authoring destruction

So last night before I crashed I cobbled together, to the best of my understanding from several different files written during November last year, and November this year, all of the Chant of the Sibyl text. Now, this year I was writing on two stories - Chant, and its sequel True Life, so about 10k of my 50 is True Life. Of the Chant text, some of it is from where I left off last year, and some of it is from the big hole in the middle of what I wrote last year (which I filled in some, but not all of). So far, the thing I unsteadily hazard to call the manuscript for the cohesive novel, is 117 pages in Word (well, OOWriter) and 75k words long. I'm closing on the end of it, and I know generally -how- it ends, but I need to actually get it written, the fine details ironed out, and that hazy chunk in the middle that regards the war taken care of.

Then, the rest of my life editing. I've never written anything even close to this long before. The longest completed story is what... 15 pages or so? The longest chunk of a novel-length piece is like... 27. Chant is very careless in execution so far, but I really like it... I didn't expect to come out of NaNoWriMo with something that I would feel like I could actually sit down and turn into something meaningful, but I honestly do believe this has potential and I intend to pursue it.

Also, next week I'm ordering parts for my computer. On Monday. I know specifically what I'm ordering and how much it will cost, and it will be on its way to me soon. Who wants to play WoW? I'm committed to transferring my main two characters (or at least one) to Dawnbringer off of Lightbringer; we play Horde. I also play sometimes (Horde) on Black Dragonflight, but it's low level.

47! Over! Check my widget, yo! I'm going to make it this year. I'm going to make it I'm going to make it I'm going to make it. What's more? I'm going to have a novel finished by the end of the year. Capping 50k will not close out Chant of the Sibyl, and there's still a chunk (only one really) missing in the middle, but it's so close. I'll be writing the end of the story next week, then it's just a matter of making sure all the connective tissue is in place. It's a mess... GOD it's an AWFUL mess but ... it's here. It's HERE. HOLY CRAP. I've been trying to do this like... my entire life! I have no idea if I'll get it into condition where I can even TRY to get it published... but you know I'm gonna. SHAZAM! WHAT!!

GOD DAMN I'VE HAD TOO MUCH COFFEE AAAAZXZZZZZZZZ

I have just officially surpassed last year's final wordcount for the '07 NaNo attempt. I feel giddy and anxious. I'm a little behind, but at this point, only a day or two. I should be able to catch up to 40 by tomorrow. I'm at very nearly 36 right now and won't likely go to bed until I hit 37. I've written 3k today. Things continue to fall into place unexpectedly; I'm learning every day about the struggle of these characters and the odds the world has presented. And the strange new order of things. This is one of the best feelings in the world.

“Ho there! What's that!” a voice nearer to him cried out in curious alarm, drawing the snap of his attention out of his swirling thoughts. He stopped and looked down the hill, watching the collective of his brethren bewilderedly drop their their skids and turn, raising their hands to mitigate the indistinct glare of the sky.
His senses honed to a sharp enough focus a few moments later to perceive the sound, and the black mass in the sky, at the same time. An ungainly flying shape angled its way through the petticoats of the cloudcover, which was low over the ground but so featureless that it offered little depth-perception to the eye. The staccato of its blades slicing the air to keep it aloft struck Caleb's ears unfettered by the haze that made its shape inconstant in the sky.
Caleb narrowed his eyes for a few moments at the helicopter as it moved inland and then burst into a run back down the slope away from the base. He paused on his way down, skidding to a stop that almost sent him tumbling to grab a bewildered compatriot's shoulder.
(  “You. Find a pair of binoculars,” he gasped, gulping the air, his tired lungs unprepared for the sudden sprint. “Watch that thing as far as you can see it, keep an eye on its direction.”  )
( [True Life] )

One extremely excellent kick-off write in later, and just shy of 3800 words.

This is going to be a very social NaNo for me and I think that's going to make all the difference (in a LOT of things).

Anyone know what's up with the author search on the site disappearing?

The hand of the clock falls slowly from the hour of midnight, through the growing hours of the pre-dawn morning and toward daybreak, but the sun never rises. The clock hangs on a string, from a nail that has stained the wall with rust, like the iron frame of the window to its left. It is a whole, narrow world of oxidized metal that has a look about it not unlike flakes of dry blood, let to char in the air and never cleaned away.

A woman stands in the corner of the room. It is hard to tell whether her eyes are on the window, or the clock, but whatever she is watching she never stirs her gaze from, not even for a second. As if one waiting so desperately for something that they feel even the most brief instant of inattention could ruin everything. Everything. But what is there to ruin in a tiny world made of rust and plaster, a window with no glass, and the sere, papery face of a clock that never ushers in daybreak? Her face is like a bird, her eyes wide and dark, frightened hands paralyzed in the fabric of a shapeless, off-white shift. The cloth, like her skin, is an unhealthy color. It is not dirty... but it doesn't have life enough to look clean. The cloth, the skin, and the woman's face are too tired to be anything. From the hair that grows unevenly from her scalp, to her bony pigeon-toed feet planted on the floor, she is as withered as a dying flower, staring motionless as the hours on the clock melt from midnight into some interminable, unnamed hour.

The hands of the clock never reverse themselves, never speed past all of the hours of day that hope, always, to be birthed into time so that everything can start to move again, start to grow, expect the sun. But somehow, they retrace the same span of hours again and again, working blindly over some unsolved mystery.

More than a few hours waiting for absolution, more than a night waiting for sunrise, it is a winter waiting for spring, an ice-age waiting to be pulled out of eternal stasis by the curve of an elliptical orbit.

Gradually, the streaks of rust that make their way down the dun-colored wall are growing longer and longer, as if the metal itself is slowly bleeding out against the uneven plaster. The hands of the clock begin to slowly fall again; an hour goes by, and then another, and then another. Beyond the window, the featureless night never changes, never shifts in terms of even a single star, a moon to show some phase, some ritual of passage.

The hands of the clock crawl down from that inaugural hour, ticking over every minute, every second with deliberation. They draw down, all the way to the bottom, as if drawn by the earth's very, bitter gravity, and then they stop.

The woman turns her dark, sunken eyes away from clock and casement. Her hands twist deeper into her nightgown. Leaning forward, she crumples slightly toward the floor, as if she is no longer able to keep herself upright. Before she collapses, her eyes boring a hole straight forward, perhaps carving out the very air into pitted space, she splits her lips in an agonized expression.

Her mouth – the opening of her mouth – is as still and lifeless a black as the unending night beyond the iron frame of the window. Slowly, from the aperture in her lips, a stain like old rust spreads hazily over the flesh of her narrow chin and down her throat.



"She is a mother, oh god, she is a mother!"

"Jada, calm down..."

"Where is her child! What happened to her child?!"