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So finishing up my schoolwork took a little longer than expected. By last night I was starting to get worried about not finishing NaNo - it would suck so much to get to 41K but then not all the way to 50K. After a few hours of writing interspersed with other stuff, though, I feel pretty confident. I just have to get a few thousand in before work tomorrow, and then wrap it up at the final countdown session tomorrow night.

This year has been really weird. The only other year I made it I felt like I was writing all the time. This year, I've had whole weeks without even touching the story, and yet I'm almost at the finish line. (I've also blabbed about it to enough people that I can't get through a day without being asked "how's the novel going?" at least twice, which is neat.)

I'm not too fond of what I'm writing right now, as I can't quite decide whether to keep going in this direction or abort completely. We'll see how things go tomorrow.

See you all at 50K, I hope!

---

There were details to arrange, of course, but after that I spent the rest of my evening in my rented attic room, going through the contents of my trunk, trying to plan some sort of arrangement of tricks to perform. The idea of performing in front of a crowd that hadn't stopped of their own volition, but rather had come for entirely different reasons, quite frankly terrified me. I had gone through the same ordeal when it came to singing, but singing was never quite as close to my heart as my tricks were. I hadn't truly been skilled at any of them before living at the circus, granted, but they still were one of the first things I remember – playing with the scarves and coins and everything my father had brought back for me, sitting on the wooden floor at home for hours, trying to puzzle together how things worked. I had learned a single trick from him, at least only the one that I remembered. He must have learned it from someone on his travels. I liked to imagine who it was that had taught him – a sailor on one of the ships perhaps, or an old crone in a village. It wasn't a complicated trick at all, only involving the flipping of a few coins between your fingers, though after going through it with Jack and Valerie it had been improved upon a bit.

I kept it in the list of tricks, despite its commonness, because it reminded me of home – both my real home and the circus, and I liked to have that part of both of them with me.

I still have an essay due on Monday, so I won't really be writing till Tuesday, but I did go to the overnight writing session last night. It was worth it, obviously. I won the first word war of the evening (and a Toblerone chocolate as well as the dubious honour of having to wear a fez for the next hour), and a Krusty the Clown Seal of Approval Button, for writing my novel in the first person without naming my main character. (I didn't even notice she didn't have a name until about 20K into it.) The captain of the word war team gave out gold star stickers for every 1K we hit while we were there; I got six. :D

I was there from 10 PM til 3 AM, until an awesome wrimo gave me a ride home. The walk there was shady enough at 10 PM, I'm glad I didn't have to walk back at 3. The only time I counted, there were 16 people there, but there were definitely closer to 20 most of the time. There was a massive, free-for-all table of snacks, too. In short: very, very cool.

In story news, I've finally got to the point in the outline where I was supposed to hit 30K. Yeah.

At the end of the month I'll post a sort of general summary of the whole thing, if people are interested. I know these small snippets don't give you much of an idea of what's going on.

---

To go on stage was an entirely different experience, now. I was less exposed, I felt; nothing could compare to how I had felt with Brown. I did wonder when I was meant to have another – what had he called it? – meeting, but that was the only time I came upstairs after a performance to find someone waiting for me there that week. I opened the door far more cautiously after going up the stairs, but it was always to find the living room empty, or with some of the other inhabitants of the apartment there. I didn't see Timothy, and I didn't see Darren other than from far away while I was on stage. I hadn't noticed him watch me earlier, and now I wasn't sure what I thought of him only watching me undress but not meeting me in the apartment or elsewhere.

I never got to that writing session on the 11th, but I did get up at 9 AM for a three-hour session in the common room with a fellow wrimo here in residence. As a result of that, I rounded 35K (if I was on a regular schedule, I should have hit that by the 21st), and then wrapped it up for now.

Additionally, I ended up on both of the top five lists of the latest word count tally in Toronto's word war against Chicago and New York: I was #1 of the top gainers since the last tally with 21487 words, and #5 in overall wordcount. Yay!

See you all next week!

I didn't manage 3,334 words today, but I did round 30K, so I'm still pretty pleased with myself. I'm getting up in a few hours to go to a writing session (!) and then a hectic day of various errands and homework to round off this bout of NaNo. As of Monday I'm going on a week-and-a-bit hiatus to write some papers and study for a test, and then I'll be back around the 24th, for the all-night writing session. I'll be needing it by that point, too!

There's a rather long excerpt up on my NaNo profile now, if you'd like to read some coherent prose rather than the short snippets I've been posting here.

---

I had lost my ability to be angry at Timothy a few days after the first shock of seeing Amy undress on stage, and had more or less forgiven him – there were so many rumors concerning circuses about that if I got angry every time I heard one I would have precious little friends left; the number of people that had come to me with their various ideas of what went on in the housecarts or behind the flaps of the tent since I had come here was astonishing. The only person I wouldn't be angry with would be Jeffrey, and that was only because he didn't speak.

Well on my way to hitting 30K before Sunday. I've sort of passed that goal, though, and am now going for the wordwar team's goal of 3,334 words a day.

I'm starting to have more and more frequent periods of "oh god this is horrible this isn't going anywhere" thoughts while typing frantically, but hey, I'm still typing!

So my character just realised that the pub she left the circus to sing at is a strip-while-you-sing pub. Indignant rage and angrysex... go!

---

It didn't stop with the one shoulder. An elaborate scale of notes, a flourish of her hand, and the side of her dress had slipped down entirely, so a small expanse of pale skin was visible at the bottom curve of her corset. Another set of notes, another line of song, another movement, and the other side had slipped down in the same way, so Amy was sitting with her dress about her waist, exposed completely from the hips up, in her embroidered, boned corset. Her breasts jiggled over the top of it as her hands moved along the keys of the piano. I could barely take my eyes off her, even though I had to concentrate not to drop anything or spill things on the floor, the bar or myself. She must know that she was half naked at this point, there was no way she couldn't notice the cooler air on her skin, or the amount of noise the patrons of the pub were making from the floor.

Today, I've been to art class and astronomy class, pilates, snuggled my boyfriend, Skype'd with my family, eaten all three meals of the day, read a good chunk of a novel for class, and socialised a bit. I didn't write at all until I got to the writing session at the Toronto Reference Library, where I sat at a table with a handful of lovely fellow wrimos...

...and pounded out just under 4,500 words in two hours. The final bit I did in 20 minutes just now.

Yeeeeeaaah.

I'm part of Toronto's word-war team (against Chicago and New York), and signed up for our team's challenge of writing double the quota every day till Sunday (the next tally-up of wordcounts), i.e. 3,334 words a day. I think I'll be able to manage.

All this aside, though, I won't be writing all of next week! So I'll need the cushion. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Two things about the excerpt below: yes, she's sleeping with people again, and yeah, she, uh, kinda punched him in the face the first time he tried to kiss her. I know, I know. It surprised me too.

---

I stepped closer, and he brought his hand up to touch my cheek. His palm was rough, callused, as I leaned into it, letting his fingers trace my lips, the line of my nose, the hollows of my eyes, then move along my jaw to my neck, and then down to the thin fabric of my blouse. He traced a line between my breasts, around the diamond nestled there, then slipped his hand around my waist and pulled me closer to kiss me. He stopped, right before our lips touched, and whispered, "If you're going to punch me, I'd prefer that you get it out of the way." I tried very hard to keep back my laughter at that, but was only marginally successful.

And I've clearly gone insane.

I have no idea how I've got this far in such a short while. No, that's not true. This is what seems to be working:

1. Get a timer. Write for 30 minutes and then stop dead, take a 10 minute break, write for 30 minutes, take a 10 minute break, write for 30 minutes. Take a couple hours off, then repeat. (I've been getting my schoolwork done in between, this way, too.)

2. Write with really loud music blaring into your ears. It helps drown out your inner editor, and it also really helps you get into the mood of the scene you're writing. There are songs that I can't listen to even now without picturing a specific scene from my 2004 NaNo novel, because of this.

3. Have a really, really vague outline, but one that will bring you all the way to the end of your story, if necessary. My points are things like "meets man #2" and then "leaves man #2", so yeah, really vague, but that leaves room for surprises, like young attractive mute possibly bisexual kitchen boys named Jeffrey. Add "should have x words by this point" marks, too.

Admittedly, I won't be writing all of next week since I have three major papers and a major test in week 3, so this is pretty necessary. Still, it's crazy fun and it feels amazing.

---

"Well, what Timothy told me was you're to work the bar for a while, get used to the place, the people here, and then once you're comfortable on the ground you can move to the stage." I couldn't help breathing a sigh of relief; I had been worried about taking to the stage as a completely new girl to the place, with no one who knew me and no idea what these people expected from me. This way, I could get to know how things functioned before standing alone in front of everything.

Jill had taken my silence for disappointment, apparently, because she tried to make me feel better. "Don't worry, you'll still get to sing. Just a good idea to get a feel of the place first, is all. 'Sides, you'll be behind the bar where no one can touch you. Good way to get used to things, believe me."

"Oh, no, certainly," I said, and tried to look as pleased as I felt. "Show me what to do."

So for the first year in my history of doing NaNo, I'm still on track after almost a week. My plan was to spend this week more or less finishing so I could concentrate on schoolwork, so obviously that isn't going too well so far. However, there's a writing session later today and on Thursday, and tomorrow I have several hours to spend, so hopefully I'll be getting close to 25 or even 30K by the end of this week.

In story news, I thought my main character was finally leaving the circus, but then she went and slept with someone and things are getting a little complicated. Hopefully she'll still get her arse into gear very soon and stop rattling on about her clothes.

---

I had just filled a bowl with the steaming stew in one of the pots when I felt someone slip their hand up under my skirts. I whirled around and nearly crashed my bowl into Valerie. She laughed at the expression on my face.

"You ought to be used to that sort of thing when food is around," she said, and I couldn't help laughing with her. It was true, that I had begun to associate the smell of food with having to step away from groping hands and fingers, though only in the main tent – this tent was safe in that sense. Although, now that I think on it, there was always a lot of physical contact in general between us all – touching foreheads together before a show, grasping fingers, leaning heads on each others' shoulders, sitting in each others' laps, touching legs together under tables. I'd grown to like it, even though it had made me somewhat uncomfortable in the beginning, just like I had reacted to constantly being called dear or darling instead of my real name. I liked that too, now.

So I haven't fallen behind, in other words, but I'm not as far ahead as I would've liked. I was supposed to go to a writing session today but opted to stay home and write instead, mostly to save my wrists. My left one hurts like a bitch, though, so there went that.

No excerpt because I've already closed Word, but it's actually moving somewhere - the circus is on its way out, finally, after backtracking me about 10K last year! Also, there are hawt menz.

That is all.

Guess how long it took me to write those words!

35 minutes.

I think this bodes well. (A note if you're new: in order to hit the 50K mark, you have to write at least 1667 words per day, i.e. if this only is going to take 35 minutes a day, I should definitely be able to do this.)

In other news, I decided to completely shift the story around - still working towards the same ideas I never got to last year, but to avoid actually continuing last year's I shifted characters. Yeah, it feels weird, but I think I'm already getting to know this Valerie person.

Finally, I swear Regina Spektor is going to be solely responsible for this entire novel when it's finished.

---

Then Paul tapped my boot with his, indicating that I was slipping into monotony, our secret signal. I wrenched my gaze away – it never did to keep the eye of one patron for too long, the others might get jealous – and tried to segue into a new song. It was a rapid succession of notes with my wavering voice above them, which seemed to satisfy Paul and the others, at least for now.

Yes, I am doing this again. A few things about this year:

• I like the story I started last year well enough to try it again (I never even got to the part I'd actually planned because that bloody circus got in the way). I won't include last year's 13K in this year's word count, of course, as that'd be cheating. I'm going to glance over what I wrote to remind me, and rework my outline a little so I know what I'm aiming for.

• So yes, I will be outlining this year. The one year I won, 2005, was also the year where I had the tightest plot outline to follow. There may be a connection here.

• As for posting to this community, I'll probably do what I did last year - post snippets of the day's writing, maybe some synopses, but definitely not everything - that just makes me edit myself, which is not exactly ideal.

• Finally, I'm allowing myself an out this year too: if I'm completely in despair over how much time this is taking from coursework, I'll quit. I don't want NaNo to be a bad thing!

Excuse me while I go off to hunt for last year's outline notes.

A NaNoWriMo project ambitiously undertaken by fiere.

Everything will be friends-locked. Join if you would like to read.

2007: Tricks - more fake magicians, less crazy whores and circuses (in progress)
2006: Tricks - a circus, gipsies, magic tricks (13K)
2005: Robbers Guild - two guilds, a robber prince, blood ties (50K)
2004: Untitled - music, crossdressing, love (30K)