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Yesterday something out of the ordinary happened. On any given weekday around noon, you can find me tucked away in my little corporate cubicle, munching on a moderately-priced microwavable meal while browsing the news online. While the break from work feels great, my daily routine is anything but exciting. I suppose that's what made yesterday stand ( Read more... )

Final Rough Draft Word Count: 58,976

Somniverse ended exactly as I planned, though it took a few detours I never expected. The end of the novel was actually inspired by a song. I was standing with my friend Todd at the Mika concert at the Riviera in late October, and Mika began singing one of my favorite songs - Happy Ending. I knew then and there ( Read more... )

Word Count: 56,371

Tonight was the night - I wrote Somniverse's last words...not its final words, mind you, but the last words in the story. I still need to go back tomorrow during the 14 hour writing marathon at Open Books and write the flashbacks I added place holders for...I couldn't write them at the time, but knew where they'd go. I had to ( Read more... )

Word Count: 55,397

I'm having a hard time saying goodbye to Somniverse. I'm in the final chapters, wrapping up the story. I have a few flashbacks to go back and write (since I decided to incorporate some back story that way), but otherwise the bulk of the rough draft is complete. And it makes me sad that the adventure is over ( Read more... )

Word Count: 50,434I completely and utterly disregarded the cardinal rule of NaNoWriMo today: I deleted the entirety of the last chapter I wrote last night. I know, I know! But listen ( Read more... )

Word Count: 50,392Yep, I did it - I passed 50,000 words tonight! And I'm just scratching the surface of Act Three. As of the most recent chapter, I had a brilliant idea in how to incorporate some back story flashbacks, and wrote the first one (which seemed weird given I haven't done any yet but wrote it as if I'd been doing it all along). It'll all ( Read more... )

Word Count: 47,010

Somniverse's third act is in full swing tonight after a fight between two characters, a hasty yet needed decision/action, and a push toward the final spiral and a big climaxy finish (and some much needed aftermath explanation). When all is said and done, it's looking to be a short-ish novel finish at 60k-ish words before the ( Read more... )

Word Count: 45,145As an addendum to that last post, it appears I wasn't alone in the whole running on fumes thing. One of my other co-coordinators had a mini-meltdown when we called her from a writing event today (hers actually she wasn't quite to yet in the travel process) about a scheduling issue. She blew up on the phone, then again in person. ( Read more... )

Word Count: 41,321I got a late start writing tonight. I went to the CTA write-in this morning, but no one but Matt and I showed up...and neither of us really wanted to do it to begin with. We have the CTA write-in as one of those "ooo look, it's new, different and not the norm!" kind of writing events writers in Chicago seem to love - except this ( Read more... )