Suck It, November

A couple of weeks ago, I was going through my new blog followers, checking out their blogs and updating the bloglist(s) in the side panels when I came across, almost by accident, a site called "NoMoSlackMo". I was intrigued, at first, but when I saw the tagline of "Suck it, November", I was in love. Er, as much love as one can be in with a website, I guess. No, no, I take that back; I was quite smitten.

As you may remember, I'm none too keen on the whole NaNoWriMo thing. I personally get nothing from it. Oh, sure, it's fun to hammer out words for thirty days straight, but after a while I felt as if, as a writer, I should be doing this more than just thirty days at the end of the year. I mean, if I want to be a serious, professional writer, I need to commit to it, right?

And, I had. I was about 19,000 words up on my current work in progress (WIP) when I sort of...slacked. Purposefully. You'll notice that the writing updates withered during late November and on into December. The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is stressful enough, to be honest, without worrying over how much of my masterpiece novel I've gotten finished. So, I kind of quit and tried to focus on doing other things, like playing Lego Star Wars cleaning the house and preparing for a visit from Jolly Old St. Nicholas.

The holidays are, once again, sadly, behind us. New year resolutions are, once again, sadly, upon us. And so, too, is NoMoSlackMo. For the uninitiated, NoMoSlackMo stands for "No More Slacking Month", and is sort of the bastard child of NaNoWriMo, but without all the stigma that goes along with that. And, the rules are pretty simple. As per the authors:

• Writing takes place from January 1, 2010 to January 31, 2010
• Goal is to reach 50,000 words by midnight on January 31, 2010
• You don't have to start from scratch. The point is to finish what you slacked off on in November.
• You can start from scratch if ya want.

Obviously, I didn't start from scratch. However, I was 19032 words into my current work. I thought, "I could cheat and just start out 20,000 strong, so that I only have to write 30,000 words and be 'a winner'!" But then I thought "Hmmm...I want my book to be somewhere around 100,000 words, so if I were to follow through and write 50,000 words plus what I already have, I'd be almost done with my book."

And, so, that's what I've done. Which is kind of a bitch to keep track of, since my starting word count wasn't nice and round or anything like that. Alas, I have to do...math...and shit...now that I'm doing this. Fortunately, Windows comes with a built-in calculator! How convenient?

Anyway, I finally got to the point where I introduced the king. And, he's supposed to be a slimy bastard lusting for the main character's mother. I thought, "Who embodies this better than anyone else?" And then after I stopped looking in the mirror, I thought, "Who in pop culture embodies this better than anyone else?" The answer: Lando Calrissian. That's right. The king (er, one of them) in my neat little myth story is roughly modeled off Lando. Except, he's Greek, not black, he's a king, and not an administrator of a mining facility, and he tricks everyone into giving him horses, not tibanna gas. Although, I do think they both rock the cape look pretty well.

I have, officially, finished five chapters in the book and I've started number six, but I need to re-read some Greek funerary rites before continuing too much further. Plus, I need to figure out how "youthful" I want my "youth" in the story to be. I'm thinking sixteen should be about right--he'd be hotheaded and impetuous, which is what the character calls for. However, I've vowed to myself that my hotheaded and impetuous character isn't going to be a whiny bitch like Harry Potter; he's actually going to listen when someone imparts some wisdom or knowledge or guidance upon him, rather than just get mad and strip naked on a stage with a horse. Wait...I think I'm mixing Daniel Radcliffe vehicles there...

Anyway, here's the progress to date. I've got 66 pages, and if that's 1/5 of the way done (estimated), then I should end up with about 330 manuscript pages. Not bad, I think. Short enough to get some interest, I'd hope, but long enough to qualify as "novel" status.

The top word bar is my NoMoSlackMo status. The second is the overall word count (sorry, ladies, but the word counter and the button you provided on your blog are a little too...pink...and that would clash with the layout colors of my blog. Yeah...yeah...that's a good explanation...we'll go with that. *shifty-eyed*)

2433 / 50000 words. 5% done!

21465 / 100000 words. 21% done!