This week has, suffice to say, not been good for my word count. But I have attempted to coax at least a bare minimum of words out of my brain every day since the election, on general “because dammit I am not letting this kill my creativity” grounds.
I’ve made it into Chapter Five of the story, though I begin to suspect I may have actually planned it out to be too short. I do have a full outline, and I’m still more or less following that. But if I write everything I’ve planned, the story may come out around 50-55K rather than a full-length novel. I’m not focusing yet on what I want to do about that, because it’ll distract me from actually getting the first draft done. But this will be something I need to review once I have a full draft.
Things I have had to look up in the last few days: doublechecking some pictures of some of the colorful town houses in downtown St. John’s, just to confirm that some of them do in fact have garages; photos of the B&B Dara and I stayed at when we were there in 2012; and a quick doublecheck to make sure that it’s plausible for a male cancer patient to lose his facial hair (because Thomas Hallett, Warder of St. John’s, is undergoing chemo as of the timeframe of this story).
Today, for the first time in days, I have actually managed to make word count. And I can say with no small satisfaction that at least regardless of everything this week has tried to throw at me, today’s writing has let me accomplish fulfilling things.
Christopher has gotten to greet his uncle Thomas and cousin Caitlin in person, and given that his family are in fact Newfoundlanders, he has greeted them properly. Which, as the Newfoundlanders and/or Great Big Sea fans who follow me will know, is of course by saying “What’re you at?”
Also, my first Quebecois character in the Warder universe is now officially on camera. Gabien Desroches–Gabe to Anglophones–is a minor character so far but I’ll be working on establishing him as Caitlin’s beau. He has also uttered a bit of French as part of his dialogue, nothing complicated, just “c’est bon, ça”. The bigger challenge with writing him properly will not be using actual French–it’ll be how to phrase his word choices to be plausible for a French speaker speaking English. I have at least some small experience with this, what with having been around several French-speaking Quebecois musicians off and on over the last couple of years, and listening to and learning how they tend to phrase things.
Tomorrow I have a fiddle lesson. But I should be able to break 20,000 on the book as long as I get writing time in too. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
Day 9 word count: 537
Day 10 word count: 523
Day 11 word count: 328
Day 12 word count: 1,704
Nanowrimo total: 12,409
Full book total: 19,190
