Day 12 - keeping score #NaNoWriMo

I am rather dependent on dialogue at the moment but it gets me through the difficult times, just to have characters sit around chatting, and discussing what is going on.

Have turned the corner on 20k words, which is always satisfying (why do round numbers please us?) so am still on par for the course, at the moment.

The second week can be tricky, from previous experience, so the game is to stay steady, and plod on.

I have spent very little time actually on the NaNo site, in forums, etc.

Rather like Facebook, these can prove as much of a distraction as a help...

Here's my profile - and this is the part about this novel.

Day 11 - Scribble, Scribble, Scribble...

I spent some time today with the corkboard, setting up some chapter and scenes to do.  I also did quite a bit of research, and stuck that in the folders for reference. Wrote some words, too.

The current game plan is to start revealing which team each of the players represents, in terms of secret groups, brotherhoods, allegiances, religions, politics and other alignments. Hopefully that can lead to more complications...including, perhaps, revealing people with more than one face, or mask, double-agents, and all that, so eventually we don't know whose version of the story to trust.  The unreliable narrator?

Scrivener's cork board view

"Another damned thick book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?"

Day Eleven - moving the scene to the countryside

I am only a couple of hours into Day Eleven of NaNoWriMo, so to be a few hundred words up, with several ideas bubbling is very satisfying.

I have decided to move my heroes to the country - on the run, but not in haste - so I can enjoy the Hacienda and the cork forests, and all that.  It's a contrast to the city, and a moment of tranquillity before I start confronting them again (throwing rocks).

I think the really scary baddie has to come in now, and he is going to begin as a surprisingly sophisticated beast, perhaps conning his way into the Archive using the stolen electronic pass, and a great deal of authoritarian body language.  I want him to be intelligent, not just a butcher, because I think it is scarier.

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/old-cork-oak-tree-andalucia-spain-peter-zoeller.html

Meanwhile, on the cork farm, their host is a lapsed aristocrat, a modern, who treats all his workers as equals - but still very rich, respected, connected - a useful resource for the goodies on the run.

Day Ten - A Golden Apple

I have been cruising for the last couple of days, and wanted a temporary book cover, so am using a photo of an enigmatic door that Mick and I found in Seville all those years ago. We came across it at night, but never managed to find it again, so considered it a door to another world - something about that daunting mediaeval door, and the mystery of the missing door knocker (assuming there once was a pair).

It's still not the snappiest of titles (the generic title for this kind of conspiracy thriller has the shape "The Mozart Conspiracy", "The Aristotle Puzzle", "The Atlantis Dilemma", etc.)

Still, I might be able to weave in the theme of Eris, the Golden Apple, temptation, vanity and greed; also the fruit of immortality...

I have noticed, though the plot seems to be emerging, that I didn't choose to give my hero those skills that these type of heroes usually have - ex-SAS, or whatever.

In fact, I started with a tough female protagonist with a male sidekick, which was slightly ignoring the template, so perhaps I change her nationality, and give her a background in (say) the Israeli Army, or something.

Dunno.

Maybe just a hobby of martial arts.  I think it is important that the goodies have some nasty skills too - just like in wrestling - the goodies try to fight fairly, but the baddies keep cheating, so eventually the goodie snaps, fights dirty even better, and the crowd are on their feet.

A bit like life really.  Have you noticed how the goodies in war zones always blame the escalation on the others?  In asymmetrical warfare the rules go out the window, and suddenly we are torturing and maiming and all in the cause of peace.  Even Obama wants to "fight for peace" (sigh).

Anyway, forgetting real life, in this context it is crucial that the goodies finally outwit the baddies...but we're a long way from that at the moment.

In the old writing adage "Get your hero up a tree, throw rocks at him, get him down again" I have only just my heroes up a tree, and will begin throwing rocks right now.  That leads to chases, hide-and-seek, and all that.

Day Eight - NaNoWriMo with Scrivener

This year I decided to take up the challenge again, after one year off, just because I wanted to really try to do the whole thing using Scrivener.

So far I have really enjoyed the process of being able to chuck research pics and words into handy folders, to use the cork board to move stuff around, put scenes into chapters, etc.

And I am sure I haven't discovered all the bells and whistles yet, so it becomes something to do when ideas dry up. I may even be falling into the pit of playing with the toys, rather than writing the words, but I think it will pay off as time goes by.

Even if I failed to complete I will have learned something useful, which I can apply to the autobiography, and any other writings I have to do, so it is the same kind of investment as learning to touch-type was.
I am a thousand words off the pace, but I have the whole evening before me, so it is totally possible to do.

Day Seven - Steady pace

I have had a couple of great ideas, although they will need moulding into something sharper in outline, but they at least form alleys of exploration for research and stuff.

I have settled on Christopher Columbus as my 'famous person from the past' - because Velazquez just doesn't interest me enough - he's no Leonardo.  Too much religious art, and not a hint of Goya or Bosch to lighten it.  And Columbus has not only all that wealth to play with, or be challenged for, but he also has all kinds of conspiracy stories around him - claiming he is not Italian in origin but Greek, Catalan, Portugese, a Spanish Jew, etc, etc.   And he does have a rather odd signature, that no-one understands
.

I have managed to fill most of the roles that I outline originally, so I guess I need to get on with throwing them at each other, killing a few innocents, riling up the goodies, and emphasising how unpleasant the baddies can be.  They've been a little comic or incompetent up until now, so time to turn up the heat.

6 - mosaic of the prosaic

When I find myself having difficulty with linear progression, I change to the film-making model.

Just to put words down - this can be the time to

• sketch portraits of the characters and their relationships to each other
• describe each of the locations in a little more detail
• simply to jump to a scene you are looking forward to writing.

Fitting them all together, later, is a job for the Scrivener cork board, when you can move things around, and piece them together, and trim and fit.

As the challenge, now, is simply to write, then getting words down is the game.

Jose and me in the Poligono Sur

As ever, with these kind of writing projects, I think back to my friend Mick - and, as it happens, one of our great adventures involved discovering Sevilla, back in 1985, and totally falling in love with the place.  We visited once together, then later I returned on my own, and met Jose, who led me into the back streets, safely enough, and allowed me to glimpse the life of the Gitanos.  He loved all the magic and juggling and everything like that.

A year later, and quite a bit richer, I was back

Then I went back to the UK for some film work, which gave me enough money to return and really have a party.