I had a plot for my novel. I was happy with it. It was my usual thing. Then this dream happened last night. It was like it was a whole novel, laid out for me to write. It had supernatural stuff in it. It had sex in it. It had violence in it. It had downright weird stuff in it. It is so not like the stuff I write about. *sigh* Now I have to figure everything out all over again.

So, the house idea is laying over there in turnaround, and I have a new idea I like a lot better. I realized that one of the reasons that my novels tend to get bogged down about a third of the way through is that I haven't really gotten to know my characters enough to know what they would do in different situations. So, in order to remedy that, I am going to be answering the writers_five questions for my new characters, as well as the traditional stuff.


Here are the first set of answers, my responses for Julia, protagonist in my new (nano) novel.

( Julia's responses to writer's 5 for 9-5-07 )

From writers_five:

Answering as Aisling, my main Raven’s Globe character:

1. What would you do if you found a orphaned child?
I would probably take it in while working out a way to find it a permanent home, but if the child was older than about 5, I would probably keep it if I could. Especially when I am in the alternate world.

2. There's a BIG thunder storm coming. What do you do?
I love the raw power of nature generated in the storms, so I would try to find a nice window seat to watch the fireworks of nature. I do not care so much for rain when I’m in a tent.

3. How girlie or manly are you?
To be honest, I’m kind of a prissy girl - I like everything to look and be just so. I’m not much into pink, though.

4. If you could be a superhero, which one would you be? What powers would you want?
Well, he’s not quite a superhero in the traditional sense, but I would be Merlin, the most powerful sorcerer to ever exist. I would want both his power and his wisdom (except when it comes to women)

5 - What is your character's biggest flaw?
Hmmm, I am not sure I have any big flaws - but my sister Annie would probably say I’m a bit of snob when it comes to education.

(Also published at the writers_five community.)

Answering for Aisling, my character in The Raven's Globe. (that's her in my icon)

1 – Who is your character's confidante? Her sister, Annie. Even though they bicker back and forth a lot, they are best friends as well as sisters.

2 – What color would you paint your nemesis’ bedroom? Adrianna's bedroom is painted in jewel tones; dark blues, reds and purples, with rich golds to highlight and accent. She has dark brocades with a gold thread creating patterns in them hanging on the walls, and gold roping to hold back the curtains on the windows and around her bed.

3 – Who is your character’s favorite artist? Aisling loves Pre-Raphaelite art, especially John William Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott series from Lord AlfredTennyson's poems. Cliche, perhaps, but later she will discover just how romanticized and unreal the Pre-Raphaelite portrayals really are.

4 – Is she a disappointment to anyone, or is someone proud of her for her accomplishments? Why? Her sister is very proud of her accomplishments on the lute, both in playing and in research. Annie, while a musical and talented singer, cannot get the coordination in her fingers to work for her enough to play an instrument. Aisling has even composed songs for the lute, one of which she plays at the competition at the beginning of the story.

5 – What sort of place spooks her? Why? Dark places, especially slimy dark places, give her the creeps. They are filled with mold, bugs, and rancid water, and they smell bad.

Forgot to do this last week. I have been very ill, but am doing better now. Anyway, here's last week's questions. I'll be doing this week's questions over the weekend most likely.

Questions from writers_five: Time to get your Evil on - Questions for your WIP's villain -

1 - What is your villain's main pet peeve? That things keep not going according to her carefully arranged plans. Like when she has her henchman tutor one of my main (good guy) characters so he will receive the Raven's Globe, but then the Globe is given to Aisling.

2 - What is the most depraved thing your villain has ever done? (even if it's not all that depraved) Convince Aisling that she is not evil and that it was the sorcerer who was evil.

3 - What is a redeeming quality your villain has? (if any) Her charm, her agelessness, and she doesn't kill people.

4 - Does your villain think she's evil? Manipulative, a bit, but evil, not really.

5 - What is your villain's justification? She believes that she should have the Raven's Globe because she won it fair and square in a magickal battle with the sorcerer.

This week's questions from writers_five.

I will use my Raven's Globe protagonist (Aisling), since my current story's protagonist (a cat) would not make any sense at all. *grin*

1. Does your protagonist have a hobby? Yes, although she does take it quite seriously, and it is what gets her into the whole mess. She plays the lute and is active in the SCA.

2. Does your protagonist have a best friend or a confidant of sorts, someone he/she can turn to for advice or just to talk through a touch time? Sorta. She and her sister are only a couple years apart, and although they bicker, they really stick together when the chips are down.

3. Does your character have a quirk not dictated by the plot? Hmmm, you know, I've never really thought about it. I suppose she does, but then again, she's never told me.

4. Does your protagonist like their job? Well, considering that we join her as she is packing for a music competition at a Renaissance faire, and disappears into a sort of parallel world from there, not much mention is made about her job. I think she is a teacher.

5. Where does your protagonist go when they're down and out? (i.e. a favorite dive bar, a friend's house, a cave in the mountains) She goes into her music. Preferably with a decent glass of wine. I know it sounds strange, but she does.

Five questions from writers_five. I am answering for Aisling, my protagonist from The Raven's Globe, since the characters in my current novel are all cats.

1. What is your character's favorite color? What does own anything that color? Blue. Aisling has a beautiful dark blue three-quarters length hooded wool cloak with silver frog closures and a blue satin lining that she is wearing when she time-shifts.
   
   
2. Your character wants to read a book or rent a movie - what would he/she choose? Aisling would read a book. Something in the fantasy line.
   
   
3. Does your character have any siblings? Do they get along? Yes. Aisling has a younger sister, Annie (also in the book). The get along about as well as any two siblings - they are close to each other, but squabble a bit because Annie has an acid tongue.
   
   
4. Has your character ever had a hangover? How did it happen? Yes. Most recently the morning after an SCA 12th night celebration. She got drunk on mead (honey wine) and oooooh, the headache the next morning. Annie, her sister, just laughed, of course.
   
   
5. What is your character's main mode of transportation? She owns a dark blue Mustang convertible, but in the story she borrowed her boyfriend's red BMW sport-ute. Once she time-shifts though, her main mode is going to be by foot for a bit. (until she has enough money to buy a horse!)
   

Today, at about 7:15 pm pst, I crossed over 50K words in my NaNoWriMo novel. GO ME!!!! Here is my word meter:

50,222 / 50,000 (100.4%)

and here is my icon from NaNoWriMo (the big one, of course!)



doing the happy dance all over the place.

Went over 15,000 words today. Go me. Final word count: 15551. I wanted to stay up and write a bit longer, but I keep falling asleep mid sentence, so it is probably time I quit. for the night. More tomorrow!

I just made 10000 words tonight/this morning. 10005 to be exact. I am very proud of myself.

Here's my little word meter:

10,005 / 50,000 (20.0%)

Go me! Only 5000 more words and I will have written the same percentage as Ian has. I'm going to really, really try.

But right now, it is 3:20am, and I am falling asleep as I type this. Good night!

Hooray!

No need to worry about the NaNo meters anymore - the zokutou meters are back!!! *happy dance*

6,289 / 50,000 (12.6%)

I'm not as far as I'd hoped, but I'm making daily progress which is good.

I think I'm actually going to finish this year. Why? Because my writing buddy is the most strict taskmaster I have ever met. He cuts me no slack at all! Devotedly churning out his own words, he nags me about mine until I stay focused and get it done.

Who is this taskmaster, you ask? None other than my own progeny, flameian. You go, son. I'm proud of you! And thanks for keeping me on track.

Well, I'm up to 4023 words today. go me! I'm putting up my first fragment for people too. It's in my next post, which will be friends locked. If you want to be added to the viewing list, just comment on this entry. :)

Well, I got off to a not too bad start today. I'm writing "Cat Tails" for my novel, and so far it's coming along OK. I am really going to try to do my 1667 words a day, and if I get a few extra here & there, that's OK too.

This year they have neat-o participant icons that have your word count on them, so I placed one over on the left of my journal. It looks like this for those of you reading this on your friends page:



This may take a bit to load, especially the first few days of the month. But it's neat because all I have to do is update my word count on my profile page, and it does the rest. YEA!

My son, flameian, is writing this year for the first time. He's in the Young Writers Program. We agreed that he would write 500 words a day, which is a pretty steep target for him, but do-able. Today he wrote 508 words. I hope he keeps it up throughout the month. We are blocking off two hours a day for both of us to write - kind of our own mini write-in.

Anyway, it's late and I'm tired. Have a busy day tomorrow as usual, and our Thursday night write-in is from 7-10. Must get the laptops ready.

Good night!

So, I've been thinking about taking a totally different tact for this NaNo. A series of interconnected short stories, told by my cat, Miw. I have one version outlined right now that is somewhat autobiographical, going from when she arrives until now, when she is either 1. reminiscing with Claudia (who dies at the end), or 2. Is telling the "clan history" to the new kitten(s) that have arrived. Things like escaping outside, when Aslan 'the brat" came home; Miw's battle with the humans for the space on the router ("that nice warm brick, way up high where that stupid orange thing can't get to me. Perfect place for a nap. And the humans just keep making it more and more secure with the tall walls they keep putting up around it. Aslan will NEVER find me here, and if he does, he won't be able to get to me anyway.")

Then today in the car, we started off on this totally different idea, born of me not being able to find my car keys for a couple days, and then finding them tucked into the side of the cat basket. We decided that the cats, while we were asleep, took the car over to "Joe's Kibble and Katnip" (or some such): Miw handling the steering wheel, Aslan pressing the pedals, and Claudia in the passenger seat telling them what to do. It goes downhill from there... Claudia and Miw sitting at a corner table, watching Aslan get wasted on catnip as he lets the pretty kittens feed him anything "so long as it tastes like chicken," and making snide comments as they sip their Catmint Juleps?

Claudia (to a friend that has joined them at the table and notices Aslan making a fool of himself): "yeah, he's a cousin - a very, very *distant* cousin."
Miw: "Dearie - we're all cousins somewhere up the line - we're the same breed after all."
Claudia: "Yeah, but at least *you* don't have to admit you came from the same cattery." (etc)

And then Claudia has to work the pedals on the way home because Aslan is throwing up out the window. Claudia: "If you're just going to throw it all up, why bother even eating it? (blah, blah, blah, nag nag, nag)... ending with Claudia, exhausted, dropping the keys where Aslan thinks he got them from, but well, it wasn't quite the right spot.

This second version would be told more tongue-in-cheek, and contain silliness (like taking the car) as well as things like "driving the dog next door wild" and "whose turn is it to sleep with the wiggle-butt?"

By keeping it a series of interconnected vignettes, I should be able to move around enough to actually get my 50K words done.

What to do? Comments? Suggestions? Throw the whole thing away and go back to magical globes and parallel tiimes?

Well, last night gallifreyan convinced me to be a co-ML for the Peninsula Nanos. He didn't really have to do much convincing, really, he'd been dropping hints since last May, if not before (don't think I didn't notice!) But, he promised to co-ML with me, unless another victim err, volunteer pops up. At least we have a name, if not a group yet - PenNaNos.(Peninsula NaNos). Hehe. One of the Nano writers from a couple years ago "penned" that name for us, and I think it's a good one.

I'm going to get Ian involved this year, too - he may not write 50K words, but I want to see the "in the classroom" stuff, and maybe even get a HMB homeschoolers group going. Heh. This also gives me a good reason why I can't do anything with anyone over Thanksgiving. (yea!)

I need to find a place where everyone can meet that is more central than my house, although I think my place would be great - especially with the new door and windows, and getting the carpet cleaned. Ken says the wireless network is limited to 255 addresses, but I think that should be enough for the first couple years :-) Maybe do Saturday write-ins here - people can choose their spot - upstairs in the great room in the soft comfy couch, outside on the balcony where you can gaze at the mountains and the waves, downstairs on the patio where the feeling of wild bamboo encloses you, or cozy in the TV room in the thick leather recliner. FIll the buffet with goodies to nibble, throw the cats into Ian's room so they don't escape, and voila - a mini retreat for all! :)

I am going to start looking for someplace in San Mateo or Redwood City to have a mid-week after work get together. The San Mateo County libraries are all wireless, and I know the RC main has rooms that can be reserved. The SM Main will probably just be opening in November. Perhaps we can get something for there. The trouble with libraries is that they tend to close early.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on ML-ing, at least at the moment. Next post I'll talk about my book idea for this year. I just came up with it last night, so we'll see how it goes.

So, rather than continue with the depressing story (food and shelter), I have decided to go back and work on my other two stories, Trusong and The Raven's Globe. Watch this space.

So anyway, after having posted here that I was abandoning my novel, my characters got together and told me that I couldn't do that to them. So, I am back on the original novel.

Well, only sort of. After much consideration, I realized that now is NOT the thyme for this novel. So, I am going to do the "drawing the line" bit for all 4000 words I've written, and go back to what I wanted to do in the first place, which is to finish my last year's novel - The Raven's Globe. It may not officially count as a win, but I want to get it done, so there.

Oh, and one of my writing friends just finished her 50,000 words yesterday. Talk about depressing. This person is writing like 200K words a month, and has all year! I suppose I should be inspired, but I'm still feeling pretty dark, so I'm just envious today.

More later. Will post "the story so far" probably tomorrow.

Well, it seems that once I got that dialog written and out of the way, I can focus a bit more on the book itself. Hooray! I'm up to almost 4000 words too - more if I keep the "book in a book" idea going.

3,957 / 50,000 (7.9%)

Will post stuff tomorrow, maybe.