Update, Day 30

Word count: 50,003

Made it.

Actually, I'm not done just yet, but I'm past the benchmark, so everything else is just gravy now.

Day 29 of 30

Word count: 47,048

I may just make it yet.

Update

Word count: 43,057.

Seven thousand words left and two days to do it in. Fortunately, I still have plot holes you could drive a Winebago through. Those should take at least 7,000 words to patch.

Thanksgiving update

Word Count: 37,340 Second wind is coming.

Update, Day 23

OK, so I am not so great at keeping this blog updated. The writing itself is turning out to take a lot more time than I had anticipated, leaving less time to consider the process. However, I am proud to report that the current word count is 30,042. Three thousand words a day between now and November 30, and I should still make it.

I am giving up on the excerpting until it is all done. Check back in December.

Here's another bit for you...

Here's an excerpt that comes close to the mid-beginning. It started out as just an amusing scene inspired by my own memories of learning to drive, and of course the need to explain why on earth she didn't just drive herself. It brings up a few points that will figure in more prominently later in the story.

“Do you want to drive for a while so I can get some rest?” Skeet asked.
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I don’t know how to drive. You think if I could have driven myself, I would have gotten you involved?”
“But you build engines. I’ve seen you drive at the test tracks.”
“Those are all Tesla racers. You said yourself I haven’t been out of the compound in three years. Where would I drive to?”
“We have a test track.”
“I’ve never driven road cars.”
“It’s pretty much the same except you occasionally turn right and there’s less chance of electrocuting yourself.”
“You sure?”
“Do you see any big arcs of lightning headed our way?”
“Not that.”
“Do you want to be stuck here making the next great way for us to kill people, or do you want to get to Arizona?”
“What sort of question is that?”
“Well, we’ll make much better time if we can trade off driving instead of stopping for me to sleep. Here.” He pulled the car into the breakdown lane and set the brake. “Hop in the drivers seat.”
She walked around the back of the car to the left side while Skeet scooted over the center console and strapped himself in the passenger seat.
She fastened the harness. “Now what?”
“A street legal drives just like the racers. All your controls are in the same place.”
“The clutch is missing.”
“It’s an automatic. It shifts for you.”
“Weird.”
“They’re easier to drive.”
“Where are all the sensors?” Actually, she’d never driven with sensors before, but she had worked on the finished racers and knew enough to know there should be more than three sensor displays.
“You’ve got everything you need for what you’re doing. All you really need is the speedometer and the water level sensor. You’ve got a hydrogen sensor, but these cars don’t run out as long as they have water to split. Street legals are designed so any idiot can drive them.”
“Where does that leave me?”
“Driving. We’re on the highway. It’s just like racing. Everyone is going the same direction as you. You got no cross traffic, no oncoming cars. Only thing to watch for is the occasional guy passing you, and cars merging back on from the rest stations.”
“Then what do I do.”
“Stay out of their way.” With that and not another word of instruction, he leaned his head against the roll bar and fell asleep, leaving her to fend for herself.

Day 16

Well, it took me 12 days of writing to get 10,000 words down. Only 4 to get the next 5,000. The writing is definitely getting faster. I periodically check my word count and I'm finding that two or three hundred words go by pretty quickly now, whereas when I first started, I had to really wrack my brain to get 500 words out at a time.

To be sure, a lot of this comes from the imperative to get words on the page, any words, and some aren't all that great. At first, I caved in to my old habit of reworking everything I had done in the previous session before I started looking at putting in new material. Now, I'm just pressing forward (and some backwards, and sideways--this is becoming a very non-linear writing experience). There are several parts I've written that, due to subtle shifts in the plot direction, are going to need to be reworked, but I'm leaving them in and alone for now. Editing is what December is for. For November, once a word is on the page, it's on, and time to move on to the next word. And the next.

I started this project with the intention of sharing excerpts and thoughts on the process every day with you. However, I'm finding it hard enough to get the NaNo writing done, as you can tell by the fact that I am still 12,000 words behind. I'm still trying to keep up with the blogging of the experience and all, but the raw writing is going to take priority. After I get a few things cleaned up with this, I'll post some key scenes through December, all in order, so you all can read what's been going on.

Ending

I've broken 10,000 words. I'm optimistically trying to double that by the end of the weekend. May or may not happen. Even if I have to pull all-nighters for the last week, I am determined to get this finished in a month, or at the very least hit 50,000 words even if that doesn't finish the story.

As for the ending, I've decided on a hybrid of options B and C. So far, she's been seized by the confeds (I've decided to make it a confederation rather than federal system just to make it a little more futurey), destroyed the data, and inadvertenly inflicted brain damage on one of the guards with a High Energy Radio Frequency (HERF) emitter an actual device that causes many of the same destructive effects to electrical components without the radioactivity. Wanna see?

This was not good, not by a long shot. If indeed she had ever had a chance of escaping detection, much less the planet, it was gone now. Her mind went to the microdrives. They were still in the lining of her coveralls. No doubt the confeds knew she had them on her. She couldn’t let them have the data, and it would only be a matter of time before they searched her for it. If they were determined to get her, at the very least they wouldn’t get her work. It would be another five or ten years for her to reconstruct it before they could force anything useful out of her. It wasn’t much of a strategy, but for the time being, it was all she had.
No doubt she was being monitored. She couldn’t see the lenses, but they must be around. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arm around her legs in what she hoped was a convincing fetal position. Her left arm was pressed into the back of the sofa, where she was reasonably certain a monitor couldn’t see, and she slowly worked her right hand up on her bicep to her upper arm pocket and fished her fingers in. She palmed her HERF and charged it up. There was no subtle way to accomplish the next step. She would have to get it done before anyone could burst in to stop her.
She pulled her right hand out, quickly took aim at her breast, and fired the emitter into the microdrives. It might not destroy the data entirely, but it would corrupt it enough to be useless. She managed to fire a second and third charge before guards burst in, wrestled her to the ground, and pried the emitter out of her hand. One unceremoniously ripper her coveralls from her collar to her navel, and seeing no flesh damage around where she fired, started inspecting the emitter like a chimp in a zoo looking at something new that had been thrown into his exhibit. She wondered why guards trained to apprehend scientists weren’t any more versed in the basics of technology. Of course, if he had any bioelectric implants, as most goons certainly did, and accidentally fired it at himself, that could work to her advantage. They could do her a big favor by taking themselves out so she wouldn’t have to.
The guard with the emitter managed to find the trigger and discharged it. He dropped the emitter and followed it to the ground, curled in a ball and clutching the right side of his skull. He must have had a cranial implant or a cochlear microreceiver. Most likely from the way he held his head, it was the cochlear receiver, which meant he was the team leader, receiving the orders radioed into his inner ear. Blowing that out was going to cause some serious damage.
The guard who had her pinned to the ground yanked her arms behind her back, hoisted her up by her elbows which very nearly wrenched both her shoulders from their sockets. The one on her upper body threw his other arm around her in a chokehold so her ribcage was being crushed between his forearms. Another grabbed hold of her ankles and pulled her feet out from under her so they were carrying her slung between them not entirely unlike a corpse in a bodybag. In that manner, they dragged her down the corridor and threw her into a detainment cell. Here, the pretense ended. The room was completely bare save for a spray nozzle in the center of the ceiling and a drain along the floor baseboards.

Day 10

Word Count: 9,775 Today I started writing the ending and I don't want to ruin your surprise.