So long, 2012

I think I just want 2012 to be over already, which fortunately happens in another couple of hours. Clean slate, coming right up. Before that, though, I have to write one last blog post to say goodbye to 2012.

NaNoWriMo 2012: a month in review

Words written on my novel: 81,685

Words written on other things: 19,508

Okay, that's the boring numbery part. Now I'll go on to the actual reviewing of the month.

NaNoFiMo: National Novel Finishing Month

National Novel Finishing Month (NaNoFiMo) is exactly what it says on the tin: a month-long "finish the novel" challenge. It's been running for a number of years, but various events led to the challenge moving to NaNoFiMo.proboards.com in 2011 and me ending up as assistant Admin. This year I'm once again more or less running the site, so I figure a blog post telling everyone how awesome the challenge is might be in order.

Blog Hop: The Next Big Thing

Earlier this month I was tagged by Nicole Tan, who is currently writing Trails of Destiny: The Elm Tree. The challenge? Answer ten questions about my current work-in-progress.

On the 21st of November.

Well, I'm only a couple of days late. I'll plead a combination of migraines and NaNoWriMo and go for it anyway.

NaNoWriMo Day 20: Parental guidance

So, this evening Dad told me he had nothing to read at the moment and wanted to know if I had anything with an ending lying around. He may have phrased it a little more kindly than that, but close enough. Then Mum commented that she'd been reading stuff on my old laptop and she remembered me saying that I had a complete version of Dark Star. I was left with nowhere to hide, so now my parents are going to read the first complete draft of a book I've been working on since 2002.

NaNoWriMo Day 19: The Great Train Heist

A bunch of minor characters are going to rob a train. Their plan is terrible and doomed to failure for all kinds of reasons involving physics, law enforcement and the fact that a couple of my main characters had to choose that particular moment get take a train trip.

"One team gets on at one station," one man said. "They blow the coupling and then just get off at the next station. Easy in, easy out. Nobody would suspect a thing."

"Yeah, and the second team unloads the carriage onto a bunch of horses and makes for the coast," another man said. "If Team One blows the coupling at exactly the right time..."

"You really think someone can blow a coupling at exactly the right moment to leave the carriage in the right place?" The objection came from the only woman at the table. "Gary, the Tullup reaches speeds of over three hundred kilometres per hour between some stations. Have you ever heard of a thing called 'momentum'?"

Sounds like the kind of plan that comes with the words "what could possibly go wrong?" attached. Fine times ahead, characters...

*evil laugh*

NaNoWriMo Day 17: 50k!!!

I am a surprised and somewhat confused writer at the moment. I have no idea what to say about anything and after writing 5k today to hit the goal I'm not sure the 'random word vomit' function is working well enough to pull out a blog post.

Anyway, 50k. According to the first draft I'm a whisker under halfway through the story. According to my vague intention of doing a lot more expansion in the second and third sections of the story, I'm probably somewhere around a quarter of the way through. According to my goal of making this draft 150k, I've just hit 1/3. Well... technically I did that when I hit 50k on the draft the day before yesterday. I started NaNo with 8k already written. I know, bad me - continuing a WIP instead of starting from scratch.

Now to attempt some random word vomit: