Ohbalto Online Welcome to the new blog. Same as the old blog.

Haven’t You Always Wanted to Rob a Bank?Posted by dhoffman on November 24th, 2008

Finally cracked the 40k ceiling and here we are on the home stretch with maybe, just maybe, a readable story forming beneath our feet.

It wasn’t a great day for writing, I can tell you.  Much weirdness with chimney repairmen fussing around in the basement and on the roof, interesting phone calls and, finally, Chinese food for dinner.

Jessy brought some lamps home with her from Boston.  Nothing too fancy, but now I’ve got one plugged in to an outlet that works on the light switch in my office.  Don’t think that sounds like a big deal?  I’m like a kid with a new toy.

I suspect I’m annoying her flicking the light on and off incessantly.  So it goes.

I believe the word count for today is 1,962, give or take.  Astute observers of my NaNoWriMo.org page will notice that the math is totally out of whack when comparing the blog’s daily word count and the actual count on the page.  Fear not!  I dd a little impromptu math earlier today and I think I’ve trashed somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 words fighting with this area of the story.  Still, it’s not what you write, it’s what you write that’s worth keeping.

On that, I have a small excerpt from today’s words.  I’m trying to give you stuff that won’t spoil things out of context.  This might be a touch of a spoiler but what the hell, I think it all works pretty nicely.

“I told you,” he said as the lid shooshed open.  “The box was Andrew’s.  he used it to store his tools when he wasn’t using them.  His best tools, mind you.  They’re yours now, Nikki.  You’re going to need them.”

“Need them for what?” she said in a low, scared voice.

“To open the safe,” he said.  “Admit it, haven’t you always wanted to rob a bank?”

I’m looking forward to the next few chapters.  I think they’re going to be fun to write.

Reading about WritingPosted by dhoffman on November 23rd, 2008

I need to create an invention that lets you smack people over the internet.  This is not so that I can smack people, no.  It’s so you all can smack the hell out of me when I’m acting like an idiot.

I spent most of the day today thinking about the past two days’ efforts.  I did a lot of writing, Thursday and Friday.  I moved things forward nicely towards where I wanted them to go.  I even followed a thread I might not normally have followed, and thought at the time it was pretty alright.

I was a fool.

Hit me.

That’s (hopefully) all fixed up now.  I threw out something like 4,000 words whole cloth.  Hurt to do it, but there you go.  What I’d been writing was the foundation for the rest of the book and while making those 50,000 words might be nice, it’s all for naught if the words suck.

So, reset the word-clock to about 36,000 and how are you doing today?

For what it’s worth, I think I made a good recovery.  2,586 words today and while, sure, that puts us about 1,500 in the hole, it’s a nice hole to hang out in.  There are good words in this hole, and characters behaving like theimselves, and not like some moronic fever dream I’m going to try and blame this awful side-track on.

I’m going to leave the NaNoWriMo word count gizmo the way it is over there; I’m afraid of confusing it by subtracting words.  We’re at about 38,500 words right now, in case anyone cares.  And plugging along nicely.

Unless I toss it all again tomorrow.  Isn’t reading about someone else writing fun?

Brats?Posted by dhoffman on November 22nd, 2008

So, after much subtraction (I have a separate file I keep this stuff in just in case I want it some day), we’re a hair under 40,000 and our total word “gain” for today is 1,586 words.

I think I wrote more like 5,000 words, though. So it goes.

Should crack 40k tomorrow without breaking a sweat. It’s funny, actually: I went through hell and back today working out just what I needed to do, found Nikki fighting me the whole way, deleted a TON of text and when I got back to things about an hour ago, it was like she threw the damned door open and said, “keg’s inside, brats are on the grill, let’s do it!”

Ah, women . . .