Gearing Up...

In the morning yesterday, I thought of this nice idea for this year's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I usually come up with story ideas based on "things hitting the fan" because that can bring on the climax of the plot.

I thought up a ship name: RedShift, and thought of the idea that it would be a civilian commerce ship. The story will be about how the crew is trying to maintain the ship and afford to stay in business as wars at the fringe of human colonized space begin to affect the economy. The crew of the RedShift will transport cargo and civilians and then discover that a batch of cargo isn't what is declared on the cargo manifest. But to really make the idea catch, I've decided that this revelation should not occur until the ship is being inspected by the Colonial Administration Armed Forces who are stopping random ships for inspection.

This is not a good place to get caught with illegal cargo, even though the commander could show the official manifest and get the crew out of trouble, the load might get confiscated and create a breach of the contract for shipping the cargo. There's still details to be worked out and things to revise and change, but that will happen in the crucible of NaNoWriMo next month, and not right now.

Hey, it might just take off...

Last year, I tried to set up a database in MS Access to create random strings of letters. As a science fiction writer who dabbles occasionally with fantasy stories, I like the idea of having a quick way to get a language up and running. Last year when I tried this, I got a few nice words like "aucokian" and "zokoturu" to come out of the database. But it was randomly creating other things like "naoifdliuleiugbn" and "ahoksbduigfdliuh" and that just wasn't acceptable.

It took me a while to get up the nerve to gut the old database and redesign it. Mind you, I was doing this at about 3 in the morning a couple of days ago. I figured out how to implement rules, add weight to letters, and find the readable parts in almost any string of gobbledygook (how is that spelled anyway?).

Surprisingly, it showed a bit of promise with fairly little frustration. Meanwhile, the databases I use at work are getting very cranky. I must not be giving them the attention they feel they deserve.

I may have to post more on this later. If it works out, I could be well on my way to having a much more "official" looking language. My favorite part about the latest installment of database-building hobby is that I can see this one catching on. Once I set up the automation, I may have to share it.

Tag, You're It!

I've hit the moment I knew was coming. There is a place in my novel draft where I stop narrating from the point of view of the Commander of the ship. His point of view is still included, but I also start narrating from the view points of several other characters.

My draft has two possibilities:

1.) Short and sweet: cut out the extra characters and include their dialogue "over the radio" with no extra descriptions.
2.) Lengthy and detailed: turn the rest of the draft into a narrative with multiple points of view.

In the meantime, I know that I need to continue writing my synopsis so I can try to submit the draft. Every time the point of view changes, I'm using bold text to remind myself of the shift. But if my draft does make it to an editor's desk, the change in perspective might get the book rejected.

I deliberately "forgot" this problem so I could finish the draft. Now, I have a feeling I will be required to think of a solution.

And I still think writing science fiction is fun.

Is there anybody out there with another idea?

The Final Stretch

Here it comes. I'm currently running about 40,113 words. I'm actually slightly ahead of quota today, but I'll fall under quota today if I don't write. I'm going to get settled into the writing in just a few moments.

During the holiday, I spent time with my brother and we played Lord of the Rings: the Third Age on the PlayStation 2. I got to enjoy spending time with family, plenty of turkey loaded with good taste and tryptophan. I got loaded with comfort food, Amish friendship bread, sugary cookies, home cooking, and good times.

My brother and I also broke through a tough boss battle with the Orcs in the Lord of the Rings game. We were at the level in Osgiliath, fighting to defend the bridge. It took us five tries before we had our tactics down right and got to beat the boss: Gothmog the Orc General. His minions attacked us and nearly wiped us out.

So, now it's time to hit that novel and put some mileage on it.

Rounding The Turn

I've gotten a nice lead on my quota leading into Thanksgiving. Unlike my last post, I got ahead of quota for real. I've been building it in units, about twice the normal quota per day. I'll be able to spend time with relatives, instead of with my novel. It's nice to have that word count "cushion" to fall back on. I'll be a little under quota at the end of the holiday, but not enough to ruin my project.

Gathering Momentum

The story is still cranking away, complete with strange ideas injected as characters discuss the history of the far future, the last recorded years of several planets, and what the archaeologists just dug up.

Ancient data storage devices may one day be used as an archaeological source, in much the same way that shards of pottery, arrowheads, bits of preserved clothing, and mummies do in the present. Imagine a future society digging through the ruins of America, what would they did up?

Maybe a stack of "floppy diskettes," or better "records." The archival properties of plastic or vinyl may not be the same as clay or stone, however. I wonder if any data about our culture would be able to survive centuries or millennia required to become an archaeological find. Will the Earth as we know it even survive that long?

My word count has topped 18,250. I'm actually over quota (despite that nasty loss the Buckeyes suffered against the Fighting Illini), so I could decide not to write for a day and still meet my deadline. I'm quite proud of that. Usually my creative juices start to run down as winter approaches, so I'm quite happy that I'm still producing this far into November.

Confounded Flaming Pants!

As in "liar, liar, pants on fire!"

...I got my spreadsheet to calculate my quotas for me. But I found out something was wrong somewhere in the middle of my writing: I'm behind by about 4,000 words! It got stuck on the 9th and wasn't adding how many days I had been writing since the 9th.

So I've managed to put in twice the normal number of words, but I'm still fighting to keep ahead of my quota. It'll take a bit longer to figure up the problem, but I'll get back on top.

Kicking It Up!

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer's Month) has initiated, so I have been plugging away at 1600+ word quotas each day and faring pretty well. I practiced back in June and July, but this is for real.

I hope to keep ahead of quota and finish, since I succeeded back in the summer. The goal is to produce a 50,000 word work of fiction. This can be classified as a "novel" but the main point is to hit the quota mark in thirty days. It was fun to do this back in the summer, and I am beginning to have fun with the story I'm writing right now.

It's science fiction, and there's a whole community at NaNoWriMo.org devoted to science fiction. I've read some of the forums and posted a few of my thoughts there. All in all, it's been a major distraction from more important things, but I could see how the forums could be interesting and useful. The part where I call it a distraction is mainly the amount of replies a post can get even after I feel like it should've ended.

There are some forum posts that look very interesting that I won't read, just because there's more than twenty or thirty replies posted on just that one thread. To me, that's information overload.

Anyway, I'll try to post semi-regularly this month, under the NaNoWriMo label so people can see.

What's my current word count? 7200 even. Wow.