Meta NaNoWriMo 2016 – Day 13

I’d totally planned to babble alongside my NaNoWriMo writing again this year, but weirdly, having a full time job again and a stupidly busy week has made that difficult. With part 13 (which will be up tomorrow morning) I’ve just tripped over 25 thousand  words. That’s halfway! Well, I hope it is anyway… god knows where the story will actually end. I’m very much enjoying it again, though I’ve felt rather out of control this last week. I think that’s because I had an even vaguer idea than last year and was on the verge of not committing to participate at all. I’m glad I ignored my warning instincts again! Last year had no plan either, but it also had a narrower focus, being neat and linear and only really having one character – control was easier to achieve, and it was easier to manage the things that happen. If I’m talking about this as if I’m not in control of it, well that’s exactly how it feels.
So what is it about? Well, I guess 25,500 words in and I should now be able to take a stab at it… In an empty and wrecked space station, four emergency back ups are activated and have to fend for themselves in a broken environment, knowing neither how they came to be there or who they are supposed to be. Yeah, sure – that’s definitely a bit like it. I’m still writing from the perspective of just one of the characters, Christopher as that felt more practical than doing four characters right off the bat. I’m finding Christopher’s character along with the others as we go. That’s probably why after a couple of chapters (and a quite good cliffhanger I think) I’ve jumped back several weeks (possibly months, maybe longer), so I can deal with the characters finding themselves, at the same convenient pace as I am.
Bad stuff happens to them while they explore their wrecked habitat, and they need to learn about themselves, and presumably figure out what happened that caused them to be activated. And then… do something about it? I don’t know. I’m greatly cheered that a few friends, including my Mum are reading it as I toss it into the ether each day. It’s a good incentive for sitting down and clawing an hour or so out of each day. I’ve got a fairly clear Monday and Tuesday evening this week, so I’m planning to sit down and alternate writing with taking our beastie out for a walk. His GPS tracker hasn’t arrived yet, and I’m damned if he’s going out solo without me knowing exactly where he is.
If you’d like to catch up with the story – here are some links: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 (tomorrow)
I’ve managed to do at least some writing every day, although that’s often been very late at night, when I’m feeling kind of fucked up and dopey after taking my sleeping tablets. That plus the various catastrophic chunks of news from America, and a couple of shows in the Nottingham Comedy Festival has left me pretty knackered and in a state that isn’t ideal for me to do story telling. Apologies to anyone who is reading along. I’m finding inspiration in putting all my music on shuffle and vanishing inside a headphones bubble (it makes the train and Costa tolerable), and when my brain is flagging a bit I’m using my tarot cards! For example, today I’ve had these two propped up on either side of my Word document: The Passageway and The Balance. For Part 13 that may have been a little on the nose… The cards are from a deck I backed on Kickstarter. I’ve used them to do real (you can add your own inverted commas) tarot readings and I’m finding them evocative for story directions. There are a couple I might not have taken otherwise – The Trap and The Law were fairly key in the previous chapter.