if I end up falling behind my planned pace.

This particular November is especially auspicious. Royals fans are coming off the craziness of our first postseason appearance in 29 years, and the narrow loss in the World Series has us all feeling a little at sea. Thus having a big, new project to focus on will help keep me, well, focused.

I’m also looking forward to the start of my sabbatical at the conclusion of this semester. As I will be studying the question of transmedia storytelling, this large storytelling endeavor should be a nice way to get that initiative going.

I’ve set myself a pace of approximately 1,667 words per day, which should take me to the 50,000 word plateau by November 30. On that count I’m off to a good start, pounding out 2449 words. Currently I’m starting at the beginning, though I may end up hopping around a bit or at least moving between the 1943 part and the 1967 if writer’s block sets in.

According to the site, novels with cover art are 60% more likely to make it to the 50k mark in time. With that in mind, I generated a quick cover (above).