The world and the empire

[Amneiger]

23709. xD Yeah, my brain just didn't want to work today. Kept getting distracted and feeling foggy. Maybe it's because I've been putting off homework. Did a bit of it. Woke up this morning hoping to reach 28k, and then get 50k by the end of Sunday. Still reachable! If things start working again. =D

And yes, the VTOL plane will work there. xD It will work perfectly.

[Amneiger]

Hi everyone. =D It turns out that spending five minutes in bed with the lights off feeling bad about my lack of progress today (well, yesterday) was a great motivator. 2:50 am here. 27205 words, so that's 3496 in about three hours. Not bad. Must sleep because I have to get up tomorrow and I need to maintain writing coherency. Will have to take a nap tomorrow. It's nice to know I'm still in the race, kind of. xD I just need to do well the rest of tomorrow.

Oh, and excerpts.

SPOILER: Click to show

What are you doing? J387 said.

You know the thing about processed sugar? said T546 as he bit down on another piece of soft chocolate taffy. It’s a nigh-addictive substance. Our bodies spent all this time evolving to want carbohydrates and sugars because we needed them and they were hard to get, and suddenly there’s this source of sugars that’s just so pure it overloads the part of the brain that takes care of nutritional balance. Sugar, sugar, sugar. It’s like coffee, or chocolate. Wherever those were introduced, the natives went absolutely nuts and the conquistadors and other Europeans walked all over them. I am, in my own unique way, paying homage to history. Anyway, I’m getting my fix right now because there’s not going to be room in my glider for any and they’re not going to have stores carrying it out there. T546 swallowed the chocolate taffy, ripped the wrapping off of a lollipop, and bit down on it. J387 could hear crunching sounds as T546 broke the lollipop into several pieces with his teeth.

I have pretty much no idea whether the bit of history and stuff above about sugar and coffee and chocolate is true, but it was interesting enough to write here. The funniest parts are that in the paragraphs before this I described T546 as wiry and that T546 doesn't actually know if there's anyone he can bribe with sugar or not.

SPOILER: Click to show

J387 opened his inbox and was promptly greeted with a message telling him that three million, two hundred and five thousand and nine hundred sixty-six messages had been returned to their senders because his inbox was full. J387 looked at the remaining two billion, four hundred and ninety-three million, eight hundred and eighty-one thousand and three hundred and two unread messages, told his inbox to save the unread messages that were from his friends and family, and deleted all the other unread messages. Ninety-nine percent of the messages promptly vanished into the ether.

Edit: Forgot to post the excerpts.

[Amneiger]

So my Internet went down yesterday. xD Which is actually good, because it meant that I had fewer distractions and more paranoia to spur me on to write. xD 37279 words, or 13570 words written in all of yesterday.

...You know, I think I can push this homework back just a little further if it means I can reach a silly goal I have in mind today. =D

[Amneiger]

40321 words. The silly goal mentioned earlier was 50k. xD I might have made it if my brain hadn't wanted to concentrate because of all the writing it did yesterday, and also because today I didn't turn off my Internet. xD I did finish the homework, though, because at around noon I realized that my brain wasn't going to be concentrating on writing today anyway, so I might as well put the time to good use. I'll have to finish up tomorrow, this time without turning on the Internet in the first place. The "main" plot, incidentally, is just starting up; most of the things before this was kind of sort of setting up the world. There's a sixty page stretch where Jolis doesn't appear; it's all just J387's viewpoint. This seems sad.

So I guess for the rest of tonight I either try to get a headstart on the 10k I plan to write tomorrow, or play games. (I've actually been trying to avoid reading new books, because they might be too distracting.) Maybe I can get a snack to eat.

[Amneiger]

50667 words. =D I did well today.

In the process, I learned a couple of things about my characters. Jolis doesn't like violence or fighting. J387 was an avid reading of science fiction; I'm planning on him reacting to an explanation for how the magic people came about by saying, "So they're uplifted, then."

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that barring sudden catastrophes I can reach 100k by November 20. I don't know if it will stop at 100k, mind you; I didn't actually put together an ending when I finished the outline, becuase I was thinking that I could just keep going through the logical consequences of everything that happened before and see if I couldn't find a natural stopping point.

Bad things I have done:
I have started writing about (magical) wolves without knowing anything about wolf social systems. I'm almost certainly making a rather large number of errors.
I have spent a few hundred words with J387 going over philosophy with himself instead of actually advancing the plot. Part of it is important because it's part of how he's reacting to his circumstances, but I'm hoping I haven't gone overboard.

I'd post some excerpts of things I'd written over the past few days, but none of them are as good as the excerpts Tamia and Rikku and Craig (and maybe some other people I'm forgetting as well) have been posting.

In any case, time to make backups now.

[Trilly (18426 words)]

W00t, congrats on reaching the 50k mark, even if you still have a lot of story to write yet. ^^ *bows*

[Rikku]

Woah! =D 'grats on 50k, Amnei! I am in awe of you.

[Stephanie (swordlilly)]

I saw via my "Writing Buddies" list that you'd hit 50k. In a week.

...

Oh. My. Goodness! You certainly write fast. Congratulations! And good luck with the rest of your novel - it seems that you have a very lively plot going on.

[Amneiger]

=D Thank you, all of you! It means quite a bit to hear that (and to know that there are people actually watching this thread xD).

Anyway. 52838 today. Did get a fight scene together, though. It was a reasonable scene probably, but it might not actually go on here because of the chunky salsa rule. xD Also, apparently Thursday I don't have to actually go anywhere. This should be useful.

[Amneiger]

54666 words. Spent some time looking at a piece of dialog that didn't feel right and kept trying to edit it to make it work with the characters. Also felt kind of tired; must be from last week. Still planning on trying to get a good day on Thursday.

[Amneiger]

58015 words. Was actually hoping for 60k today, but got caught up trying to write this thing about cookies that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and it also doesn't illustrate the point it's supposed to. I'll fix it later when I think of something better.

Anyone remember the McDonald's coupons I was saving? I've been trying to use them up because they expire next week, and I figured out McDonald's evil business plan with these.
(1.) First, I bought larger items to get the coupons. That got extra money out of me.
(2.) The three food items I got were a breakfast sandwich, a beef sandwich, and a snack wrap. Each of these individually does not constitute a meal, so I would have to pay more to get more food to go with them. And that's more money.
(3.) I'd have to use the coupons, because they promise free food and that invokes my moneygrubber instincts. For other people, it might invoke their "unhealthy food is yummy and I get more of it now, yay!" instincts.

I guess if I used them all at once that would get me a free meal, but they'd still have gotten me to pay equivalent to those food items because I bought larger portions than usual earlier.
I must learn statistics. Possibly by sneaking into McDonald's headquarters and convincing one of their statisticians to teach me. xD

Also, I looked on the NaNo forums and found this rather cute name: Sushimustwrite. It puts me in mind of little round fuzzy sushi moogles typing away with their little feet.

Anyway. Been too long since I posted excerpts of any kind.

SPOILER: Click to show

“It’s like…” she closed her eyes and heard again the chorus of the trees, and then opened her eyes again. “I can hear the trees singing. I can understand them, but I don’t know the words. If I knew the words I could talk to them. But I don’t.”

“Interesting. Rocks are different from trees, dryad. They do not sing. They simply sit there. They feel more as if they had a kind of latent energy within them, a kind of potential that can be tapped and held and released. Golems do not think about how to speak to rocks; they simply order them. Perhaps you are overthinking this. Do not think about how you will speak to the trees. Simply do so.”

Jolis took a deep breath and closed her eyes again. The song of the trees was there again, as strong as it had been. Again she contemplated it. How to speak these words?

She shook the thought out of her head. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about how to speak them. She was just supposed to speak them.

Jolis began to press down into her mind, looking for some sort of instinct that would tell her what to do. The golem had said that she was simply to speak to them. The last time she had learned how to speak, the knowledge had simply been there. Maybe it was the same again?

She told herself to stop thinking again. She concentrated on just reaching deep down into herself.

She almost felt something –

She opened herself and sang a single note.

The note slid into the river of the tree’s song like a drop flowing into a pond. She heard (or was it felt?) the trees start to turn, to see who this new singer was.

But by then she had already dropped it. The new sensation of singing the tree’s words and the surprise of herself doing so had been so strange that she had lost her hold of her new revelation. She felt it slip out of her mental fingers…but it didn’t seem to fall far. She could feel it floating just beneath the surface of her conscious mind, like a leaf that was just out of reach. She could feel instinctively that if she just practiced on reaching that state of mind, she would find the leaf closer and closer, until it was almost beneath her fingertips, ready to pick up and use as needed.

She opened her eyes. The golem was still watching her with his burning eyes. “Well?” he asked.

“It worked!” Her delight at it was almost enough to eliminate her initial fear of him. “I sang! I didn’t sing for long, but I did! I think I can do it now.”

“That is good. You were indeed overthinking it,” the golem rumbled.

It would probably be clearer if I replaced "Overthinking" here with "pushing too hard." I'll fix it in the edits.

SPOILER: Click to show

J387 suddenly noticed that one of the gliders seemed to have broken formation. It was dropping away from the rest of them, heading back towards the ground.

Wait, it wasn’t headed back towards the ground now. It had turned and was heading towards the hospital.

J387 looked at the glider come closer. It took him a little over five seconds to realize that the glider was not headed for the hospital, but was actually headed for him.

There was the internal beep of a new message.

Z219 (2:20:02) :> Changed status from “not here right now, will be back soon” to “Hello, little ants! Eat your heart out, Wright brothers!”

That was quickly followed by another message.

Z219 (2:20:02) :> Hey J387, sorry about not responding. I knew you were in the hospital recovering from the new implant surgery, so I thought I’d keep this a surprise. Anyway, I’m coming to visit you now. How do I look?

J387’s jaw nearly dropped. Dog? Is that you?

Yep. I can fly!

The glider came down to street level and coasted towards him. It pulled up while it was still several buildings away, and J387 saw the wings spin out on ball joints. The glider slowed as it came down the street until it came to a stop in front of him. The glider’s wings were whizzing in a complex figure eight pattern. After a few moments, J387 recognized it as the way that a hummingbird’s wings spun when the hummingbird was hovering.

This is awesome! gushed Dog. J387 had never heard him this excited before. Look at this! I can fly! This is so much more fun than my old dog body! J387, if you try to get me back into that thing when we’re done here I’m going to pick you and drop you from two miles up.

I don’t know, that old body has sentimental value.

You probably don't get this from the excerpts, but I've been spending too much time in J387's viewpoint and not enough with Jolis's. Jolis should be getting more viewpoint, if I can figure out how.

[Amneiger]

I didn't have anything to do today (apparently everything closes around Seattle on Veteran's Day), so I figured I'd get some good writing in. 70341 words, 12326 today.

Bad thing I have done story-wise: Did an infodump on the shadowfolk. I managed to get across what the dyrads and Lupda were fairly naturally, but couldn't think of anything for the shadowfolk. I'll probably think of something for the Sorrels and leviathans, though. The shadowfolk seem to be the most strange of the world peoples.

Almost bad thing I have done: J387 calls the shadowfolk "darkness people." Which is both in character and increases my word count. Hurray!

Other bad thing: I had a character write two letters and wrote out the full of text of each letter. Both had almost exactly the same information.

SPOILER: Click to show

He heard their giggling first. It was a kind of gleeful, chortling thing, like mischievous sprites who liked seeing their pranks result in spilled milk and sudden tumbles and children getting into trouble with their parents. The laughter had started coming from high up in the sky, but it quickly came down towards him.

J387 looked up and saw what looked like two clumps of clouds like cotton balls with small glowing lights inside of them dropping down towards where he was. He decided to keep walking nonchalantly forward, both to give the impression that he might not have quite noticed them yet and so that he would be getting that much more progress in before they inevitably cut him off. Sorrels liked to harass and tease anyone they found; if you didn’t act fun or didn’t stick around, they’d eventually give up and leave you alone.

Both Sorrels suddenly fell down from the sky in front of him as if they had been suddenly dropped there on strings. They bopped up and down as they floated in front of him. J387 came to an easy stop and looked at them both. The two Sorrels looked back at him for a moment before the one on the left spoke.

“Hee huh huh huh huh! What have we here? A strange bipedal thing, not golem not dryad not shadowfolk! How strange. Don’t you agree, Augist?”

“Indeed, Gelony! Yes indeed! What a strange thing you are, stranger! Hee huh huh huh huh! What’s your name, funny colored very tiny ground crawler?”

“I’m not tiny compared to you two,” J387 said casually. Both Sorrels were about the size of basketballs, and were floating somewhere around stomach level.

“Oh, hee huh huh huh huh!” said Gelony. “This one has a tongue! Temper, temper! How tickled we are!”

“Indeed, Gelony? Why is this one so treacherous, as to twist our words upon us, hmm? Hee huh huh huh huh!”

“Dunno,” J387 answered, and he shrugged and started to walk past them.

Both Sorrels shot backwards and zipped around like bouncing balls until they were in front of him again, blocking his progress.

“Why such a hurry, hee huh huh huh huh!” said Augist. “Why not stay and play a while? Hee hee hee huh!”

“Yes, yes, stay and play! Let your cares all fall away! Hee hee hee huh!” Gelony added.

“Sorry, I really got to go,” J387 said. He tried to go around them.

Augist and Gelony both swung around in front of him so that they were blocking him again.

“Such haste! Such need!” chortled Augist. “How funny of you! What great goal are you galloping after? Hee hee hee huh!”

“Nothing in particular,” J387 replied, and he tried to go around them again. Both Sorrels kept pace with him, forcing him to stop short.

“Hee huh huh huh huh!” giggled Gelony. “Why so fast, hee hee hee huh! Your two little legs will snap right off! You should be like us Sorrels and just soar all day, pointing and laughing at tiny silly ground crawlers going on their tiny silly business, hee huh huh huh huh!”

J387 almost started at the mention of flying; it reminded him of Dog, and the Empire, and how just two weeks ago he’d been flying over this exact same mountain. But he didn’t show any of it on his face. “How about I ask you two a question?” J387 said instead. “Why do you two want to keep me here?”

“Hee huh huh huh huh!” said Augist. “Is that really your question? Silly ground crawler! Your questions only show your silliness! We want you here because we feel like having fun? Do you feel like having fun, tiny ground crawler?”

“Sorry, no time.” Instead of trying to around them this time, J387 suddenly started forward as if he meant to walk right through the two Sorrels. He didn’t know if he actually could, but maybe it was possible. Clouds were just puffs of water, right? And even if he couldn’t walk through them because of the magic in their bodies, maybe they’d dodge out of the way.

They did not dodge, and they were not simple puffs of water. J387 felt as if he’d walked right into a pair of ice cold boxer’s gloves. He bounced off of them and stumbled backwards a bit, and in that moment both of them pushed forward, bumping him at a point just at the bottom of his ribcage. He staggered, then fell backwards into a sitting position.

“What was that for?” J387 yelled at them from the ground.

Both Sorrels had already floated down to his new head level. “Because it was so rude of you, hee huh huh huh huh!” said Augist. “Why did you just try to go right by as if we didn’t exist? How inconsiderate! Hee huh huh huh huh!”

“Don’t you think it’s rude to keep blocking someone’s path like that?” J387 responded. He wasn’t expecting a rational answer anymore; these two seemed determined to stay in his path until he either collapsed from staying up late trying to argue with them or lost his temper and did something stupid.

They didn’t disappoint. “Hee huh huh huh huh!” said Gelony. “We weren’t block your path or being rude! We just wanted to invite you to some fun! Hee huh huh huh huh!”

“Aren’t you supposed to let the person being invited go if they say no?” J387 replied. He put his hand on the ground and got up. Both Sorrels rose up with him instead of knocking him down again. He wondered if maybe they’d try to hit him a second time now that he was standing and could actually be made to fall over again. In the meantime, he kept weighing his options. Would a sudden sprint work? Could he use his blowtorch to intimidate them? J387’s Imperial instincts still said that he should try to work this out peacefully and in some kind of manner that benefited both parties, but that clearly wasn’t going to work here. The air seemed to be getting colder and a bit more moist as well; maybe it was because there were clouds down here.

“Let them go? Oh, no! Hee huh huh huh huh!” Augist answered. “They just haven’t realized that they want fun yet! So we ask and we ask and we ask, until they know it and they say yes! Hee huh huh huh huh!”

J387 wished for his field pistol. Chances were excellent that the bullets would just pass right through them, but it might be worth a shot anyway if the cracking sound as the bullet broke the sound barrier startled and distracted them enough for him to make a getaway. The cold and moistness were getting stronger, too. They really were doing something to the weather conditions down here on the ground. All the more reason to get rid of them.

“Well, I don’t know it,” he said. “And I’m not going to know it, not until I finish up what I came here to do. So I’m going to have to go, and maybe I’ll come back later for fun.” His hand reached down towards his blowtorch. At the same time, he realized that he’d made a mistake. He’d run out of good lies to say and accidentally revealed a tiny bit of what he was actually planning. Classic method for pumping someone for information. Keep them talking, and eventually they’d run out of lies and have to resort to truths to fill the space.

“Hee huh huh huh huh! Life is too short for doing things that aren’t fun!” said Gelony. “No staying for fun? How foolish of you!”

“And what do you know about life being short, then?” J387’s hand was just starting to unhook the blowtorch from his belt. In a moment he’d have it clear of the belt and ready to give these two a real good look at some pyrotechnic high-tech fun.

“Life being short? Hee huh huh huh huh! Look behind you!” said Augist. And with that, both of them shot back up into the sky as if they’d been launched there by cannons.

There was the sound of a low, rumbling growl behind him. It almost sounded like the rolling of thunder.

J387 turned around.

Its entire body was made up of black storm clouds. That must have been where the cold and moisture were coming from. The thing behind him had to be at least six meters tall. It had a long, thick body with four legs, each leg ending with four toes, each toe ending in a razor sharp claw. Its head was as big as his torso. Its two nostrils poured out white steam that rose upwards. Its eyes glowed bright yellow as it stared down at him. Its mouth was slightly open, and through its many teeth J387 could see the flickering of lightning.

It was a dragon.

The Sorrels' names were picked by going through my Funny Names file and finding the ones that seemed to fit the most.

[Amneiger]

70580 words, because my lower arms hurt today. I did look back at the excerpt I posted yesterday, and J387 seems unusually trigger happy. I'm going to chalk it up to a headache he had earlier and previous events making him feeling slightly less than sociable.

[Amneiger]

71029 words. Did homework today, and then just lazed instead of having any further excuses. xD Still have a goal of 80k tomorrow, though. It should be possible if I just focus. Current goal is still 100k by the 20th. I still want to push myself as much as I can this year, because it's doing to be difficult to do so next year. I want to see what I can do without having a full 9-5 job.

[Amneiger]

77354 words. Eh. Procastinated for pretty much all of today. I'm probably going to stay up late until I get 78k and then actually go to bed, because I'm feeling a bit tired.