The Shadows on My Wall Don't Sleep

*head!desk*

Way too close to my last NaNo for comfort. While the dolls weren't the focus of my novel, they were pretty significant, and while Elyza technically isn't a doll there are too many similarities for comfort. :(

Shit. I liked my novel in progress.

Jossed and I wasn't even writing fanfic. :P

EditPad: 50,004
NaNoSite: 48,670

Yep, about what I expected.

40,050 words as of now. Just 10k left, and then probably another 1500 to make sure it will verify.

Man, for all the days I wrote nothing I'm really surprised that I'm this close to making it.

Note to self for next year:

You write more, faster, if you have characters you can send off in different directions!

I don't know if Aaron Moritz will come back into the story and find out that Elyza isn't dead, but his flashback gave me a huge boost on Monday and made this sprint possible. It cost him his legs, but that's okay, they grew back. (Hurray for cyberpunk medicine!)

I'm about 12k behind. :(

But I did get 3k down today so it's moving at least. Winning is still possible, if I can manage about 3400 words a day. :P

After I get some sleep I'm going to try to get to 30k between the various stages of making apple pie from scratch. That will be a smidgen over 7k in one day though, so I have my doubts but I won't know unless I try and all that.

I lost some time on the NaNo by working on some knitting. I have two projects to finish for Christmas and now one of them is almost complete and the other I know I can finish if I take the time to put some movies on and knit while I watch.

The hat I knitted Saturday didn't do anything for any of my goals but it scratched the itch for starting something new. It's not done, I don't like the way the brim is going, but I have a life line in there so I'm going to rip back to that eventually. I'll start the brim a couple rows earlier on larger needles to compensate for this particular worsted being on the heavy side (and very "sticky", what a bitch to knit with).

It was more of a "keep me entertained" project than anything else so I might do just the first layer of the brim and bind off without cutting the yarn and try it on. If I don't like how it looks at that point I can frog the whole thing and not really mind. The yarn was a bit heavy for the project anyway. I did learn to do two over two cables without a cable needle by doing the hat though. And really, it would look better in a color rather than black. It's hard to see stitch detail in black.

I tried knitting continental today... I think I'll stick with English/throwing. I know I'd get quicker with practice, and I did have a few points of quick knitting, but the tensioning issues were driving me nuts. I just can't work how to run the yarn in my left hand and not have it be either far too loose or far too tight. (It's sort of weird, I crochet and can tension the yarn for that okay, but not for the knitting. O.o )

And after just fifty or so stitches my left hand started cramping up something awful. It's just a weird position to have my fingers in.

After a few rows of knitting when I was finally able to stay pretty constant on speed and tension I tried purling... I can see why so many people say they have different gauges between knitting flat and in the round now, and why so many people have rowing out issues. My continental purls were astoundingly loose. Sure, practice would probably fix the tensioning, but I suspect I'd cripple my already problematic left hand by trying.

Unless I get on a roll and have a couple truly spectacular days I won't have a chance to win. I should be hitting 20k and I'm not even at 16.

I like the characters, but there's no real story, just a situation to get out of and they're nearly out now. I have no ideas about what happens next. They get out, they get to a safe house, they bitch at their boss, that's about it. Here's hoping some inspiration hits soon.

So here it is, about five and a half hours to NaNo'07 kick off, and Sierna (the main character from NaNo'06) is chattering her little hamsterish head off about how the kinless are treated in her home culture.

WTF hamstergirl? Where was this info this time last year?

Yes, yes, I'll start a TiddlyWiki for you. I promise to stick these little details in there and get back to them later. Maybe I'll be insane enough to do NaNoFiMo with your story, okay? But I swear, if this year's NaNo actually ends at 50k (unlike yours, which is what, half, maybe?) I'm doing NaNoEdMo for it instead and you'll just have to wait since you didn't speak up all year.

And I have no clue what I'm going to write.

I have vague urges toward steampunk or cyberpunk but no real ideas. The occasional flash of a ruined city taken over by jungle isn't really fitting with either genre for me.

I was going to do the 30 Days of World Building thing but it really doesn't fit all that well with the way stories tend to develop for me. To save you a click and perusal of the site the steps there go pretty much like this:

1. Think of climates, figure out what sort of adjectives fit with them and the emotions you attach to them.
2. Learn some geography and climatology. Think of weather related plot devices and what they can do to the story.
3. Decide the mood you want for your story. Pick a matching climate.
4. Large scale land features and how they might be made.
5. Draw a map.
6. Make up races of people that evolved in the various regions of your map.
7. The last 100 years of history, including natural disasters, politics, wars, disease, etc.
8. Refine your economics and politics.
9. Language, what do the languages of each race sound like.
10. Make everything fit your mood.

You get the idea. I'm not a mood writer. Mood is basically the LAST thing I consider. Generally I start from characters. Last NaNo was very atypical of my writing in that I started with a specific setting, made the world in order to make that one place exist, built the culture from that place, and eventually found some people there that were interesting to write about.

I have about 10 days to think of something. I need a different approach to finding a story.