Random Thoughts, Notes, & Incidents

This weekend I made it past 15,000 words in my NaNoWriMo novel. That brings the completed work just past the mid-way point in my outline. Yeah, I know - That means I'm heading for a 30,000 word novella, but that's okay with me.

Most of what I'm writing now is dialogue and key action - I've got to go back in December and January to flesh out a lot of the descriptive passages and fill in a few rough spots, plot-wise -- It will hit 50,000 words or above ... eventually.

When I started this NaNoWriMo madness I decided that I'd rather have a good and complete 30,000 story that could be turned into a novel, than 50,000 words of garbage. Of course, if I had the time to write 50,000 words in a month, I'd like to, but I'm just happy to be making it this far, and still have a job.

An interesting theme that has come up on the NaNoWriMo discussion boards is dead animals. It started with one woman's discovery of a dead squirrel, and has continued with other posters.

Well, yesterday, Leslie and I were looking at this house up in the Santa Cruz mountains - a real "fixer upper" (more like, light a match and run) - and in the doorway to the basement was a mummified gopher.

Not a freshly dead gopher, but a dried out, well-preserved, long dead gopher - One that the various wild and domestic dogs and cats of the hills failed to eat. Not even any insects came to claim it.

While Leslie considered whether or not it was a sign about whether or not we should purchase the house, I realized it was a sign that I needed to be home, NaNoWriMo-ing.

Now, how to work the mummified gopher into my story...