So NaNo is almost over and I will admit that I definitely petered out. Actually I didn't even start strong. A word of advice. Don't spend the months leading up to NaNo speed writing a 150k long book. You will murder your brain faster than any of the fancy villains in the books you are writing can. But oh well, I may not have written much on my projects but I had fun and it was the break my brain needed.
Anyway, NaNo progress report:
Project: Darkness From the Stars
Total word count for NaNo: 10,167 words (though I will probably try to get a few extra in before the end of the month)
Total chapters: I started chapter five
So far there has been one death, RIP Pimberly.
-Line you’re most likely to cut in revisions?
Still not sure about this line if it even fits.
"The
process of getting ready for a ball is akin to torture. Except the
person doing it thinks that they are doing you a favor. And I haven’t
a clue whether true merciless evil of someone wanting to do you harm
or the false sense of kindness of someone who thinks they know what
is best for you is more painful. But I would hazard to say that they
are equally painful in their own ways."
-Line you’re most proud of?
I have my own spoilery reasons for liking this line mwahahahah....
"Mr.
Wintersleeve shoots me a look so scathing that it feels half like it
pierced me through. “I think the true problem here is the willful
desire to not see things that are clearly there.”"
-Line that made you cry while you were writing it?
So I didn't actually cry with this line, but I nearly did.
"He
raises a trembling hand to rest it on my cheek. I hadn’t noticed
before that his hand was shaking. No, his whole body was wracked with
tremors. “Astra, whatever happens, know that I love you. Love you
as my own child.”"
-Piece of dialogue that made you laugh out loud, shiver or flail?
Probably the longest snippet I will share today, but I can't help it. This one had me cackling as I wrote about my poor dear Edgar trying to be "polite" oh the humor of it all.
"Henry
nods toward us. “And Edgar, these are my dear friends Miss Miranda
Addington and Miss Astra Dempshire.”
“Dempshire?”
Mr. Wintersleeve says his gaze sharpening on me. “That name is
familiar.”
Henry
leads toward him, dropping his voice but not quietly enough that I
don’t hear. “It is her family hosting the ball.”
Mr.
Wintersleeve furrows his brows further. “Are they? Well, you have a
lovely parlor, Miss Dempshire.”
“It’s
a ballroom.”
Mr.
Wintersleeve’s eyebrows shoot up. “A ballroom?”
“Yes,”
I say hardly able to contain my mirth. I’m certain that Mr.
Wintersleeve is not actually an idiot, he appears to have an
intelligent gleam in his eyes. But then perhaps if he speaks much
more then that will become nothing more than just a gleam. “It is a
room in which balls are usually held.”
Miranda
steps on my foot, forcibly, if not painfully reminding me that as
amusing it would be to mock Mr. Wintersleeve further, perhaps he is
not someone to mock. I press my lips together and hold out my hand,
returning to the boring confines of social refinement. “Anyway I am
charmed to make your acquaintance.”
Mr.
Wintersleeve stares at my hand for a long moment as if half expecting
to find an Infected bite there. He leans closer to Henry. “Is it
now fashionable to shake a lady’s hand on acquaintance?”
Henry
shoots Mr. Wintersleeve a stunned look. “Heavens no, Edgar you are
supposed to kiss it.”
Mr.
Wintersleeve pulls back shooting Henry a look as if he had grown not
only a second head, but a third as well. “Kiss her? That seems
quite unseemly, and I must say that she is certainly not handsome
enough to tempt me so early into our acquaintance.”"
-Line that made you stop writing for a minute so you could process it
"My
eyes drop to the ground before I even realize what I am doing and I
find myself staring into the blank eyes of Uncle Pimberly.
His
body drops to the ground a second later."
-Favorite snippet that describes a place or character?
Probably this one where I just set aside several paragraphs to describe my darling Henry XD
"Henry,
however, is a very humble gentleman and doesn’t put on any airs
despite his heritage and everyone’s great esteem of him. He
legitimately does not think himself better than anyone, and makes
that fact very clear. Because of this, he seems to be a friend of
everyone in society including me, and Miranda, and frankly everyone.
Henry does not know a stranger."
-Line you can hardly believe you wrote (whether that's positive or negative is up to you)
I was essentially like O.O when I wrote this line:
"Most
people were quite eager to leave. You know what they say. It’s all
fun and games till someone gets decapitated."
-A snippet where even you aren’t entirely sure what’s happening.
This little gem of dialogue got a tad odd and problem is I don't even know if the "accident" discussed was an accident or not. So yeah... definitely in the dark here XD
"“He
has since then spent nearly five years battling the Infected
on the front lines.”
I
don’t know if my brother’s voice drips with envy or just mockery.
Sedgewick
didn’t even last a year.
“That
was until his disappearance for a good six months as well as his
entire regiment. That was quite the talk at the time. Not as much
talk as his return or his injury. How he was found wandering the
wastelands half out of his mind with a gaping hole in his shoulder
and somehow not infected. Of course, nobody assumes Mr.
Wintersleeve inflicted that wound upon himself,” Sedgewick mutters
bitterly sinking further into his cushions. “And there was no
witness for that injury either to prove that it was not him.”
“There
is a good difference between being impaled and shooting yourself in
the foot. One is significantly easier to do.”
Sedgewick
shoots her a hard look. “I know very well how easy it is to be shot
in the foot. All sorts of things can happen to lead to such a wound.
Guns can misfire, especially if they are tampered with.”"
-Weird thing you had to Google mid-writing-session.
Military titles XD
-Beginning sentence and ending sentence (if possible without spoilers).
Since I didn't finish the book I'll just post the last sentence that I wrote *shrugs*
First sentence: "It
is a fact that is commonly assumed that any single woman must be in
want of a husband, and one with a significant fortune at that."
Last Sentence from the middle of chapter five XD: "I
need more help than heaven can give. Of course she will expect
me to pursue Mr. Wintersleeve. Never mind the fact that he is a cold
blooded killer. He is a wealthy and powerful cold blooded killer so
of course everything is fine."
Anyway that's all for today, let's sit back and congratulate ourselves on surviving NaNo. Some survived better than others for sure, but we all did great if you ask me XD
Don't forget to check out the other participants in the Shared WIP Tag and their awesome stories
Lila: https://lilakimswriter.blogspot.com/
Julian: juliandaventrymemories.blogspot.com
