There is no doubt that Nanowrimo is a word to be feared, even if it does sound like something that happens to people who put their fingers inside paper shredders.

I am currently sitting on just over 43k. I have 5 days left to write 7k more. Of those 5 days, I am losing the weekend. And I’m blogging instead of writing. (And they are very different acts, I assure you.) I can see the end, and I have at least scratched down on some paper somewhere how I think its going to end, pseudo-meaningful epiphany for main character included, but goddammit it feels like I’m trying to wring AB- out of a rock. Or Mick Jagger.

Basically, what I attempted (and I do feel that is the most appropriate word) is a prequel to the Tatsumaki Cluster Fuck (TCF). Enter all the characters alive and slightly less deranged than they all become in Ship Song and Still A Captain. Essentially, the TCF is a study in madness. Several characters either descend into it and never come back out of it or are touched by it at some point. Those who are au fait with the series will know what I mean. The prequel is an attempt to study the roots of their later madness. And work in some sex scenes. (There are two. Yay? Maybe, I don’t know.)

I’ve only sent it to one person in its horrible, unedited form. Poor Caitlin will likely wonder why she ever enjoyed my writing, and I send my condolences to her abused eyes and briefly-tortured mind.

And its all Tallulah’s fault anyway. This was her bad idea.

But it hasn’t been an entirely bad idea though. I have enjoyed watching the little nano counter rack up the words as I raced to meet each daily deadline, and sometimes scream past it. If anything, I am grateful that I know have a big, fat draft. It would probably be best to combine it with the first one and make it a weighty tome. And give it some semblance of a plot. Because it seems to be a series of disconnected events with a very thin underlying thread better not probed too much for fear it snaps. There’s a lot of adventure, a great deal more drinking than necessary that gives it a Raymond Carver kind of feel and some interesting combinations of words and expletives. And some sex, did I mention that? Well, one is three-quarters of a love scene. The other is a long, drawn-out lovemaking scene dripping with sentimentality. I was fighting to make word-count that day, and writing dripping sex scenes comes easily to me.

So, with some grind during work and in the evenings after training and when everyone goes to sleep this weekend during the last big sleepover of the year, I will hopefully finish and get me that print voucher. I am contemplating using it to print the monster-sized Dojo Heroes. I am fond of it, and no publishing house would ever touch it. Who would be interested in a copy?

In any case, I have some websites to fix and then some serious writing to do. Light a candle for me, if it seems I’m fading.