Leeder's Grain Snippet

Here's a little gift for all of my readers, few as you may be: 

She smelled of the sea, the sweet salty brine of the ocean and the foam of a white-capped wave as it roiled toward the shore. Her hair seemed to have a life of its own, the thin filaments moving with the slightest motion within the room as they reacted to small sounds, flickering about like grass in the wind at the quiet pad of Molly's footsteps as she hesitantly made her way across the room to stand before her.

The woman extended a thin-boned hand as she turned, fingers curling outward and gently sliding beneath the young girl's chin, tilting her head upward and to the side. “Remarkable,” she said, and her voice had a music in it of a kind Molly had never heard before, the low moan of deep waters beneath its softness.

 “What's remarkable?” Molly asked, returning the pooling gaze of her brown eyes.

 “Why you are, young lady,” the woman laughed, and Molly smiled.

A snippet from page 16 of my novel. Currently on day 9 of NaNo, and catching up to the quota! 

NaNoWriMo Day 6

It is the sixth day of NaNoWriMo, at 3am. At present I have fallen massively behind on my word count. The hoped-for quota at present was about 8,333 last night, but today's quota is 10K (10,000), which I doubt I will achieve unless I do some serious word-crunching. I'm currently trying to word-war my way to the correct amount, but it is doubtful that I will reach it in time. Regardless I will try my best, and see how far I can go.

NaNoWriMo day 2

My word count has bumped  up to 2,416 in the past couple of hours, but is still behind for the day's quota of 3,333. Either way, the story is developing right from the beginning in ways I didn't even think possible. For one, my main character has switched back to that spunky little redheaded girl, Molly, as Prian  has yet to be introduced to the story. It's begun rather slowly, starting with Molly's arrival in Cadge Down and moving onward from there as she settles into her life within the village. So far,  the story is going good and I haven't hit any major roadblocks (yet). I'm sure many hurdles lie in the future, but for the moment, I'm going strong (Despite it being 2 in the morning and being half-awake), and hopefully I will reach the proper word count before heading off to sleep for t he night.

NaNoWriMo day 1

And so it begins!

Within the first hour and a half of NaNoWriMo I pounded out 1,222 word, nearly meeting the day's quota of 1,666. As a result I am spending the rest of my free time today resting and recuperating, as a few days ago I contracted Bronchitis. Not the best of ways to kick off the month, but with how much writing I got done in a short amount of time, I have high hopes for the next several days.

Stuff.

Five days, seven hours, thirty-seven minutes and six seconds until National Novel Writing Month begins.

I've decided that today I'm actually going to take the reference material I now have on armor and attempt to draw fantasy-style armor for Prian. If that doesn't pan out, it's researching one of the many books that I took out from the library and word-warring. Nothing of particular interest to post at this point in time, but isn't that how it is most days? Things will liven up during NaNo, I'm sure, and I'll have plenty of posts to come about how six cups of coffee isn't really a good idea and resisting the urge to tear out my hair about the antagonist and so on and so forth.

Countdown.

Six days, four hours, three minutes and forty-six seconds until NaNo begins. I think all this concern over whether I should use this novel concept or not is a result of slowly-festering stress as a result of watching the deadline clock.

NaNoWriMo is fast approaching, and I'm not sure that I'm ready.

Not that anyone ever really is fully prepared, but still. You get the idea.

Indecisive.

I'm still doing Leeder's Grain for NaNo.

My original indecisiveness was brought about by concern over the fact that I have been loosely laying out ideas for scenes (like, this character will do this, I have this image in my head of this character standing there and an overall emotional impression, etc. Nothing solid). The idea that bothers me is that NaNo is centered around the concept of spontaneous prose, as well as starting from scratch. Technically I am starting from scratch because the plot/characters/design overall is a COMPLETE re-vamping of an old story that I'd put together when I was very young, but this bothered me anyway. Due to that, today I had a bit of indecision about whether I should use this story or use the next six days before NaNo begins to come up with an entirely different plot.

Ultimately, I decided that I would remain with Leeder's Grain as my NaNo project, because ultimately I know the plot, I know I would be capable of writing 50k of it (if not more, whereas I have absolutely no semi-solid ideas or scene concepts floating about my head for any 'new' novel), and because I just took out 15 books at the library on mythology/fairytales to research, AND received bucket-loads of information from a friend who is an expert on medieval arms and armor from a variety of cultures, as well as fighting techniques/sword styles, etc.

I now have hundreds of links/books to look through. I doubt my work will be complete with just NaNo, but I think that it is necessary that I work on Leeder's Grain during the course of the month of November. Doing so will result in a workable draft that I can manipulate and refine once my research is complete, and as a result perhaps I will complete this story faster and be able to move on to new projects (and potentially get it published).

And so, Leeder's Grain it is.