Blog for budding Sheikhspeares entering National Novel Writing Month 2006

November 24, 2006

No sleep for 36 hours

Well, after an actual night of no sleep - I now haven't slept for precisely 36 hours but that will be remedied within seconds - I have only managed to do another 2033 words in the past two days, bringing my total up to 44477, short of the 45,000 mark that I had really hoped to crack. What I have spent time on is extensive orgnisation and structural changes, because this being a mystery that relies so exactly on Person A knowing Fact X at a spccific time, and Person B meeting Person C because of Fact Y, that it had become impossible to write the later scenes without sorting out the earlier ones. I massively changed the start of my book, it's still dire, but thanks to snow white the first line is starting to take shape. Excerpt (from much further on, please excuse typos I can barely function right now):

Pat - definitely Pat, she was the more assertive of the two - got up and said she was going to find out what the "commotion" was all about. Before Phoebe could advise her to stay still and wait, a restaurant manager came over and instructed them to stay put. "This is a small dispute," he said. "It will pass soon. Can I get you more fruit cocktail, or some...?"

Gunfire cracked across his words. One of the men had fired into the ceiling. It was posturing, but the fact they had live weapons was enough for Phoebe. She took charge of the tour members on her table. "Everyone get under the table. It's probably nothing but let's not risk it." Oddly, she wasn't scared. Her heart was beating but it was with adrenalin. Any anxiety was only for their fear. Another shot was fired, this time ending in the tinkle of glass. The grimy chandelier was at last being put out of its misery.

There was more shouting, all in Arabic with the hotel manager also shouting Hindi instructions to some of the staff. Eventually the noise subsdied, though not the knife edge atmosphere. Margaret was clutching her handbag to her chest, white and terrified. Pat looked grim, and the Scots and Germans weren't much better. The Japanese girls were clutching one another. Only the Russian looked slightly bored by the whole affair.

5 Comments:

Blogger snow white said...

You see, this is why I have rejected genre, plot, proper narrative and character development. I no longer care about all of these, just the November 30 deadline. I'll fix everything else later.

24 November, 2006 10:47

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What is this for? It reads like a short story that you might find in Woman's Own.

24 November, 2006 11:42

 
Blogger secretdubai said...

Try the links on the right, they will explain more about nanowrimo. It's about quantity rather than quality, trying to pump out a 50,000 word novel in one month.

24 November, 2006 16:25

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

SD - From the excerpts I've read your writing sits nicely within the mystery genre, I've no idea why anon at 11:42 made the Woman's Own association it doesn't read like that at all to me. Congrats for getting so many words down, hopefully I'll see the book in the shops one day.

24 November, 2006 17:03

 
Blogger secretdubai said...

Thanks anon! I make no secret of the fact that I'm trying very much to write a "cosy"-style mystery, so in actual fact the readers of Woman's Own would probably be my key audience.

I had some hopes in the very early, very deluded days of doing something Evelyn Waugh-esque, with a bit of black humour, but over the month I've grown to accept my sad fate as being several degrees less sophisticated and amusing than Enid Blyton. But I loved Enid Blyton's stories when I was six, so...

;)

24 November, 2006 17:14

 

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