Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Digital Hellhound]

I have no idea how IRC works. Freenode lets me just punch in a name and creates a channel with that. So, uh. Uh. Eh?

[Caz]

Can I get the full server info? I'm already op'ing a channel for my local region, so I can just hop in with mIRC at some point.

irc.freenode.net #bay12nano

[Malt_Hitman]

I popped onto the Bay 12 channel and got pulled away rather quickly so I'm sorry if I missed you earlier and just sat there silently.

I tried a 60 minute word sprint and managed to get my total around 16k so I'm mostly back on track.  Maybe a day or so behind where I'd like to be but it's better then where I was on Friday.

Spoiler: Sometimes even OM NOM NOM isn't enough to stop your badass determinator. (click to show/hide)

The team stood, waiting for a termination message though none came.  Seconds, then minutes passed.

“What’s wrong?” Ihd broke the silence.

Sos quickly checked the status readouts and then froze, pale.  “She’s…not dead.”

“What went wrong?”

“Nothing!  She’s just…not dead!”

The view screen was black even though data still crawled across the screen and readings fluctuated.  The onscreen data was still coming in.  Even as a black screen assailed them.  A black screen, her black screen.  They were still getting visual data from her suit.

“Switch to another view.  Anything.”

Sos changed the display to pull from external data.  The scene refreshed and  they were suddenly assaulted by the true nature of her survival.  What she had really been capable of.  She had managed to cling to the inside of the mouth of her devourer and was still fighting.  Not just surviving but fighting.  Even as it had been trying to eat her she was attacking.  Blow after blow was struck at a single spot on the roof of the creature’s mouth.  She was trying to punch a hole through the thinner area on the underside of the creature’s cranium.  She was trying to punch her way into its brain in order to kill it as much as to escape.  Ihd was horrified at that prospect.  To be eaten was outside of his area of expertise but to continue to fight in that situation was…alien to him.  She must know that she was going to lose at this point.  That she was going to die.  There was no other option.  Why continue to fight?  How could she do that?  Ihd could not wrap his mind around that.  He could not grasp the true form.

[Digital Hellhound]

@Malt: I liked it up until the final line.

But yeah, I like the whole idea of a team watching their team-mate's (?) miracle survival from here.

[Sappho]

And, inevitably, I'm sick. And I live alone, so I don't even have anyone to make me tea. : (

I didn't write at all yesterday, exhausted by the conference on Saturday. Now I haven't written today. Can't miss work tomorrow either. I should rest... But I should write... Started out so strong, now I'm falling behind.

This happened last year too. I managed to succeed in the end after several 4000-word days. Ugh, even typing this is killing me. I want soup. I'll have to get up and go cook it...

[IronTomato]

* IronTomato sends Sappho some soup, green tea and a cookie

You can dooooooo eet

[Sappho]

* IronTomato sends Sappho some soup, green tea and a cookie

You can dooooooo eet

Thank you!

Managed to cobble together some soup which is cooking now. Ginger, carrots, Chinese cabbage, and chili pepper with sesame seed oil and noodles. I thought I had mushrooms but they went bad. : (

Also drinking some homemade grog. One of the nice things about this country is when you get sick, everyone tells you to drink. This one is hot water, ginger, lemon juice, honey, and about two shots of spiced rum. It makes you feel better one way or another. Maybe I'll manage to write something today after all...

[Caz]

800 words so far. Headache is trying to pain me to death.

All I've written so far today is a huge, tedious info-dump about a city that's blatantly ripped off LotR's Minas Tirith.

Kill me now.

[Parsely]

And, inevitably, I'm sick. And I live alone, so I don't even have anyone to make me tea. : (

Fund my kickstarter for the intercontinental tea cannon. Can deliver hot tea from point A to anywhere in the world within seconds, as long as you're okay with replacing your roof whenever you make an order.

[Sappho]

Okay, I'm trying to write, and I've realized that I'm sick of writing in the first person as this character. She's getting on my nerves, and I'm so incredibly limited in what I can write. It's so much easier to write in the third person. I know I should push myself and see this through to the end with the style I started with, but... Ugh.

[Parsely]

1. Perish the character and replace it with someone more likeable.
2. Disguise as clever twist.
3.
4. Profit!

[Sappho]

Well, the entire story is told directly from the point of view of this girl. There's almost no dialogue, and no other characters except some ghosts, her grandfather, and one teacher who has made only one appearance. I definitely don't want to write from the point of view of any of those. At this point in the story it would be easier to simply write in the third person, but I can't think of a way to do that and have it make sense. Worst of all, the story appears to be going nowhere. I've just been making it up as I go along, with absolutely no plan for what would happen. What is happening is that the whole story is falling apart already. I thought it would be a lighthearted selection of anecdotes from this girl's life, but it's all going very badly. Everything is suddenly very serious, and I can't think of a way to fix it without deleting the last 2000 words or so -- and I can't do that, because I'm posting it all on my blog as I write it. The whole point of that was so that I'd be forced to go forward, not backward, but now I wish I could go back...

I know everyone's been busy with their own writing, but is there anyone who's been following my story as I've written it? Any thoughts? Is it really going sour, or is there a way to save it? As a short story it might be fine, but I'm starting to feel like there just isn't enough here to make a novel out of it... And now I've got the grandfather concerned that she might be schizophrenic, and I've got myself concerned about the same thing, and I can't imagine anything happening now other than him sending her off to a shrink who will surely put her on meds and... this is not the story I was planning to write. : /

Also, I'm still sick, and I want to go to sleep now.

[Parsely]

I can take a look if you want. Is that the thingy in your sig?

[TD1]

And, inevitably, I'm sick. And I live alone, so I don't even have anyone to make me tea. : (

I didn't write at all yesterday, exhausted by the conference on Saturday. Now I haven't written today. Can't miss work tomorrow either. I should rest... But I should write... Started out so strong, now I'm falling behind.

This happened last year too. I managed to succeed in the end after several 4000-word days. Ugh, even typing this is killing me. I want soup. I'll have to get up and go cook it...

:/ Get well soon! Best just to soldier on with it.

[Darkmere]

@Sappho

Keep the faith, I know you can pull through. One word after the other, same as the rest, eh? I've found hot showers help clear my head and get me back on track. Have you considered letting the ghosts interact with grandpa directly and spending some time seeing how he copes with it? You could have Princess be in the room so he can't just blame it on her, then have them both try to cope with it together.

* * *

And... I hate when people do this but I need to brag. I'm at 19,700 words right now, pushing strong now that the action in my story is picking up and I've got more characters in play being pushed out of their comfort zones. At the rate I'm going I'll end up with something like 80,000 words' worth of novel at the end and it's going so much better than last year, plus everyone I've showed is pretty enthusiastic with it.