Nano continued

While my word count is certainly coming along nicely I have found myself struggling to get through this story. July (Julnowrimo) was so much easier! I blame the fact that I'm just that much more interested in the world of The Obsidian Shifters. By comparison Temerity seems like a rather drab world (and the characters aren't as fleshed out which only adds to the difficulty in writing about their adventures). But all that is perfectly acceptable because this is Nanowrimo – I'm not aiming to write the best novel ever, I'm just trying to get this story out of my head (to clear the way for the editing process for Obsidian Shifters) and have fun in the process.

I wish November was in September. My social life here in South Africa has gone in overdrive ever since Nano started – I've been to the kick-off party, two write-ins (so far) and more is on the way. It's sad to realise that now when I'm finally making friends I'll leave soon. Next weekend? Saturday write-in with the same bunch of wonderful people I've spent last weekend with and on Sunday it's time for the half-way party (together with the wrimos (Wrimo (n): A person participating in Nanowrimo) of Pretoria – we'll be meeting in a Mugg & Bean in Midrand). If it's good to be around people (roughly) my age ... it's even better to be around other writers. In fact, it's amazing. Write-ins work better than I had expected, too. Yes, you 'waste' quite a bit of time just chatting away and socialising... but even so both Saturday and Sunday have been days with the highest word count since starting Nano (almost 4000 words on those days). Word wars are partially to blame (Try to write as many words as possible in 15 minutes time! It's like a race (with the only prize being the words you write, so everyone wins!). Michelle (aka 'WinterWhite') has been amazing – because I don't have transport she agreed to take me to the write-ins! I'm so happy I don't have to miss all the meetings. Writing is a lot of fun as it is, but having the actual – real life – support to keep on going even when it's starting to get tough has added a whole new dimension to Nano.

So to share some more pictures:

Sunday group


Writer's fuel! (Halloumi + sweet red pepper wrap)


Saturday

To summarise some of the things my main character had to go through, so far:
* Buried a relative
* Was drugged and semi-abducted
* Joined a rebel force
* Saw a man die in front of her eyes
* Tried and failed to convince a friend-possibly-turning-lover to stay with her
*Had a very narrow escape and had to resort to ... drastic measures to dissuade a member of the religious order of the Idaites to follow her.
* Came very, very close to falling into a stream of human waste.
* Gave away food tickets to a bunch of pre-teens that mugged her party at the market
* Insulted a man in front of his mother's eyes – without realising the woman was his mother (and her friend)
* Found an excuse to leave a drunk guy and his son behind with a crazy barman
* Had to transcribe an old map (first from the Jirandean script to the New Idaite form of writing, then try some homophones to get the real message)
* Lost two beautiful and perfectly good Fire Prints in the process of stealing boring volumes of Idaite history and plans
* Contact another nation's leader (ok, her superiors did that, but still) to ask for some help in their fight against the Idaites
* Deal with declining numbers of their Freedom Army and try to fix this

Some random observations I've noticed about my stories:
* Somehow my characters like to eat, a lot. And I enjoy writing about what they're having. In less than 25k words I've managed to mention porridge at least three times, soup or stew at least twice and... Did I mention my rebels have their home in a basement under a bakery?!
* Dye makers. If I need a random profession for someone, they turn out to be a dye maker. I have a family of them in Obsidian Shifters and now my main character's grandma was one, too.
* I like names starting with the letter T. I actually used the name 'Tera' in both Obsidian Shifters as well as Temerity. I had to rename Temerity's Tera to Denla (because I also have a Tesza and Tobi – too many two-syllable T-names, oops!)
* From my writing you can't tell I'm interested in languages. Just kidding, I've mentioned 'adenoidal' voices, have a character with a strong accent + 'strange' intonation, another character that sounds a bit off because of 'long disuse of the language that was once so familiar to her' (she left the country as a child, apparently – so she sounds outdated and a bit too formal). Oh, yes and I based the test to join the rebel force on useless language skills. That's just silly. Most 'See I'm a language student!!!"-thing I did though? Make a list of my character's names, country names etc. In IPA. (Because I might forget that Jirande is /dʒi:'rɑndə/ or Niroh /'ni:ro/ Idaie and Idaite are /i:'dajə/ and /i:də'ait/)
(And that's ignoring the fact that writers usually kind of like languages. It's your main tool, after all.)

School and other things
I'm going to Japari on Mondays and Thursdays now (to evade the long wait after school on Wednesday when my cousin plays his cricket matches – they last forever!). This also gives me some time on Wednesdays to work on another project I've started... (Lots of projects going on at the moment.)
This week I just try and keep the grade sevens quiet during exams.

I also finally managed to get my stamp (which turned out to be a sticker, oh well. How disappointing.) in my passport at Home Affairs. Another trip on Wednesday fixed the problem – I got lucky and arrived just as they were letting the people coming for collection inside. They then took our receipts (scary! Because that meant I had to stay there until... well, whenever they would decide to return my receipt or give me my sticker.). I got a fright when the security guard started to hand out receipts and called 'my name'. It turned out to be someone else (a guy, too) with a name like 'Charidza' ... Well, he had to go back home and wait another week or so because his application was still pending. Mine, however, was ready and after another hour or so I finally got my extended visitor's permit! The 'all clear'-sign. I can go home on December 13th without any problems. I'm looking forward to it.

My NaNoWrimo Adventure.

Seeing as I will probably be rambling on and on about my story, word count and the whole NaNo experience during November I figured an introductory post would be a good thing.

In its most basic terms NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is just this; a challenge to write a novel (defined as 'lengthy work of fiction') of 50,000 words during the 30 days of November. It's what I'll be doing during November.

I first heard about NaNoWriMo several years ago, upon which I immediately signed up. I never even wrote a single word. In July 2010 (there are events like this year-round, but NaNo is the biggest) I tried once again for 'JulNoWriMo'. I wrote 50,427 words on a (still incomplete) fantasy novel titled The Obsidian Shifters. I loved it. Pushing yourself, going all-out in trying to come up with a decent plot, seeing your characters evolve and start to decide which way they want to take your novel (instead of what you, as their creator, had so carefully planned), the stress, the utter elation upon reaching the magical 50,000. I loved all of it.

This time, I wasn't planning on doing NaNo - I still need to finish 'The Obsidian Shifters'. (And for NanoWriMo you have to start a novel from scratch - finishing another manuscript isn't allowed). In the end though, I decided to write something new for Nano and try to finish The Obsidian Shifters in December/January.

So what will I be writing this time? Temerity is another fantasy story, but this one has less magic (and not enough technology to be called 'science fiction', although it might be closer to that than to fantasy). My 15-word summary (or less, mine is 14 words... It's a thing we do on the forums, minimalist summaries) is "Girl joins Freedom Army to send invading Idaites home, oh and solve personal grudge." More information, including a longer synopsis can be found at my profile page.

November is going to be a frantic, fun-filled month. The world in which Temerity is set is less complete than the one I created for The Obsidian Shifters. I have a basic plot and chapter summary... But only for 14 chapters and one POV (Obsidian Shifters has over 5 POV characters). I'm hoping this will enable me to get to the end of the story in 50,000~60,000 words, instead of leaving me with a story that's far from complete at the end of November.

Want to hear more about my story? Don't worry, I probably won't be able to talk about anything else starting this Monday.

Yom Kippur and another week gone by

12 weeks left, time is starting to move faster for me now!

Saturday was Yom Kippur, a day of fasting and praying for forgiveness for the Jewish people. As I'm not Jewish myself I fasted for only part of the day (Friday night until around 11 on Saturday) but I did stay away from coffee and I didn't eat as much as I normally would during the day. My aunt and uncle went to the synagogue, I decided to have a little reading marathon myself. Books I've finished since last updating my booklist:

- The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)
- The Way of Shadows (Brent Weeks)
- Specials (Scott Westerfeld)
And a compilation of 3 short 'war stories for girls' (didn't have anything to read and my cousin had this book).

The Book Thief was amazing, and I can certainly recommend this to anyone. In fact, I'm hoping they'll make a movie out of it, because I'd love to see it.

I'm now reading the second book in the Night Angel trilogy (Brent Weeks) and "The Lightning Thief" (I have to confess I have this exciting affair with young adult novels - easy to read, lots of adventure... I love it!).

On Saturday night we visited my uncle's parents to break the fast. We had a wonderful meal of fried fish, different salads (pasta, rice, cabbage) and cakes, kichel (sweet crackers they usually eat with fish - I like them plain) and lemon meringue etc. etc. Very nice!

Oh and have some pictures of our Sukkah! The festival of Sukkot (plural of Sukkah) is coming up, it's a time when the Jewish people remember the time they spent in the desert before being allowed to enter the lands of Israel. You eat in the Sukkah (a hut with palm leafs - you have to be able to see the stars through the roof, but it also has to provide shade) and invite people over for meals... It lasts a week!

My aunt painted the scene

Completed:


On Thursday I had the best experience I've had so far. I went with my aunt to collect some money at a client and we chatted to this lady for about 5 minutes. After a short while my aunt decided to introduce me, saying "Oh, this is my niece from Holland!" and you know what the lady said?
"Oh really? Your English is amazing! I didn't hear any accent!" (I know that 'no accent' doesn't exist, but still!). I've heard all sorts of things "You're German aren't you?" (At Japari) and even "Are you Scottish?" (well... no!) but this is the first time that I've heard the 'no accent' comment so I'm insanely happy with that!

That said... I think that while I'm finally starting to get the hang of this bat/bet problem and my th's are starting to feel more natural to me... I still have a long way to go. The 'oo' in 'book' is still hard to get right...
When we're on language related things, could you explain "He had his daughter kidnapped." in two ways? I said this, meaning that 'He' had it happen to him (someone else kidnapped his daughter) my aunt keeps telling me I can't say it like that, because it would mean (and could ONLY mean) that he arranged to have his daughter kidnapped, himself. In my opinion this sentence isn't different from "He had his car stolen" (i.e. it happened to him) but... well, just double checking. I'd say in the kidnapping one it's pretty ambiguous who arranged what, if anything.

Back to South African life...

Summer is still a while away, but the weather has been improving. Yesterday I took a dive and did 21 lengths in our pool. The water is still a bit chilly, but once you're in it it's wonderful! I just need to swim more often, because after 21 lengths I had some trouble lifting myself out of the water at the deep end! Haha... Well, at least it's something that's nicer here than in the Netherlands. Maybe I'll swim again today, I think I should. The South African lifestyle is kind of lazy, because you have to drive everywhere... I need the swimming!

And finally... We managed to get our internet connection sorted out! I'm online using my own laptop (Sephiroth) at the moment and it's such a wonderful feeling to know that whenever I need it, or just want it, the internet is there for me. Even at a max of 376 kb/s. (But hey, we have a pool in our garden! Bet you you can't say that! Even with your super fast internet!) So while I'm waiting for my downloads to finish (at about 10-20 kb/s) I'll just have a cup of rooibos and take a swim.