NaNo Day 22

Daily Words: 1,631
Total Actual WC: 36,144
TOTAL WC GOAL: 36,674

The wrist is better than it was. Here’s hoping it stays that way.

There is still knitting. If you’re lucky, I’ll have the time and energy one of these days soon to take pictures and post them.

Snippet:

Sheila looked up, her eyes following Brooke’s outstretched hand to a wide stretch of green meadow split down the middle by a wide river. The water flowed fairly fast, as far as she could tell, and looking to her right she could see why: there was a waterfall only about a mile away.

Everything looked normal and peaceful, like the type of place you’d bring a picnic lunch on a summer afternoon.

Except it was fall. And the flowers in the meadow were just budding, as if ready for spring.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo Day 21

Daily Words: 2,221
Total Actual WC: 34,514
TOTAL WC GOAL: 35,007

I’ve been writing, but have been forgetting to record it properly. So, here’s the best I can do – today’s count. I’m not sure how much of the rest of it is from yesterday, and how much the day before.

Also: I tweaked my wrist earlier today. So I didn’t get as much written as I had planned/hoped. I’m hoping it heals in my sleep and is all better for tomorrow.

(Oh – and yes. Sock knitters will recognize one of the names in this snippet. I needed the name of a barony that sounded like it could be pseudo-medieval-England, and guess what book was lying around providing inspiration? )

Snippet:

“That is all anyone knows.” Ariane’s normally even voice caught as she spoke. “There was trouble brewing for months, with a few disappearances and suspected deaths, and no obvious way to stop it. And then one day, it just stopped. That was the very day –” Her voice broke and she shook her head, unable to continue.

The others all seemed to understand her reference anyway, dropping their gazes to their food, and staying silent. All except Sheila, who was horribly confused.

“The day that what?” she asked at last, unable to combat either the heavy silence or the curiosity eating at her.

“Can’t you guess?” Alex said softly, meeting her eyes for the first time since they’d gotten back from exploring. “Is there no subject that we’ve been talking around ever since we came here?”

“No.” She maintained eye contact as she shook her head, trying to read the answer in his eyes.

“That day,” Rupert said in a voice completely devoid of emotion, “was the day she died. Melissa of Bordhi. My mother.”

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

Um… oops. I spent last night reading instead of writing. And then I forgot to schedule a Snippet. I know, we need downtime sometimes. But it seems I’ve been doing a lot of bouncing between “really on” and “really off”. Going from 2500+ words in a day, to only a couple hundred. Ah well. I *am* still writing every day, and that is what matters most to me.

Speaking of writing, I’m going to get back to it. Here’s a snippet. (Sheila’s learning how to do magick — Duncan is having her extinguish a candle.) I’ll post stats when I’m home and have access to them.

“That was odd,” she said. “I couldn’t see the magick at all until you touched my hand. I wonder, now that I know it works, if I could do it without seeing it?” She didn’t say it, but it would be pointless to learn spells but only be able to use them when she was touching him. Besides – if the magick didn’t work when they weren’t touching, she didn’t need to learn it at all: just be careful not to touch him.

Duncan relit the candle between one blink of the eye and the next, and while she was jealous of the ease with which he accessed the magick, she would still rather be out exploring than stuck inside staring at fire.

Imagining instead of actually seeing the neon she’d seen before, Sheila mentally went through the same process she’d just finished. Her imagined neon flame turned into chartreuse, then canary yellow. When she’d imagined the flame going out altogether, she blinked and allowed herself to actually look at the candle again.

It was still lit.

Reaching out, she touched Duncan’s hand. Instantly, the colors reappeared. This time, she took the flame down to nothingness in half the time it had taken her before. When she let go of him and looked again, the flame was out.

“Damn.” She sighed, but smiled up at him. “I guess that’s not going to work.” It might be frustrating, but there was no sense in taking it out on him.

“This is not the only time I’ve heard of a magick-user having difficulty accessing their powers,” he said. “In many cases, when the faery blood is diluted sufficiently, the powers are weakened, or inconsistent.”

“So I’m diluted?”

“I did not say that. It could be because you are not truly of this world.”

Yeah, that sounds much better than my explanation. “So, does that mean we don’t have to worry about me doing magick accidentally?” She smiled again, expecting him to agree and tell her that, since she obviously couldn’t cause accidental magickal difficulties, there was no need to train her past what she wanted to learn.

“No. Actually, it means we have to worry more.”

Sheila’s face fell. “More?”

“Yes. You see, something happened in camp that night. It was not just coincidence that we were attacked when you had been thinking it was too quiet.” He frowned, though not at her. “I should have known then — that flicker I saw happened every time you looked at the forest. And it was the same color as your aura.”

“But if I can’t do magick without touching you, how could I have accidentally called up bandits?”

“Your instincts know how to call magick. It is your mind that does not — and that is what we need to work on.”

Sighing, she settled in for more lessons. This was going to be a long day, if she had to spend all of it staring at candles.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy or reprint/repost without permission, etc.

NaNo Day 17

Daily Words: 963
Total Actual WC: 26,892
TOTAL WC GOAL: 28,339

NaNo Day 18

Daily Words: 3,471
Total Actual WC: 30,363
TOTAL WC GOAL: 30,006

So, my word count output today was about what I hoped, but I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to accomplish it. I’m glad I did! Broke 30K right on schedule! Hooray!

In other story news, I came up with some fun back-story and motivation for my MC (main character, not Emcee). Some of it is below. Other bits of it will be held back to make the antagonist (one of them) deeper, more believable. Also because it’s better to dole out bits of back-story in pieces, not all at once.

Snippet:

Sheila had followed the old adage of “write what you know“ and started a story about a young woman who, unsatisfied with her life, had set out to make her way in the world and ended up confronted with obstacles in her path.

As a new writer, she didn‘t know much about the importance of backstory. She‘d given this woman – Melissa, or Liss, she‘d named her – a small family back home, a husband and kid. She had noble blood, a headstrong spirit, and good looks. That was all Sheila had bothered with. No photo to work from so that Liss stayed the same each time she was described. No notes on where the “headstrong spirit“ came from, or even how she exhibited said spirit. No names for her husband or child.

Even the obstacles Melissa faced were vague. Shadowy omens, bumps in the night, that sort of thing. She was going to overcome them at the end, and find a way to have both her new life and her family back. Sheila had the whole thing planned out, down to the tears on the husband‘s face as Liss appeared in the doorway.

But then something unplanned had happened: Melissa had died.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo Day 16

Daily Words: 2,663
Total Actual WC: 25,929
TOTAL WC GOAL: 26,672

Catching up on the words after a weekend of headaches… (My head feels much better now, thanks! And the word count for the day is proof of that.)

Snippet:

Unlike many of her peers, Sheila had never been the type to claim that a certain plot point happened “because the character made it happen” or that something she’d planned wasn’t written “because the character wouldn’t let me.” That was stupid. The author was the one in charge. Yes, certain characters were well developed enough that you could tell what they would do in a given situation without having to plan it, but they were still characters. Created by the author.

And the author was in chrage.

That was a laugh. She was so not in charge right now.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo Day 14

Daily Words: 382
Total Actual WC: 22,054
TOTAL WC GOAL: 23,338

NaNo Day 15

Daily Words: 1,212
Total Actual WC: 23,226
TOTAL WC GOAL: 25,005

Well, I’m a bit behind again now, but the headache I had this weekend really had me out of things. I spent a large chunk of Sunday napping because it was the only way I could get my head to stop pounding. Ah well. I’m not so far behind I can’t make it up.

Snippet:

“What were you thinking of, just before the attacks?” Duncan asked, his eyes fixed on Sheila’s.

She found she couldn’t look away, no mater how hard she tried.

“What was it?” he asked again, his voice losing nearly all of the musical quality she liked so much.

“I was thinking how calm and quiet it was,” she said, speaking in a whisper so soft he had to lean forward to hear her. “Too quiet.”

He sat back on his heels, skimming his gaze over her once more. When he spoke again, his voice was back to its usual lyrical tone, though it also held a trace of sarcasm she hadn’t heard there before.

“Do us all a favor… don’t ever think that again.”

He had a smile on his face, but it was a stretched smile, forced. She didn’t think he was joking.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo Day 13

Daily Words: 1,560
Total Actual WC:21,672
TOTAL WC GOAL: 21,671

Here’s a bit of a longer snippet for your Friday. Enjoy! (I’ll update this post at the end of the day to include Friday’s stats.) Stats posted!

They’d been riding through the countryside for a few hours now, and Sheila still could not rid herself of the vague feeling that there was supposed to be something going wrong.

Nothing had happened in the stable-yard. Nothing as they rode out the castle gates and over the drawbridge. Nothing as they passed by the now-busy village.

Nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all.

In real life, this was great. Normal. Expected. In a novel, it was unheard of. And if this was one of her novels, a world she created, something should be happening.

The others rode along as if they did this everyday. Ignoring the fact that they probably did do this daily, or at least close, she tried to emulate their easy, calm way of sitting in the saddle. And failed. Even Bryce, who she’d expected to be as uncomfortable on a horse as she was, seemed to be at ease.

Sighing, she resigned herself to another day and more of discomfort. Sheldon and Samuel rode close together, talking, and the prince and Rupert laughed over some joke one of them had told. Gregor was at the rear of the party – but by choice, he’d informed her with a scowl when she tried to slow down to talk to him – and Alex was scouting up ahead, leaving only Bryce and Duncan unoccupied.

Normally she would consider talking to Bryce, spending some time learning more about this world she’d made by asking questions of one of its historians, but the few words she’d spoken to him at the beginning of the journey had been uncomfortable. Physically uncomfortable – at six-something, he was already close to a foot taller than she was. Add the difference in horse height to that, and it gave her a crick in the neck looking up at him to have a conversation.

That left Duncan.

She was a bit in awe of him, even though she supposed the feeling was mutual. She’d planned for his character, for a magick-user, but she hadn’t gone into much detail about him. She hadn’t named him, or figured out his appearance, and she certainly hadn’t given him faery blood.

Yet here he was, in all that detail. From his faery blood and his graceful movements to his white-blond hair and his lyrical voice, he was everything she would have wished in a magicker. Everything she could have wished, and yet didn’t think she could create.
Before she could get up the nerve to approach him, he nudged his horse over to her.

“You seem preoccupied, milady,” he said, his lilting voice reminding her of the way the Irish spoke without being an actual Irish accent.

“It’s just…” Just that she had no idea what she was supposed to be doing. Just that she felt like baggage along for the ride.

Just that she was stuck inside a dream of her own fantasy world, and she couldn’t wake up.

“I don’t know how the magick in this world really works,” she said at last. “I have a vague idea that it’s some kind of energy, but that’s it. I don’t know how it works, or who can use it, or anything like that.”

Duncan smiled. “It works differently for each of the touched. For Alex, it allows him a strong but passive sense of foretelling. For myself, it provides the ability to manipulate the magickal energies, the life-currents that flow throughout the world.” His smile turned sarcastic as he continued. “I have a much weaker talent than Alex, but a more controlled one. I am not sure which is to be preferred.”

“What do you mean? Isn’t stronger usually considered better?”

“Not always.” His gaze flicked to the front of their party, where Alex was just visible as he waited for them at the entrance to a forest. “Is it better to be strong in magickal gift, and yet be unable to ride it?” He looked back at her, mischief in his pale eyes. “Would you prefer a powerful horse, or a calm one?”

He had a point.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo Day 12

Daily Words: 2,349
Total Actual WC:20,112
TOTAL WC GOAL: 20,004

I’m back on track! Yay! I’ve got this Week Two thing so kicked!

… and in keeping with the “overconfidence” theme of the evening, here’s today’s snippet:

Snippet:

Watching the rest of the preparations made her feel a bit useless, but not nearly as bad as she had felt before she’d mounted. Doing nothing, but doing it from the back of her horse, was much better than doing nothing from the ground. There, she had her hands free could conceivably help with something. Here, she was a poor enough rider that all she could manage to do was hang on tight and hope for the best.

Not that anything was going to happen to her in the stable-yard.

As soon as she thought that, she realized what a stupid thing it was to think.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo Day 11

Daily Words: 2,461
Total Actual WC: 17,763
TOTAL WC GOAL: 18,337

Yay! A much more respectable number of words today. It’s within the realm of possibility that I will be completely on track (aka ahead of the “required” word count by a few hundred) by the end of the day tomorrow. I could probably get caught up to the total goal tonight, but sleep is calling…

Snippet:

“We looked in your room for you, but you’d already left,” Erick said without preamble. “We need to fit you out for the quest – and as we want to be on the road, today, there’s no time like the present.”

“And how was I to know you wanted me?” she asked, annoyance and leftover adrenaline making her bold. “We didn’t arrange for anything specific yesterday. Your Highness,” she added. He might not be her prince, but he was her prince.

“Peace, lass,” Sheldon cut in. “His Highness is merely excited, and wants to be on the road yesterday. He means nothing by his high spirits.”

“Oh very well,” she said, setting her spoon down and taking a last sip of the wine. “I was just about done anyway. We might as well get this show on the road.”

The four of them left the room, and though Sheila tried not to care, she couldn’t help but notice that the group was the center of attention: every eye in the room watched them leave. Even the servants paused in their duties to watch.

If there hadn’t been rumors about her before, there certainly would be now.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo Day 10

Daily Words: 1,601
Total Actual WC: 15,302
TOTAL WC GOAL: 16,670

Not my full complement of words today either, though much closer. Tomorrow and Thursday I’ll be going to write-ins, and those always help my word count. So with luck I’ll be back on target by Friday.

Snippet:

Sheila glanced over her shoulder again, and saw only the fog. She stopped running, instead looking around her with a sense of rising urgency. Where had he gone?

“Do you even know where you are?”

“Andover,” she whispered. This time, unlike before, her voice did not echo. Silence met her answer, a more complete silence than she’d heard since falling asleep.

Looking around her, she could see no evidence that this was still Andover. Assuming this dream-world ever had been.

She took a step forward, moving cautiously now that she was no longer being pursued. When the figure did not reappear, and no voice taunted her from the shadows, she took another step. And another.

And felt herself falling through the fog into nothingness.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.