The madness: Day thix, as Jay would call it ...

Day six: 50,137 words.

 Downside; only one page left of a plot I *thought* would hit 80K :p

Also a couple of scenes I may have to alter or trim as I don't think they fit the series that well at all, but that'll be into the next draft....


A fun scene between Charlie and someone else. Charlie is always far too much fun to write :)

“I was angry: my husband had died not a year before. I was being blamed for his death, called a witch and all manner of lies.”

“So you called up a creature from Outside the universe to show you weren’t a witch.”

“We all do things in haste; what is life but a series of regrets?”

“Lessons on how not to be an asshole?”

Fun bit from tonight.....

“I’m going to be limited in what I can do, let alone attempt. You should be fine,” I say as Jay looks over at me, “but you’ll definitely want to just eat normal meals.”

“Normal?”

“A magician is tied to their place of power: they can sense what people are doing and saying, probably even thinking if they have to, and in a small town they tend to notice and react to oddities much quicker. You eating four breakfasts would count as that.”

Jay gulps at that and manages a small nod.

“We have never tried to starve you,” Charlie says, cocking her head to one side as she studies Jay. “This is probably not the best time to experiment.” He looks relieved until she adds, “but there is no time like the present.”

“Charlie.”

“You’re the one who said we’ll want to blend in, magician.”

“Having Jay’s stomach growling like a small freight train won’t be blending in. You hungry?” Jay nods, trying to look casual, tongue darting over his lips. “On a scale of one to ten?”

“Thirteen? Maybe eleven?”

Charlie snickers, trying to turn it into a cough.

Day iiii

Things I have learned so far today:

• Apparently, forming a union may create a god, or at least helped make the god of a local chain of coffee shops.
• That both Charlie and the magician's mothers are interesting pieces of work needs to be balanced out at some point. I shall probably have Charlie's mother get rid of her husband later on and build on that. 
• Jay helped beat a curse by eating waffles.
• Charlie could probably list Starbucks as her religion.
• apparently I ran out of other things to add and never finished this.

On the other hand, pulled off just over 6K yesterday, which tends to result after doing a 15K day the day before (a new record on my part). Weirdly, the 15K stuff 'feels' better than the 6K, but that's probably because this section shifted into Charlie's POV and I'm not sure if the story needs it to shift between the magician and Charlie this often at this point in the story. The fact that many of the questions Charlie had weren't ones any of the other characters could -- or would -- answer didn't help, but it is going to shift back into gear this morning as more fun stuff about her family comes into play and a god of a casino attempts interesting blackmail...

Day IIV

In which the magician meets with his sister after an absence of eight years.

The coffee maker beeps. Alex pours everyone a cup, though at least gives Jay a small one, and sits back down. I dump cream and sugar into mine and wait.

“I see that hasn’t changed,” Alex says with the hint of a smile.

“Some things don’t. Are we done sparring?”

“Not on your life. You ran away. No note. No explanation. Do you know what you did to mom?”

“Nothing she couldn’t handle.”

Alex’s right hand twitches on her coffee mug. She takes a sip. “I didn’t know you could be so cold, little brother.”

“I can do a lot of things.”

“Most of those seem to involve running away.”


.... and now hitting 23K and taking a break before shifting into Charlie's POV for a few scenes. Whew.

Day II

Almost at 14K and done for the day as I have to head off for a party this evening.

I have just hit the first major act of the story. The magician -- along with and Charlie and Jay -- are not at his hometown. We get to meet his sister and mother, which will be AWESOME to write and he has to deal with magics he has left undone, what the town thinks of him and we even get to learn his name. It shall be great and crazy fun to write and I'd rather do it all in one mad go than break it up, so ending for the day.

I shall go nuts at it tomorrow, never fear.

Fun line of the day:

We love people for who they are, not who we desire them to be, or we don’t really love them at all.

Day 1 of the madness

7,000 words into Curdled Magic and I already will need to redo the first 6,500. HUZZAH!

I had planned to do the story in first-person past tense for all sorts of good reasons (marketability being one). And did so, but the story faltered at odd parts and the dialogue and tone felt stilted and off. Few lines jumped out at me as being cool or neat. So I shifted into present tense and 500 words later things are flowing far more smoothly. Past tense got into the magician's head too far, taking away some of the mystique of magic (and what he is doing/plans). So shall change it up later on, which won't be anything major: I'll be altering the first two major scenes but not to any huge degree so it's all good.

Mind you, that 7K has only brought me to the third scene of the novel is more than a little worrying :)


Fun bits so far:

Charlie and Jay were in the suite when I returned, the floor covered in stuffing. Jay was sitting on the one bed and looked unharmed but was giving Charlie a wary stare as she stared down at her hands and flexed them slowly as if unsure they were still her own.
“I murdered a dozen teddy bears,” Charlie said flatly. "I have eaten gods. This was worse by far."
"Oh," I said.
“No stuffed bear should tell you they are a bear of very little brain but have a large...” Charlie trailed off. "I need a drink. I need several drinks."

And:

Alderton is a larger town, at least a ten-Starbuck sort of place, Halloween and Christmas decorations already starting to fight for space in store windows.

.... describing town size by # of Starbucks is fun. Charlie is, after all, rubbing off on the magician as well.

Ah, plots...

Plotting for nanowrimo continues — as I have 60,000+ words of short stories (and a novella) that basically count as back story, the novel is shaping up to be rather solid. I know the characters, though not too well, and the setting is largely fleshed out in my head.

The actual folder for the novel proper contains over 11K in notes, half of that being notes on the town of Sunny Creek, historical vs. modern magic, various notes on characters and assorted bits and bobs as I do notes very haphazardly. The novel plot itself is sitting at about 5K of words in the novel folder, most of that being the first half of the novel. All my notes are pointform summaries of ideas, digressions and in some cases sarcasm.

EX, from last night’s notes:

• The magician losing to William. This is William’s place of power. To defeat him in it requires X [Determine what X is. This would be Helpful.]
• Making a Deal with Mary will be considered unwise; a hundred years of imprisonment may have tempered her, but also made her seriously pissed off. (This is actually not true, but the magician will believe it to be so. Everyone makes mistakes: not trusting her is going to be a big one on his part.)
• The townsfolk are all guiled by the wards/protections of the town (or murdered if they begin to see through the town’s protections/illusions). As such, only non-human entities will be able to aid the MCs. So now I know why I wrote over 1K of notes on fae glamours and various critters earlier this week … go me.