Lily's Pond of Fictional Reflections

Yes, that's right. Kick me. Go on, you're allowed. :)

For those of you who aren't signed up to NaNoWriMo mailing list, and who haven't just received an amazingly well-timed email from Chris Baty (the founder of NaNoWriMo), I'll explain what I mean.

I have just passed 20,000 words.

Yes, yes, that is correct.

Twenty thousand words.

Two. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Words.

I passed it. I checked my mail. And then I discovered that apparently this means there is most likely an invisible "kick me" sign on my back, which my less-fortunate novelling companions have placed there.

I'd feel bad about gloating if the last six or so thousand of those words hadn't felt like I was very very slowly pushing my brain through a cheese-grater. Even so, I feel like I've reached base camp, half-way up Everest - the easy bit with the aeroplanes and the cafes and the gentle slopes is done, all that's left is the hard slog through the blizzards and the altitude sickness and the frostbite.

I'd heard for ages that week two's meant to be the hardest. I believe it, because right at this moment, I have only 573 words left in my quota for today, and the thought of writing even one of them literally has me at the verge of tears.

But I've cracked twenty thousand. And I'm proud of myself. So I think I've earned this chance to procrastinate gloat, even if you deserve the opportunity to kick me for it.

Twenty thousand words. Twenty thousand. And if I've done twenty thousand, I can do five hundred and seventy three more, can't I?

Yes, I can. Because I haven't failed to hit my writing quota one single day as yet. Not one day. There's a shiny gold star on every single day so far on my calender to prove it.

And when I've made it through tonight, and tomorrow, and Saturday - that's two and a bit more days of my eyes dry and burning like this and my wrists on fire and my brain slowly dissolving into a gooey morass - and if I manage the extra four hundred and seven words in that time that will break me over half-way, then... I'm having Sunday off.

That's right - I, Lily, the writing machine, will take a day of rest.

So here is advance notice - I'll be out of contact on Sunday. I'm not turning on my computer. I'm not answering the phone. I'm not even intending to get out of bed on Sunday.

Because there's no if, with this, not really. I'm going to make it.

So kick away, my friends! Kick away!

Edit: In case I hadn't mentioned it, I totally rule. 21003 words, final wordcount for tonight. G'night, all.

Purchasing a kitchen timer may well have been the best preparation I made for NaNo this year. I've been going in 20 minute sprints, which has been suiting me really well.

I've tried sprinting before, never before with this level of sucess.

The difference, I'm sure, is my kitchen timer.

It's a shiny metal half-sphere, and it looked okay inside the packet in K-mart, but I couldn't try it out, so I bought it and brought it home - but the first time I actually started it up, I just stared at it in dismay.

It ticked. Loudly. Three times a second, in fact, which kind of increases the urgent feeling even further.

Actually, it feels like sitting next to a small time bomb as I write, and at first I thought it'd be totally distracting - I don't deal with noise while I'm writing well at all.

But this is... fantastic. There's no way I'll forget I'm on the clock while it's on, with its frantic ticking. And I'm getting stuff written! Yay!

7795 words officially for the 3rd, though I didn't get the NaNo site updated quite in time. I'm now on 7825. Yes, I'm pedantic to want to give you both these figures.

Tomorrow... I'm going to crack 10,000! Easy.

It's the most unmitigated, unforgivable crap I've ever written. It's stilted, it's completely unpaced, and it's flying towards the earth at 9.8 meters per second per second, without even bothering to insert actual story along the way, let alone any descriptions of anything. I thought it was just because nothing had happened yet. But now something's happened, and... it's even worse, because something's happening, and it's even worse.

And I've just worked out why.

It wants to be in first person.

I don't want it to be in first person. I hate reading first person, and I've already done a major first-person work, solely because it made it easier to distinguish two POVs. And I hate reading first person. It feels like lazy third person limited to me.

But okay, Mr. Novel, sir. You want to be in first person - you can be in first person.

Damn you.

1095 words and counting.

Edit: and straight up to 1607 in 20 minutes, of course. Seeing it took me over two hours for 1000 words, making 1st person triple the speed for actual possibly not completely totally rubbish stuff... I think I know which I'll be chosing. :D But now my inner editor's totally desperate to fix the first 1000 words. *twitches*

Edit 2: Final word count for today: 2,503. Most respectable. And by 11:30pm, too!

I’d like to talk for a while about the plausibility of the sci-fi aspect of my NaNovel.

( Feel free to tune out )

Anyone have any ideas, or shall I just make myself some Magical!Futuristic!Ultra!High!Tech!Attenuationless!Glass? Or just gloss over it?

I must admit, glossing’s looking attractive, at the moment. :)

Next up, Part Two: Interpretational Implications (or: A most ingenious paradox!)

Edit: Stop press! Apparently, in certain gasses and at certain temperatures, the speed of light can be slowed down by a significant amount - enough to make it possible to make a photon cross a room at a slow enough pace to make this work. If this is the case - and it doesn't result in a high attenuation along the way - this looks like the go. Yay! Thanks, Geoff!

So, I've signed up for NaNoWriMo.

Instead of just sitting on my rear end, thinking "one day I'm going to write an original novel" - I'm going to do it. Next month. And no, that's not like, "I'm going to stop procrastinating. Tomorrow." This is seriously next month. Starting on the first of November, and going through until the 30th of November. And at the end of that month, I will have over 50,000 words on a page.

It'll be my first original novel. And it'll probably be complete and utter carp. But that won't matter, because it'll be written. And fifty thousand words of carp is fifty thousand times better than nothing at all. I'm hoping it might be of a standard that I can edit to something reasonable, possibly even publishable - but that would just be icing on the cake, really. All I'm aiming for is words on the page.

For the moment, though, I'm just preparing. I'm nesting - putting up corkboards and calendars, obtaining index cards and gold stars and a big jar of M&Ms with which to reward myself when I reach targets. I'm cooking a huge oversupply of dinner every night and dividing the rest into takeaway containers to put in the freezer so that I won't have to put up with Hubby's continual whining that he's hungry. I'm doing all the jobs that I've been putting off for months but will suddenly become high priority once there's something I want to procrastinate even more - heck, I'm even half way through filling, sanding, and repainting the dint in our wall from where the removalists dropped our piano.

Yes, I'm frighteningly obsessive. Thank you for noticing.

I'm also trying to get all my research done now, before the month starts, so that I'll have at least a superficial understanding of the complexities of quantum mechanics as they apply to antimatter, antitime, quantum entanglement, the two slit experiment, and how you might use it to send messages from the future. And can someone please explain to me why I've taken it into my head to write Sci-Fi? Please? I just know I'm going to get sucked into hours and hours of unnecessary procrastinative research. (By the way, if anyone has the understanding necessary to explain some of this stuff to me, please let me know, because it's really hard. Geoff, I'm looking at you. Yes, even though I haven't even told you my pen name yet. Don't try to be rational with me.)

Now, with that attended to, I'll return to my bubbling boiling cauldron holding a week's supply of Beef Stroganoff. It's going to be a fun month...