Robust McManlyPants on Average Display

20,175 words. Whewf.

This year I’m writing a noir thriller kind of thing called Particular People about a gay insurance agent caught up in the life of a famous client who is a closet-case. It’s set in Nashville, TN, in 1983 and the title is an allusion to the old trick the queer community used to use to identify one another: when they were sitting at a bar, so it is said (and as often it’s said to be untrue), they would leave out a pack of Pall Malls so that the motto - Wherever Particular People Gather - would be visible.

I’m up to 12,923 words as of tonight. I’m only barely keeping pace with the normal progression of 1,667 words/day but tomorrow afternoon there’s a write-in at a coffeehouse around the corner from me so I plan to get way out ahead of the curve while I’m there.

I am linking to a brother’s awesome photoblog of the Annex’s demolition for two reasons:

1) because, as stated, it is awesome and
2) so that Aaron will believe it’s really happening.

Sadly, the age of Photoshop renders (2) a futile effort, as “photos” are no evidence at all anymore.

Also: AnnexCam!

I have finished The College Town. It’s a short story about a small college town on the night the zombies attack. It is extremely silly, but at least I finally finished it.

I wrote a lot this weekend and that always leaves me feeling pretty awesome.

I’ve completed the first draft of Tooth and Nail, my very silly little novella about redneck vampires in Western North Carolina. It can be read in PDF format if you’re interested.

Now I’m really tired of staring at the computer screen.

Jeez, did anyone get the license plate on that month?

December has flown by. I’m facing some family dramas with my mountain relatives I’m not quite ready to discuss and some having over-booked myself in the activities-and-travel department in the next couple of weeks. On Monday I drive up to Asheville and back on Tuesday. On Friday I drive up to DC and back on Sunday AM sufficiently early for The Boyf to get to work by half past noon. A week from Thursday I fly up to Philly for a long weekend for GC. In the meantime I’m still trying to wrap up the last couple of chapters of Tooth and Nail and today I need to finish my shopping.

I did man up and go hold vigil at Maria’s last night for Yule, however. I’m exhausted today but had a fantastic time sitting by the fire and catching up on Order of the Stick and telling and hearing stories. At 7:23 we were all out on the front lawn, facing east, staring at grey clouds that covered the sky. Still worth it.

I crossed the 50K word mark a week in advance of the deadline though I still haven’t finished the story. One more chapter, maybe two, and an epilogue. Period. I’m estimating 60,000 to 65,000 words as the final final count. Regardless, year five has been a success. I feel much better about this one than I did last year’s.

On a completely unrelated note, my gallery gets a fair amount of comment spam I have to go in and delete every now and again. These are almost universally from .cn addresses advertising two things at once. As such, tonight I received a comment spam (sadly, now deleted) which tied the concept of Tr/ama/dol together with Castlevania and my first thought on reading it was, Wow, that sounds awesome!

36,530 words. I had 37,000 as today’s goal but I ended after a chapter I really enjoyed writing and decided it was better to stop there than squeeze out 500 words I might not enjoy or that might keep me writing past the start of tonight’s Karazhan raid.

Oh, World of Warcraft, my dark tempter.

The lesson I have to re-learn every year: Cup a Joe’s on Hillsborough Street is a never-ending freak show where no one has any respect for personal space. Also, I aged seventy five years in a moment when my first thought upon seeing the hottie barrista with his jeans sagging down was, He should pull his pants up.

I’m terrible at updating anywhere - here or NaNoWriMo - but I’m past 29K words. My goal for tomorrow is to hit 37K.

I went back to Ma Bell today for a potluck lunch in honor of my old boss’ imminent departure for other, greener pastures. I got to see my absolutely favorite old co-worker, hang out, gossip, chat. I had a really, really good time.

For some reason - many reasons, among them my eternal shyness, the knowledge that at least a couple of them have found and have read this blog in the past, weird issues I have about maintaining the boundary between work and personal lives thanks to having watched my father flirt with breakdowns and ulcers and stress and anger when work refused to retract its fangs - I was absolutely terrified to go. I dunno. How dumb is that? I got to see a lot of folks I haven’t seen in a year, people I was glad to see. Most of them I got to exchange about two sentences with, but it’s good to see them anyway.

I don’t open up a lot at work. The Boyf and my friends know me as garrulous and gregarious Michael, chatty and whimsical and eager to crack a dumb joke Michael. Workmates tend to know me as Vulcan Michael, who really does just want to get some tickets done and get some people out of his fucking face. That’s something I’m going to have to get over, eventually. It was, after all, when I really think about it, my father’s own desire to build that wall and save the best parts of himself for us - and he did and continues to do so, being a garrulous and gregarious father, philosophical, kind, compassionate, intellectual, relaxed with us in a way he never could be with or at his work - that drove him to stretch himself so very thin trying to straddle both lives at once.

Weirdly, this brings me back full-circle to NaNoWriMo. One of the characters in my novel this year, an old vampire who is the annoying and creepy funhouse mirror version of Withrow in terms of his own philosophies of isolation and secrecy and retreat, lives in the plant where my father worked in reality for 35 years. The plant is gone now; in the novel it’s slated to be torn down at some indeterminate point in the future.

It was a factory that made X-ray film and over the decades my father worked there the production areas - the actual factory floors - operated in total darkness 24/7. There were a few times, when I was fairly small, that I got to go visit him at work on bring-your-spawn-to-work type days. I would have to hold his hand and be led around in the dark. There were tiny red lights up at the corners of any room or hallway that, he told me, people would get used to. They could see just fine in there, eventually. He would walk in there every day, live in darkness for 10 or 12 hours (he worked a crazy-ass swing shift schedule), in total isolation from the world.

When people went around corners in those areas, the custom was to announce one’s presence by quietly saying, “Watch, watch!” as one neared the corner. That way, another could know to get out of one’s way. These days, in reality, I go to work and spend 8 hours in a room that’s nearly pitch-black, more lit by computer monitors than anything else, kept that way because the company thinks it looks cool. I sometimes fight the urge to say, “Watch, watch!” when I round a corner.

Yeah, I’m going to have to get over that Work Michael/Home Michael thing some day.

20,980 words. Aw yeah. I love a Saturday of writing.

11,795 words, which is behind the 1,667/day standard but it’s probably OK given I’ll hit 13K at lunch tomorrow and the halfway point sometime this weekend or Monday night.

3,435 words. Some of them don’t count (IMO) because they’re chapter titles and quotes and such. Still, not bad for Day 1.

In the format of Character: Beginning State, Story, End State.

Withrow:

The Page of Swords
The Ace of Cups
The Four of Coins, Reversed

Roderick:

The Page of Swords, Reversed
The Ace of Wands
The Heirophant

The Transylvanian:

The Hanged Man
The Page of Cups, Reversed
The Ten of Wands

And with that, it’s 1:04am on 1 November, 2007, and I have a prologue to write. I love this month.

Two quick things: I finally worked up the nerve to link my 2006 NaNo, even though I hated it upon its completion. I re-read some of it tonight and actually really like the first couple of opening scenes and couldn’t gin up any huge objections when I grabbed scenes or pages at random from later in the book. 2006 was the year I went on a noir bender and actively tried to imitate with my NaNo as an extended writing exercise; in short, mixed results but what the hell. Maybe it’s a disaster, I can’t tell, but it’s my disaster. I describe it on my NaNoWriMo page as “a sort of urban Edwardian fantasy noir detective adventure mystery” which should tell you right away that large quantities of caffeine produce activity but not focus.

Speaking of NaNo, the second thing is that I know what I’m going to write this year. It’ll be a murder mystery involving a bunch of redneck vampires and starring Withrow (from a short story I wrote earlier this year on a lark). Tentative title: Tooth and Nail. Too cheeseball, or just cheeseball enough? The scene I’m most looking forward to writing is Withrow’s second visit to the abandoned X-ray film factory based on the X-ray film factory where my father worked for 30+ years. Ridiculous-But-True Fact: the plant, which operated in total darkness 24/7 due to the unexposed film everywhere, is/was in Transylvania County.

47,800+ words, still writing, knee-deep in what may turn out to be the big climax. I will finish this before I sleep tonight. Damn it. I will. Even though, for the fourth year in a row, I’m looking at what I’m writing and thinking, Gods damn it all, will these people shut up? Talk talk talk! Shoot somebody for crying outloud!

Update:  OpenOffice says it’s 51,429.  www.nanowrimo.org says it’s 51,355.  Either way, I’m done.  So what if the denouement is like a page and a half?  Fuck the denouement.  Fuck it right in its pompous ear.

Who knew I’d ever be asking for Neal Stephenson’s sloppy seconds?