Nanowrimo

I’m in the middle of working on Day 3’s words, so while I’m thinking of how to start off this next scene in Chapter 3, here’s a quick report on how yesterday’s writing went!

Notable things I had to look up: where the boundaries of Seattle’s actual city limits are, on the southern side of the city. Where interesting parks are, just south of the Seattle city limits, and how close they are to Elliott Bay. Doublechecking that Elliott Bay is in fact salt water. Pictures of Seahurst Park in Burien. And, what actual examples of woods that match the phrase “dark polished maple” would look like, so that I could visualize and describe a minor character properly.

This burst of effort let me finish off Chapter 2 and start putting a dent in Chapter 3, and write a fight scene! Fun! 😀

Now back into Chapter 3–look for the Day 3 report tomorrow!

Day 2 word count: 1,669
Nanowrimo total: 3,367
Full book total: 10,148

My Nanowrimo 2016 effort is officially underway–and I gotta say, people, having Scrivener this year, and specifically having used it to plot out the entire outline for Warder Soul, has made it significantly easier to get the words out of my brain and into the draft. All I have to do is more or less follow the outline, with occasional pauses to look things up if I need to, and make comments there and there to note stuff I’ll want to fix when I come back through on edits.

Also, since it’s been a while since I did an official Nano, I checked in on the official site and woke up my account there. Wow, that site’s a lot more organized and detailed these days! So I filled out a lot of things in my profile, including details on past Nanowrimo efforts: the 2003 win, but also the failed attempts in 2005 and 2009 that did at least add words to Lament of the Dove (which of course eventually became Valor of the Healer) and Bone Walker.

You can see my official Nanowrimo profile here. And hey, if you’re participating in the madness, feel free to add me to your buddy list!

As to the actual words, I am now very, very close to finishing Chapter 2. Finally.

Things I looked up as part of last night’s writing effort:

• Pics of Ravenna Park in downtown Seattle, with an eye to trying to identify how many picnic shelters it has available, and how close such shelters are to nearby streets
• Model names for electric cars, because here’s a fun trivia fact: Elessir drives one

And here’s a snippet of last night’s words, which I shared to Facebook and Twitter!

There are reasons I don’t own a car, mostly amounting to how I hate driving with the blazing passion of a hundred fiery suns. Especially during rush hour. Especially during the winter. You’d think that with all the rain we get in this town, people would be better at driving on wet roads, but you’d be wrong. We’ve had a massive uptick in population in the last few years, not only computer geeks from all over the world to feed the ever-growing staff needs for our local tech companies, but refugees from Syria and other troubled parts of the world as well. And every winter, all these new drivers get to learn the joys of what our rainy season does to oil-slicked asphalt—not to mention how fast one or two accidents anywhere on our highways can slow down the whole system.

I would rather face demons than drive during a Seattle rush hour. And I’ve faced a demon.

And I realize that it’s traditional to start a Nanowrimo effort with a fresh project, but I am taking the liberty of doing Warder Soul anyway even though I had nearly 7,000 words in it already. I’m pretty sure nobody’s going to actually mind, as long as I do actually throw 50,000 brand new words at the book to count whether or not I win this year. So here are yesterday’s stats!

Starting word count for the book: 6,781
Day 1 word count: 1,698
Nanowrimo total: 1,698
Full book total: 8,479