The Fins – Day 24

At long last, VIB is done.

It was a profoundly mixed experience. Some of it – particularly the Juliana Y subplot – is some of the best writing I’ve done in awhile. Other parts were like pulling teeth, and I’m not at all convinced that they won’t be as tough to read as they were to write.

So like wine, I’m going to let this one age for awhile and see what I think of it once I have the benefit of some distance.

As things stand now, I'm a little more than 8000 words shy of the 50k for a Novel Rhino win. I may take up one of the other sections of Sunday Night School. Or I may concede that I’ve met my goal even if I haven’t finished the word quota.

The Fins – Day 23

The slog continues. Which is exactly what it feels like at this point. Other than yesterday, I haven’t managed a single decent day of writing since I finished the novel. I fear I may be learning a hard lesson about my psychology as a writer.

The Fins – Day 22

For some time now I’ve been dreading writing the Margaret Kelly subplot. Try as I might, I can’t muster much feeling about her one way or another. She’s such a caricature of a character, and I’m not sure what exactly to do about her.

However, I knew it would be a bad idea to write the last part of the story and then try to backtrack to Kelly’s bit. So I dug in, and with good sessions in the morning and after dinner I managed to write her demise from start to finish.

Anyone checking the outline may note that originally her passing was supposed to be more sexual than it turned out to be. I confess I’m not fond of writing sex scenes, especially not if they involve violence as well. Like bad things befalling animals or children, I prefer not to see that kind of thing in movies or read it in books. So why would I write it myself?

Frankly, I think it turned out scarier without the sex stuff.

When I completed her story, I noted that I was almost all the way to 40,000 words for the month. So I finished the evening with the beginning of Steven Raleigh’s descent into madness. If I can get another good writing session in tomorrow, I may be able to wrap up “VIB.”

Where to from there, only time will tell.

The Fins – Day 21

Juliana has met her end. Though I recognize that this is a story with nothing but bad people, she’s the first time I’ve written a villain with multiple dimensions and a sympathetic backstory. When one writes mostly Lovecraftiana, most of the bad guys are nonhuman entities out to obliterate the universe.

The trouble with finishing the last 900 or so words of a section like that is that it didn’t exactly leave me inspired to move on to anything else. Hence another low word count for the day.

The Fins – Day 20

The Lonesome Death of Juliana Y continues apace. Another slow writing day full of distractions. My current plan is to spend some time doing housework tomorrow to see if that inspires a fresh perspective on productivity.

FFR: The proagonist is currently cowering under her desk.

The Fins – Day 19

And off we go to “VIB.”

The transition wasn’t seamless. My morning was unusually busy for a Friday. And once I got home, I spent most of the afternoon on non-Novel-Rhino activities. Even when I sat myself down at the computer, I had trouble getting myself on task. I re-read some of the parts of the story I’d already written, which made sense when I was bringing myself back up to speed on The Lonesome Death of Julianna Y, but I also blew a bunch of time on parts I’d completely finished.

As usual, I got into a writing groove around 9 p.m., and that allowed me to at least get the story up and running. Fingers crossed, I hope to make more (and more consistent) progress now that Thanksgiving break is officially underway.

FFR: Juliana has shut the spider out of her kitchen and is now considering her options.

Novel Rhino 2021 – The Fins

 No, I’m not actually writing a novel called “The Fins.” Instead, I’m going to cheat on the National Novel Writing Month parameters a little.

“Into the Mist” fans have probably already noted that last November I started The Legrasse Estate, but after a couple of days I quit blogging about it. I actually managed to keep writing for awhile after that, but in the end all the turmoil that followed the election killed the project. I don’t want to come across as a sensitive artist who can only work under ideal conditions, but the stress and trauma Trump caused were simply too much.

So my main focus this time around will be to finish the novel I started last year. It was around 18,000 words long when I bailed. My guess is that it will finish somewhere in the 50,000 word neighborhood, but that means I’ll only have to write 32,000 words this year to wrap it up.

To get the rest of the way to the 50k quota for the month, I’m going to finish “VIB,” one of the short stories in the Sunday Night School collection. I began this project during Camp NaNoWriMo in April 2020 but finished only one of the five stories I hope to include.

As I will be finishing two works in progress rather than starting a new novel, I’ve dubbed this project “The Fins.”

Sunday Night School – Day 11

I have decided to take the day off.

If there aren't any more entries after this one, then it turned out to be more than a day.

Sunday Night School – Day Ten

Looks like what "tomorrow" brought was more of the same. Another writing spurt after midnight and then not much else.

Sunday Night School – Day Nine

I started strong after midnight but couldn't get much going during the day. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Sunday Night School – Day Eight

Act two of the current story is considerably shorter than the one before (and most likely also shorter than the one to come). Thus I was able to write it from beginning to end in a single day.

Though this wasn't the epic writing day I had yesterday, I did manage to do enough work to get back on my 2k per day pace. I hope I can keep it up.

Sunday Night School – Day Seven

Today I decided that if I was going to do this at all that I needed to make a complete commitment to it. No more "maybe I'll write and maybe I'll do something else." Time to do or do not. There is no try.

If that's my mindset, then for today at least it worked. I cleared 4000 words with less than five minutes to spare before the stroke of midnight. Act one of "VIB" is complete, and the rest of the story is at least framed in my mind. The rest is just scribbling, right?

Sunday Night School – Day Six

And on the heels of every success walks a day like this. Today I had no particular excuse for a poor performance, but I turned one in anyway.

At least it wasn't a complete zero.

Sunday Night School – Day Five

With Independence Day behind me, I've managed to bounce back a bit.

The real key to getting moving again was switching stories. That's a real blessing of the collection format: unlike novel work, if I get stuck on one story I have four others I can switch to. So I set aside the detail-heavy piece that had me shut down and switched to something more up my traditional alley.

I topped 3700 words for the day, so the new track is working so far.

Sunday Night School – Day Four

Nothing.

The holiday has me out of sorts, and I'm having some issues unrelated to the writing process.

Though I suppose it's still early, I'm starting to feel like this isn't my year for Camp NaNoWriMo.

Sunday Night School – Day Three

Today the fates conspired against me. I've got a stalled story. I had a friend in from out of town. Though I hoped to write at least a word or two, I managed to write literally nothing.

Total goose eggs really put a dent in my pace, too. Now I'm way behind on my 2k per day goal and even lagging a bit behind the pace I'll need to finish before the end of the month.

Sunday Night School – Day Two

Today went well, but not as good as yesterday. In general that's no big deal. Some days are better than others.

My particular concern at the end of the writing day today is that I'm a little stuck. I started at what seemed like a logical starting point: the first story in the collection. However, this particular piece is giving me a couple of different kinds of trouble.

First, the plot hinges on some technical details about DNA. At the outset of the writing process I admitted to myself that I didn't have the level of technical knowledge required to make this as realistic as possible. As long as the science fiction elements don't get too implausible, I'm prepared to forgive myself (and hope my eventual readers can do the same) if I make mistakes or suggest complete impossibilities.

However, even an over-simplified version of science and technology still involves a lot of science and technology. What I'm finding at this point in the story is that I'm having trouble striking a balance between details that are actually interesting and details that I'm merely trying to straighten out in my mind. And I'm concerned that details in the latter camp are bogging down the storytelling.

And second, I'm worried about story length. Figuring that I would write five stories and that I would need to hit 50,000 words before the end of the month was math so simple even I could do it in my head. But the end of the writing session today found me at the end of the first act of this story and at around 3700 words. Trouble is, act one is by far the longest of the three. If nothing else, it does all the set up. Thus I'm concerned that there isn't enough to this tale to get it to pull 10k worth of weight.

Sunday Night School – Day One

And we're off!

Following my typical November practice, I started promptly at midnight and wrote for awhile to give myself a running start.

Camp was a little different than usual, because the stories each needed their own set-up. So that was five epigraphs starting at the stroke of midnight. And for the first time I also intend to include an afterword. That occupied my time until I went to bed.

I didn't have the most productive writing experience ever during the day, but I was saved by a last-minute push in the last hour and a half of the day. How many times have I done that in the November challenges?

Sunday Night School – Cover design

I wanted something that said "church" without being churchy, if that makes any sense. So a photo I took of some stained glass at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art a few years ago came to mind.

Might change the font to something less cliché and more readable. This one looks a teeny bit like it says "Sunday Home School."

Sunday Night School – Preliminary thoughts

This year I've decided to give Camp NaNoWriMo a try.

For those unfamiliar with the camp concept, it works a lot like the novel version that happens every November. However, the camp challenge is more flexible. Writers can set whatever word count they wish or even use some other standard (such as writing time) to measure their success. And more to the point in my case, they can work on something other than a novel.

Several years ago I read the Bible all the way from "in the beginning" to "amen." It was an interesting experience for several reasons. For starters, it left me wondering if many people who profess Christianity as their faith have ever bothered reading their own scripture. That's a discussion for another time (and probably a different venue).

One thing I noticed was that the book was full of odd bits here and there, the fragmentary beginnings of thoughts that blossomed into story ideas. None of the stories born from the experience were actually about their source materials (at least not directly). Of the five that stuck with me from my reading notes and actually wound themselves up into stories, one is a consideration of one of the possible side consequences of a well-known Bible story. Two of them put a new spin on somewhat familiar verses, and the final two are likely to have been noticed only by the most astute of Bible students.

I know that's teasingly vague, but at the moment that's where it must stand. I'm half likely to write an afterword explaining my thoughts, and if I don't I promise I'll create a much more complete blog entry on the subject at the end of the process.

The goal will still be 50,000 words, though of course this time it's divided across five plots rather than just one. I'm curious to see if that makes a difference. I'm also curious to see how writing in July – when I'm a gentleman of leisure – differs from the frenzy of November.