The Beat Goes On

November is still here, and my brain is...mostly still present as well, so I thought I probably ought to update on the NaNo-progress. I am being very contrary mary in my writing right now, although I am still going on with it. Just...not the way I planned. Ha. But then NaNo seems to be very much about grabbing the seat of your pants and holding tight as you run along with it, so here we go.

Technically I am still supposed to be working on The Juniper Bones; it's probably not that far from a complete first draft (say, maybe twenty thousand words) but my brain is just not co-operating with me. It's a complex ending, of course, but I just can't seem to concentrate on it. Whenever I do I just procrastinate worse than ever before, and after a less than productive week I finally surrendered on Thursday night.

The first novel I had been working on after getting here was Greywater, and while writing both Hibernaculum and The Juniper Bones I ended up missing the characters in that dreadfully. On Thursday night I was particularly troubled by the loss of Arosek and Ryennkar, and was reminded that while in airports from New Zealand to the US to Canada to London to Turkey and then on a wee boat upon the Med, I had been writing a couple of stories detailing a very important chance in their relationship when they were teenagers. I'd started typing it out sometime in London and never got around to finishing it, even though I had typed out other stuff I'd written in a couple of different coffeeshops in York. So, I decided if I was just going to sit and stare at The Juniper Bones and not type anything I might as well get my shit together and type out stuff I'd already written for a .doc I'd called Night of the Long Grass.

The story was never finished in longhand, despite the long hours in airports and those beautiful days in Turkey (although in the case of Turkey this may be because I was often distracted by delicious food and the lure of swimming in beautiful blue waters filled with ANCHORFISH!). After I finished typing out what did exist, I ended up finishing it. And of course it didn't kill my fascination with the characters, it only made it worse. So while yesterday very little writing was done -- I had to drive to Perth, which was an experience; I've never driven a freeway in my life and spent most of it wanting to scream out the window I DRIVE BETTER THAN YOU AND I'VE NEVER EVEN DONE THIS BEFORE! -- today I ended up opening a file that contained a few scribbles of the direct sequel to Greywater. Roughly seven thousand words later...

So, yes, it's been an odd few days. I've also been sketching out the bones of two other short stories to the tune of three or four thousand words I haven't counted towards NaNo yet, and one of those stories is actually most likely the prologue of Kaverlen Falls. So, I am keeping on keeping on, despite a rather unproductive week. I did manage to reward myself for the first couple of weeks, at least; I went horse-riding on Tuesday and got wrapped in seaweed on Wednesday. The horse-riding was an absolutely wonderful experience; I did it partly because I'd been on a camel and a donkey in Egypt and had forgotten what a horse felt like, and also because a lot of my fantasy-tilted writing involves riding horses which I remember so little about. But despite the terrible weather of the last few weeks in Bunbury, it was a beautiful sunny day for us to ride through the fields and see kangaroos, emus...AND COWS. I like cows. Go the research, I say. ^_~

At any rate, I should go spend a few more hours with the kids. <3 But just for amusement, here's one of my favourite places in York. I wrote about Arosek and Ryenn in this most beautiful of beautiful cities, and this place in particular inspired me to commission of drawing of the pair of them. It's all good.