Larocque and Roll

NaNo 2006 Day 5: The christening of the fleet November 5, 2006

(You know what I hate about WP? No spell check.)

Today was a tough writing day. Hell, it was tough getting out of bed this morning, what with the cold, rainy weather outside and my warm, snuggly bed being all warm and snuggly. However, the demands of my bladder made it impossible to extend this snuggle-fest for very long, and once I’m up, I’m up.

The trouble with the story I encountered was that I hit a part of the story that I could do one of two things: sweeping generalizations now and details later, or details now and a quick recap later. I decided to take the middle way - some detail now, more detail later because I’m still fuzzy on certain aspects of the plot later on. But even the general details I needed to write about today - ship names and sizes, crew sizes, crew names, etc. - wasn’t easy. What I should have done early on was make a map of who does what and where so I could have posted it somewhere in front of me to refer to at times like this. But again - writing the outline while dealing with trick-or-treaters = not very productive. My bad. There was also the small matter of having to write a Q&A session some of my characters were attending. I really didn’t feel like coming up with something that detailed or long, so I cheated by saying stuff like, “people were asking questions about x, y, and z, and then someone asked about this that and the other” and so on.

The fun challenge I had today was coming up with names - of people, ships, and places. I have several galaxies named after the actors from Kids in the Hall, and a couple of ships named after TV shows (Jericho, Oz, and Smallville.) Then there’s Big Bertha, which I’m dying to use somewhere, and Kong, which may go back on the reserve list.

However, the best news is that I’m still ahead, if only slightly. Here’s to being able to sustain this kind of momentum.