KJToo

That’s right, kids, it’s the final countdown. I’ve got about ten hours to write 6,777 words (pay no attention to the word count at the right; I won’t be updating it until I get home tonight) if I want to win this thing.

Perfect time for an emergency situation to arise at work, right? Naturally.

Keep watching, folks. I ain’t out of this thing, yet.

Oh, and congratulations to Laura, whose word count is currently 50,495. Winnah, winnah, chicken dinnah!

Posted November 30, 2005 Comments(2)

Okay, so the home stretch is a long damn stretch for me. Something just shy of 20,000 words in five days. Well, now I’ve managed to whittle that down to less than 15,000 words, so I feel pretty good. I have to say this, though: not writing for three or four days at a time is a bad idea.

I just finished writing the epilogue, which is the bit that comes after the end. In my case, the epilogue doesn’t feature any of the main characters, so I really didn’t have to know how they fared at the end in order to write it. Which helped more than you might think, because though I’ve got a vague idea of how I want to wrap this thing up, I haven’t fleshed it out too much. I will say that writing the epilogue has helped to establish a couple of events that must happen prior to the end of the novel, so I’ve at least got some direction. I may write the rest of the thing backwards, starting at the end and working toward some point in the middle.

Posted November 26, 2005 Comments(6)

1. I broke a blood vessel in my left thumb. How? I was attempting to blow out a four-wick candle by clapping my hands together a la The Incredible Hulk. I succeeded on the second attempt, but I believe the blood vessel ruptured on the first. The pad of my left thumb is now slightly swollen and vaguely purple in color.
2. The Craftsman ½-hp belt drive garage door opener I bought on Sunday is incompatible with our garage. There is a support beam approximately 101 inches from the door that will prevent the opener from being installed. Required horizontal clearance: approximately 125 inches. Dammit. There may be some hope, though. The installer told me that Genie garage door openers (available at the nearby Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse) don’t require as much space as the Craftsman models.

Posted November 23, 2005 Comments(3)

I wrote a measley 500 words last night and failed to move the story forward at all. The problem is this: I started with a single character, built a situation and then starting filling in details. But I have no outline and no clear idea of how the story should conclude. My fear right now is writing 50,000 words and winding up with no climax.

Posted November 22, 2005 Comments(4)

I’ve written about 2,150 words today, bringing my total to just over 28k, or about 5k shy of today’s goal (33,340). At this point, I have two main objectives:

1. Don’t fall any further behind.
2. Close the gap.

To a certain extent, I’ve met both of those objectives today. However, I’d like to get another 2k written before I turn in tonight.

Laura, by the way, is doing better than I am at this point. She spent most of last week several thousand words behind me, but really made a big push since about Thursday. When last I checked, she was just under 2k shy of the daily goal. She’s in the middle of writing a difficult scene right now, so I’m trying not to bug her.

If you’d like to see a my NaNoWriMo user profile, a nifty bar graph that tracks my progress since 01 November, and an even more nifty excerpt from my as-yet untitled novel, have a look at this page.

Posted November 20, 2005 Comments(1)