Day 6

Word Count: 5,002.

This means I need to up my daily word output to 1,957 wpd to make 50,000 by November 30. I'm getting into the story more, and the characters are starting to really take shape. Not to mention, I'm finding little subplots coming out that I'll need to pay attention to fleshing out. Most importantly, with the characters taking shape more, I'm into the word-count-eating power of extended dialog.

I am definitely not writing in order, so I'll try to give you a sense of where the excerpts I post go. This was originally written as a flashback, but I've moved it to the first scene.

Jo peeked in through the open doorway of the commissary. Sure enough, Skeet was at a table having a late lunch. She stopped at the beverage bar, poured herself a peppermint iced tea, and sucked half of it through the straw as she stood there steeling her nerves. Truth be told, she wasn’t any more comfortable around the drivers socially than they were around her. She topped her glass off and took a deep breath. Given the options before her, she would have to go with a little social awkwardness.
"Can I join you?” she had asked, sitting down at the table across from him.
“Jo?” He said, swallowing the bite of roast beef sandwich and swigging a gulp of soda to wash it down. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know.” This was already the longest social conversation they had had in seventeen years.
“I’m not on the track this week.”
“I know.”
“Mack doesn’t have a meeting scheduled until tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“Then can I do something for you?”
“Yes.” She looked around the commissary. It was midafternoon, between lunch and dinner, but there were a few others at nearby tables.
“Do you want to tell me what?”
Shepicked up her tea. “Come with me.”
“I really don’t think that would be…seemly.” [note: I really dislike this line]
“I need to talk to you.”
“If you’re pregnant, I’m pretty sure it’s not me.”
“Nothing like that. Could we just go somewhere to talk?”
“We’re talking.”
“No, I need to ask you something.”
“Ask away.”
“Not here.”
Skeet picked up his plate and glass and led her out the door. He stopped a few meters down the hall in a vacant alcove.
“So, what is it?” he asked, taking another drink.
“I need you to take me to Arizona.”
“We don’t have anything going in Arizona for at least two months.”
“I need to go tomorrow.”
“I’ll ask Dad.”
“You can’t.”
“I’ll have to.”
“He doesn’t know I’m going.”
“Why not?”
“No one does.”
“And when were you planning to tell him?”
“Listen. No one can know I’m leaving.”
“Leaving as in…”
“Leaving.”
“You know, if you’re quitting the team, you should tell my dad and find your own ride.”
“I’m not quitting. I’m running away, and the fewer people who know, the better.”
“How do you get to that?”
“They can’t be forced to give up information they don’t know.”
“Are you in some sort of trouble?”
“Not like you’re thinking.”
“You know any one of us here would help you.”
“That’s why I’m asking for your help.”

Day 3, Starting to get on a roll

Well, it's day 3 and this book is really starting to take shape. I'm getting a feel for the characters and the plots. I'm still working on a B story line, but that will come.

Total word count: 2,003. That's 2,998 behind where I would be if I were keeping up with my 1,667-words-per-day goal. I'm confident that as I get deeper into the story, it will get easier to write more.

Here's a little excerpt, slightly out of sequence. Properly, this will be about halfway through:


"You two are awfully far from home," the guard noted with a suspicious edge.
He rolled their travel papers through his scanner.
"We have business," Skeet said. The scanner let out a quiet beep.
Another uniformed guard appeared out of the windowless building at the edge of the border zone and headed straight for the car. Jo took a deep breath, slowly so as not to attract attention. They were going down in the home stretch. The feds were going to get her after all and she'd spend the rest of her life in a weapons lab a thousand kilometers from nowhere. If she were lucky, she'd only design the delivery systems. That wouldn't be so bad as knowing she had engineered the next improvement in man's race to kill one another. She glanced around the passenger compartment for something fatal. There was nothing, which was just as well. She'd never be permitted to kill herself in a guarded border zone. They’d stop her long before she would succeed. She was of no use to them dead.
The second guard thrust his hand in the window toward Skeet.
"Skeet Hansen. I can't believe it. I've followed the Hansen team since before I was even born. My family has been fans forever. Is everything all right?"
"Everything is fine,” Skeet said. “It’s always great to meet the people I race for.” Jo let her breath out slowly. Skeet was in fan meet'n'greet mode.
"So you're Josephine," the guard continued, looking further in the car. "I've never actually met one of the engineers before. My brother is going to be so jealous when he finds out I've met the Josephine. We once blew up the kitchen trying to turbocharge the vacuum cleaner from one of your schematics. I have all the technical readouts and diagrams. Your designs are just amazing."
Considering the circumstances and the presence of a suspicious border guard eyeing them, Jo found it odd that she was most uncomfortable with the fan’s gushing admiration for her. Most race fans just knew the drivers. The serious fans followed the technical side, but only the most obsessive hard-core raceheads got to the level of engineer groupie. She did nothing to encourage it. She preferred to stay behind the scenes with just her and the cars. Her designs were personal, and several were trade secrets. Having strangers poring over her specs felt more than a little like knowing they looked at nude pinup photos of her. She preferred the nude photos. At least then, she knew what they were thinking and that they didn’t know who she was.

Day 2

Total word count 1,353. That leaves me 1,981 words behind schedule. I intend to be caught up and even ahead of schedule by the weekend. Given that I was writing while watching the election returns, there's nothing really worth posting tonight.

Day 1 Report

Daily word count: 1,115. Slightly less than my daily target of 1,667, but not bad for sorting out where the story is going. I'm having a minor technical issue with transferring excerpts from my Palm and office PC, where I'm doing most of the writing, onto the computer that is connected to the Internet. As soon as that is worked out, I'll be posting longer excerpts, but for now, here's a few bits from my opening.

"We have to leave now," Jo called from the front door.
"What?" Skeet yelled back from the bedroom. "Worried they'll leave without you?"
"Yes." Jo fingered the case of memory chips in her pocket.
"I thought you said the Martians needed you."
Jo suppressed a laugh. Skeet talked like they were little green men, not refugees from Earth. "The research colonies need a lot of us. They're going to launch ahead of the shutdown whether I'm on the rocket or not. It would disappoint them to leave me, but they would do it to get the
rest off this rock while they can."
"Relax, " Skeet said, appearing out of the bedroom with a duffle bag slung over one shoulder. "You'll get there."
He spoke with the cockiness that was his family's hallmark on and off the road. In all her time on the Hansen Team's engineering staff, she had never heard any of the drivers less than absolutely certain about themselves...Skeet was a fifth-generation driver, an endurance champion, and had even run and won drifts back when they were illegal. If anyone could beat
the feds to the launch site, he could, even if no one knew what time he was shooting to beat.
Jo hadn't told anyone how she was getting to the Mojave Spaceport. Aside from Skeet and a few off-world colleagues who had helped the arrangements, no one knew she was leaving at all, and she'd only told Skeet because he was her best shot at getting there...

...Faced with a draft into the service of the Defense Department, which had been on the offense so long now that the name was blurring the line between being a quaint relic and an Orwellian joke, most of the formerly-exempt scientists were booking passage to one of the independent off-world stations. So many were leaving that the commercial space ports were running at peak capacity just to keep up. Now rumors were circulating that the governments were going to deprivatize the remaining civilian space ports to stem the tide. Nothing had been announced yet, but no one expected the feds to give a warning...

...The city gave way to fields. Skeet cranked up the driving. Jo had been allowed in the cars occasionally when he test drove new components, but she'd never seen him drive a full-on drag from the inside. The fields blurred. They drove on in silence, Jo knowing far better than to break his concentration. She turned different phrases over and over in her head. None sounded right...

And We're Off

It's midnight, so the writing can officially begin. Check back this evening for the first excerpts. Feel free to comment, but please be kind. There's bound to be some less-brilliant moments. I'll try not to post the absolute crap.

Writers, Start Your Engines

T-minus three hours and six minutes until I can start writing. Check tomorrow for the first excerpts.