of pots, wall-guns and horse-trades

[alenxa_classic]

kelson and I refer to visiting a restaurant lavatory as "bringing the food" or "bringing the check." It just seems as though having something to do triggers other, marginally compatible things to happen. And right now, I could use a few things happening. In that spirit, and the spirit of not being a completely useless slug, I've decided to turn June into NaNo II: Not the Sequel.

I re-read the contiguous part of the thing on Sunday and discovered it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd remembered. It's not as draggy, for one, and I caught some instances of characters doing stuff I thought I'd need to edit them into doing. (That actually made me squee.) I did write a bunch of notes on what to fix, though, especially in light of the world-changes I've been making for the last six months and how much socially and culturally eye-opening material I've been reading. I also discovered the second oddest find/replace error I've ever caught myself doing, wherein about 4 instances of "the" were replaced with "Hm." No clue how.

As of 12:01 am on June 1, I had 52,016 words in the file. About 1800 of those had been added after the official end of the event. And none of them told me squat about what I'd worked out re: getting the prostitute's horse back. Either of the two times I worked it out. o_O (Next time something like this threatens, I'm sure as hell getting up at 2:30 am to write something down about it.) So yesterday was made of alternate frustration and triumph as I weighed scenarios and timing, discovered I could use dialogue I already had even if my POV character wasn't speaking it, and used a complete throwaway detail to solve a major problem. I ended up at 53,510, of which about 1k is now unnecessary and another 1k has been put into line-theft limbo. But since I wouldn't delete it if this were November, I'm not going to delete it now.

I foresee today being used to lengthen pieces of the already-written journey as well as acquiring another party member. The extra travel time didn't appeal to me when trying to create plot, but seeing how much tell there is about character interaction in the later bits convinced me. Sure, people are allowed to talk about other people. But it's better if the audience has enough information to form their own opinion as well.