SE story monday: NaNoWriMo, anyone?

You Are Now Less Dumb - How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself

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Monday, 2 November 2015

quote [ On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30. ]

Anybody else on SE doing NaNoWriMo this year? I wasn't planning on it, but the second half of my current project is going to be just over 50k words, and I paused right before November at the halfway point. So I figured, what the hell. Why not?

I figure we might as well make a thread for people to post excerpts, ask for advice, commiserate about how our damn jerbs are eating up our time that we should be spending writing, etc.

I've been working on a cyberpunk themed pulp serial that I'm planning on releasing in 2.5k-ish word pieces via podcast. Here's an excerpt that I wrote in the last twenty four hours.

Reveal

“Yeah. I’ll definitely need to study it when we get home. For now, I need to stop by a store real quick, get an adapter for the hard drive so I can keep crunching bits while I walk without having my fingers stuck in my pocket. We can grab an extra set of goggles for you.”

I shook my head. “Just when I got used to this one. They probably won’t have this model anymore.”

The owner of the shop gave us some funny looks when we came in. I guess we did look more than a bit disheveled. And since this was the Shadow Market, the odds that he didn’t have illegal hardware in the back were slim to none. So I didn’t blame him for being a little twitchy. But Chance found his adapter and I found some goggles that synced up fine to my Wave and almost sat right on my face.

After walking several blocks to get to the Shadow Market, we decided to splurge and spend a couple of extra creds on a pedicab to get to the Westren building. A girl who was built a lot like me, but with much darker skin and tight braids pulled up on a little electric bike with a rickshaw attached to the back. She also had a set of goggles almost exactly like the pair I was mourning. I was tempted to ask if she wanted to trade.

Chance tapped his credstick against her meter. “Westren building,” he said.
She responded with a thick Jamaican accent that I’m not even going to try to duplicate. Chance threw back a few words in I dunno, Creole or Patois or whatever. I didn’t even think to ask if he knew it, or if he looked it up on the fly while he was talking. While we rode, I tested out my new goggles and looked up some info on the Westren building.

The bottom floor of the building was almost like a mini mall. A few stores, a few bars masquerading as family restaurants. The bottom floor was one of the cleaner places in the Shadow Market.

Above that, however, the old office complex had been turned into a series of small independent businesses. There could be literally anything up there from budding young entrepreneurs sleeping in cots in the back room of their startup companies, to chained up illegal immigrants sewing knockoff jeans, to high-tech (and likely illegal) surgical facilities. It was tiny compared to the Markhov tower, but there were truck bays and a freight elevator in the back. Anything that could physically fit through a double wide door could be made, modified, or transferred through businesses here.

“I don’t know where he went in the building,” Chance said. “Their internal cameras are on a closed network.”

“You can hack into it, though, right?”

He gave me a look.

“You know what I mean,” I said. “Once we get there. Obviously, I’m not expecting you to miraculously hack into a closed network from here.”

I think he blinked at me from under his AR goggles, but it was hard to tell. “Actually, I probably could if I had time to get into a nearby network and go from there. Anyway, once we’re there, we need to get close enough to somebody connected to the network that I can get their key.”

“Just a walk-by?” I asked, “or are we gonna have to actually stand around and talk?”

“If you wan’ stand around,” the driver said, “I can wait. Only a cred a minute.”
Chance smiled at her and said, “No, I think we’re good.”

He tapped his credstick to hers to transfer a tip, and we headed into the Westren building.

“Anytime you wan’ ride,” she said to us, “jus’ call me.”

My new goggles popped up a couple of messages. One ad blip from her with her Wave info. And another message telling me that I have yet to set up my FriendNet account. Stupid bloatware must have come pre-installed on the goggles. I had Chance take the damn thing out of my Wave when I first got it. That last thing I need is a new way for people to find me on the net.

[SFW] [literature]	[+4 Good]
[by Tirade]

<-- Entry / Comment History

Tirade said @ 4:07am GMT on 3rd November
Oh, another thing I did for the outline on my first NaNo attempt that I actually forgot about until I just went back to look at the outline. :P Once I finished the outline, I went through each chapter and wrote in what function each chapter fulfilled in the book. Mostly because I remember reading a few books from authors who I enjoyed, but who in their later books started to ramble on in certain parts, leaving huge plot swaths that deviated from the main plot and delivered absolutely fuck-all.

I'm looking at you, third Ringworld book.

Tirade said @ 4:15am GMT on 3rd November
Oh, another thing I did for the outline on my first NaNo attempt that I actually forgot about until I just went back to look at the outline. :P Once I finished the outline, I went through each chapter and wrote in what function each chapter fulfilled in the book. What it did for the plot, for the characters, and for the readers. Mostly because I remember reading a few books from authors who I enjoyed, but who in their later books started to ramble on in certain parts, leaving huge plot swaths that deviated from the main plot and delivered absolutely fuck-all.

I'm looking at you, third Ringworld book.

<-- Entry / Current Comment
Tirade said @ 4:07am GMT on 3rd November
Oh, another thing I did for the outline on my first NaNo attempt that I actually forgot about until I just went back to look at the outline. :P Once I finished the outline, I went through each chapter and wrote in what function each chapter fulfilled in the book. What it did for the plot, for the characters, and for the readers. Mostly because I remember reading a few books from authors who I enjoyed, but who in their later books started to ramble on in certain parts, leaving huge plot swaths that deviated from the main plot and delivered absolutely fuck-all.

I'm looking at you, third Ringworld book.

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