10,000 words: take 2

So you may remember the insanity that was last Saturday night. I am doing something similar this weekend, perhaps more relaxed times, a different word count. I haven’t decided the rules yet but it definitely won’t be as late as last week, it’s my parents wedding anniversary tomorrow and myself and my sister are cooking, this could go horribly wrong even without being sleep deprived.

My current NaNo progrees bar says I have 18530 words out of 50,000. If I can get to 30,000, or even 26,000 by tomorrow night I’ll be happy. I’m not sure if Sean’s interested, hang on a minute while I text him…

 

/ 15000 words. 0% done!

17:00pm
So I’ve decided my playlist for tonight’s event, it consists entirely of Tim Minchin videos, here are a few of the best but the easily offended should not follow these links:

1. Prejudice
2. Peace Anthem for Palestine
3. Drowned
4. F*ck the Poor
5. Canvas Bags
6. Not Perfect
7. Storm
8. The Pope Song
9. If I didn’t have you
10. Darkside

18:47 So after sitting down to write I was almost immediately called and told to pick up Mom from work and take her to Tesco so the wordcount still stands at “0” but I’m cautiously optimistic about the next hour

19:55

560 / 15000 words. 4% done!

So I’m actually writing a scene that’s making the obnoxious literary side of me come through, it’s kind of difficult because I want to make it accessible and compelling to read but there’s also lots of pretentious crap I want to fit in too.

Basically the scene is in the 50s in Ireland, Sunday mass, and my main character (a twelve year old girl) is going up for communion. You with me so far?

She has reasons not to like this priest, nothing to do with abuse or that he’s just not a very nice person, arrogant, dismissive etc. and the night before he got really angry at her in confession.
This is where stuff gets literary.

As she’s walking up the aisle I want to compare the red carpet in the church to the purples in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. In the Agamemnon he comes home from the Trojan war and his wife lays out their red silks, representing their wealth. He walks up to his house along this red strip and as soon as he goes in his wife murders him in the bath (as you do). With the red he’s walking on a river of his own blood to his death, showing all the death he caused too… Awesome right? It’s one of those scenes that I get really excited about, it’s an amazing play and I intend to write a blog post about it later on.

So I’m struggling to make it fit and for it to be fun to read but I’m damned if I’m going to leave it out!

21:00

1192 / 15000 words. 8% done!

So it turns out this metaphor lark is better than I thought, my MC is burned in chapter one (which could symbolise the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis), the fairies can be the Furies from Eumenides and my wise grandfather character who knows all about the fairies but no-one believes is like Cassandra! Isn’t the subconscious amazing?

But I am working very slowly tonight. I need to hire this guy to stand behind my chair and make me work

22:00 It was pointed out to me that food is a good idea so I was coaxed out of my room with a Chinese take-away (even though I was promised Indian, grr) a lit fire and a glass of wine. I love fires. I’m working on the couch next to the fire and it’s currently so hot in here that I’m in a vest and shorts and I don’t care. If When I become rich and famous I’m going to have a fireplace in my office, a big massive one, like this,

Only bigger!

23:00 Move over coffe, writing has a new best friend and it’s name is white wine! which also gives me an excuse to link one of Tim Minchin’s only non-comedy videos that I like:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q]

Isn’t he brilliant?
(the answer is yes, yes he is)

Also I’d like to point out that since starting NaNo I’ve written:
5,500 words of notes on my novel (stuff to put in later chapters, that kind of thing)
2,500 words of a short story
200 words of poetry
1500 words of an essay
4 blog posts
30 pages of handwritten notes for class

That’s at least 10,000 extra words right there, I’m very tempted to count them. But if we’re going strictly by the rules my wordcount stands at

2066 / 15000 words. 14% done!

24:15
So I’ve reached the beginnings of a subplot, I’m pretty certain the entire thing isn’t working though. I need to stop and think for awhile about where to go with this or if I should just cut it out altogether. What better way to ponder it than to go to bed and read A Dance with Dragons? So I will finish the marathon tomorrow(ish)

3000 / 15000 words. 20% done!

Night Night!