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Round One of NaNoWriMo Freak-Outs
Nov. 8th, 2010 01:41 amSo, uh, guess who forgot and got completely behind in NaNoWriMo?
If you guessed me, ding ding ding! You win a prize!*
I'm supposed to have 13,000 words by the end of today, so I've been frantically trying to catch up since yesterday. I've written7,200 7,600 9,097 words in two days (and hell, yes, I'm putting the exact amount because after the first 5,000 every single one starts counting like a stuffed vampire on Sesame Street), so if I keep up at this pace, I should be caught up before too long.
Anyway, one excerpt:
When Katy was nineteen, she bought a car and moved to California and moved in with a woman who wore ripped T-shirts and tight jeans and smoked weird brands of cigarettes that floated around her like a perverted cloud of perfume. She wrinkled her nose when she heard Katy’s name, took a long drag of her cigarette, eyed Katy up and down, then declared with a long exhalation of smoke, “No, you’re not a Katy. You’re Finn. Finn Again.”
And so Finn Again was born on the cracked gray sidewalk of California and Katy disappeared somewhere in the dust trails on the highway heading into town.
And the best line I've written so far:
Terry was like a flower in the midst of this jungle; every time the sun-lit cherry of her cigarette lit, she bloomed purple smoke around her.
Terry actually wasn't meant to be such a major character, but she's turning out to be one. Well, that's what NaNoWriMo is all about, right? Finding out that your plot means nothing as you desperately attempt to pad your word count with adverbs and unnecessary descriptions. I was going to do this great thing where I notably never described any of the female characters by their physical description, as a sort of meta-commentary on the way women are judged by their looks rather than their actual worth or personalities... but I'm finding it really hard to do so, because when reading something, I like to know what the person looks like. I've been edging around it so far, but I might have to give in on this one.
* Not really. Unless you want some turtle wax. In which case, why?
If you guessed me, ding ding ding! You win a prize!*
I'm supposed to have 13,000 words by the end of today, so I've been frantically trying to catch up since yesterday. I've written
Anyway, one excerpt:
When Katy was nineteen, she bought a car and moved to California and moved in with a woman who wore ripped T-shirts and tight jeans and smoked weird brands of cigarettes that floated around her like a perverted cloud of perfume. She wrinkled her nose when she heard Katy’s name, took a long drag of her cigarette, eyed Katy up and down, then declared with a long exhalation of smoke, “No, you’re not a Katy. You’re Finn. Finn Again.”
And so Finn Again was born on the cracked gray sidewalk of California and Katy disappeared somewhere in the dust trails on the highway heading into town.
And the best line I've written so far:
Terry was like a flower in the midst of this jungle; every time the sun-lit cherry of her cigarette lit, she bloomed purple smoke around her.
Terry actually wasn't meant to be such a major character, but she's turning out to be one. Well, that's what NaNoWriMo is all about, right? Finding out that your plot means nothing as you desperately attempt to pad your word count with adverbs and unnecessary descriptions. I was going to do this great thing where I notably never described any of the female characters by their physical description, as a sort of meta-commentary on the way women are judged by their looks rather than their actual worth or personalities... but I'm finding it really hard to do so, because when reading something, I like to know what the person looks like. I've been edging around it so far, but I might have to give in on this one.
* Not really. Unless you want some turtle wax. In which case, why?
