NaNoWriMo #4: Post Mortem

Another year, another NaNo over. And as usual I failed to keep up with the official wordcount, and my personal wordcount. But I'm mostly satisfied with the under 10,000 words I wrote this year.

Due to the month of November being midterm month in the quarter system, and the last week of November the week before finals, I'm amazed that I wrote anything interesting. I believe this has been my most stressed year while writing.

A look at November and NaNo:

1. My laptop contracted a virus on the 2nd. Since I needed it immediately for school, I decided that I could afford losing all my recent information and factory restored my laptop. There went the first 4,000ish words of my NaNo.
2. I asked my roommates and friends for side character names. The most notable: my friend who said that she would name my prison 'Jared', which is rather funny because one of the guys who lives across the hall is named Jared. This led to the nearby tavern's name "Jared's Stomach".

3. While NaNo did help me keep awake during my 60 and 132 classes, it hadn't kept me awake for my 100 class, most notably since I'd been up all night writing an essay.

4. I have decided that a Goat would be a yearly tradition. This is where I randomly insert a goat into my story and see what happens.

5. I have finally stepped out of my comfort circle in regards to writing. Or at least, I started to. My perfect characters are no longer perfect and have even made me uncomfortable. Now, to write them out of that uncomfortableness. If I even want to...

6. Crazy apartment goingons have put a whole new perspective on a 'crazy' character.

All in all, it was a good NaNo, and I plan on continuing it....soon. At any rate, I'll probably solidify my plot more and get to know my characters better before I start writing again.

NaNoWriMo #3

A bit over the halfway point and officially only 6,000ish words done. This does not bode well for my word count. I suppose I can only plead laziness over Veteran's Day Weekend.

Despite the very small increase in words, Things Have Happened. Alissande has character development and Jayahn is racist. Joy.

Alissande, who is a failed student and feels like she fails at everything in life, is supposed to either grow a backbone or find herself and develop confidence in herself. Or possibly both. Her backstory is still getting nailed down. But I finally have the scene where she demonstrates this confidence.

Lucas is trying to help her see her impossible task of making Jayahn help them in a more positive light. He doesn't tell her that her task is possible, he's not quite sure of that himself, but he tells her that she should keep trying because by her own admission, she has nothing to lose. So why not risk it all?
Alissande is still Unhappy with Lucas because he had arrested her (that particular scene still has not been written). She's feeling terribly unsure about herself and not sure what to do next. However, she is sure of one thing. Lucas calls Jayahn 'Jeanne' because that is how her legend was known to their culture. He knows her name is Jayahn, but still calls her Jeanne anyways because that is how he has always 'known' her as. He does not mean it disrespectfully or anything.
So Alissande decides to cling to the one bit she does know and tells him, "Her name isn't Jeanne. It's Jayahn, Get it right."
Good girl. [Though it does make me wonder if Alissande is going to prickly about names and using the correct name/pronunciation like I used to be. :\ ]

Other developments are that apparently.....Jayahn is a bit racist. I'm not sure how much, but she is. While this is probably realistic, I feel like it puts me in a difficult position. Or at least, it makes me uncomfortable.
I spent a good chunk of the morning yesterday (during lecture...) thinking about how my background as a sociology student affects my writing and how my characters get to be who they are. How much do I rely on stereotypes? Cultural structures? Social structures? Conflict theory? Symbolic interactionism?
Why is Jayahn racist? Can she still be a good character despite that? Will she change in her opinions?

Have I pushed her into this position because of my own preconceptions and socialization? Or am I finally starting to be mean to my characters? And is therefore Jayahn being racist a product of my brilliant imagination because it can and will tie together internal and external conflicts?

Seeing the direction of my thoughts, I obviously had not planned for this. I knew that Jayahn hated everyone who looks like what she knows as the invaders, and will gravitate towards people whose looks are most familiar to her (mostly people of the region where Alissande is from). But until I sat down for class, I hadn't realized that there was a term for Jayahn's behavior: racism.

I'm still reeling in shock here, and I suspect I might for a while.

NaNoWriMo 2011 #2

A week of NaNo, and I'm only at 3,239 words. The unfortunate thing is what most of those words came from whatever homework assignment I was working on at the moment. I currently have my character reading my homework as random sheets of paper that his nephew picked up off the ground. It's really confusing for Marcus, my linguist, because the paper keeps mentioning congress. Now, a congress of people, and a sexual congress, he's heard about, but a Congress as part of a government? He has no clue what that is. He's lived his whole life in a monarchy and none of the countries that he knows of have a democracy. As well as puzzling out Congress, I've decided to bring back my goat.

Last year's NaNo, one of my main characters was an Oracle who told the future. As is traditional, in exchange for a prophesy, the penitent would have to offer something in exchange. One person gave Eneles a goat, who proceeded to eat his notes.

So now I've decided to bring back my note-eating goat, who is now eating Marcus's linguistic notes. Jayahn, who first discovered the goat, and Marcus had a battle of wills with the goat when they threw it out of the house. Unfortunately, the law has decided that the goat belongs to Marcus, even though he wants nothing to do with it. They were contemplating having it slaughtered for stew meat (quite tasty, actually), when Alissande took a liking to it. So now they're still stuck with the goat, and I don't think its going to stay out of the house...

And I am pleased to announce that I have finally figured out religion for my modern culture. They pray to the ancestral spirits. The whole country also pray to what the people presume is the ancestor of the King. These particular ancestral spirits are like gods. I currently have a whole host of soldiers praying to these Great Spirits for deliverance against the crazy madwoman who's been locked up in their prison for a year. Understandable since the soldiers still can't figure out how she has a live tree growing in her cell. It popped up out of the blue one day.

NaNoWriMo 2011 #1

Okay, let's try this whole blogging thing again...

Less than five hours from now, NaNoWriMo will begin!

Trying to write 50,000 words during the month of November during my first quarter of university sounds rather stupid, and it probably is, but I'll have a lot of fun along the way. Yes, there is the midterm on the 7th and the essays that are due on the 10th and 21st, but I'll have Veteran's Day Weekend and Thanksgiving Weekend to catch up. Not to mention, I've decided to be realistic and only try for 25,000 words. Last year I barely hit 10,000, so upping it to 25k is not too bad. Let's just hope I make it.

I have a good chunk of the plot plotted out, and one scene fleshed out. No title yet, and there's still a whole host of side characters who still need names and positions.

My working synopsis:

A thousand years ago, the aristocrat Jayahn is appointed the Earth Guardian of the capitol city. However, when her deepest secret is revealed during a critical moment during an attack by invaders, she is exiled to the Forest of Unknowns—banished until she is recalled to save the country in its hour of need.
However, the invaders won and time passed. But now there is a new threat of invasion, and someone brings to the King's attention the ancient legend of Jeanne of the Unknown. But what they find in the forest is a madwoman who doesn't speak any recognizable language.

After completing her education, Alissande is forced to realize that she no talent for metal magic. Unable to face her peers with her failings and unable to find a job in her chosen field, Alissande finds herself in the capitol taking on odd jobs. Finally free from familial expectations, she pursues her passion: singing. But strange things occur when Alissande sings, and she is brought to the attention of the local soldiers, and the resident prisoner of the palace who recognizes what she really is. An Air elemental.

When Jayahn and Alissande are thrown together and ordered to save the country, they each face an impossible task. How can Alissande persuade Jayahn that the original invaders' culture is worth saving?  How can Jayahn train an army of lost Elementals like Alissande, to save a country whose Royal Family killed her own?