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I'm terribly sorry about Monday; Blogger did not want to work for any reason. (Believe me, I tried asking it politely, cajoling, bribery, everything, but it wouldn't have it). So yes, I'm just getting to post today (but hey, better late than never, right?) Plus I might have still been a teensy bit tired and behind on my NaNo from my weekend off, so I'm not sure I could have produced a good blog post anyway, haha.
Oh yeah, NaNo. Well, first week(and a little more) is done and I'm at 23,207 words, which I'm pretty happy about. Tomorrow I could very well reach the halfway mark, which is pretty crazy considering it'll only be the 12th day! (It feels like I've been doing NaNo for forever now.)
And, of course, I got a brilliant but nagging idea that I had to give attention to before returning to Dragons' Bane. Ever had that happen, where you get a new idea that's so bright and shiny and new that it demands you at least write down/figure out some parts of it, get super excited about writing it, then return to reality and realize it's like the 100th in your queue of future story ideas? Sometimes I really wish I could write ten novels at once...efficiently, that is.
But alas, this brilliant idea will have to wait. Still, it consumed about four hours of my time today as I was forced to not only find a basic idea of the story itself, but also name the main character (which is not always a quick and easy task). I don't even know if I'll keep the name, but it was bugging me so badly that I just had to go and find it so I could concentrate on the rest of Dragons' Bane.
It's all very exciting though because this brilliant story idea involves dragons in modern day, which is something I've wanted to write for a while (ever since I had a thought while sitting in the car of how strange/cool it would be to look out the window and see a dragon flying beside you) but never really had much of an idea for. Now, a couple other story elements have joined themselves with this one and formed at least a semblance of a story that I can begin carving into once I finish my 10,000 other stories. Ah, the life of a writer.
Anyway, I'm just falling more and more in love with Dragons' Bane and its cast the more I get into writing it. I feel I could write just pages and pages of these characters interacting in a relatively normal setting...except what fun would that be? I might enjoy it, but I'm not sure anyone else would. Therefore, I'm doing my best to stick with forwarding the plot and characters in each scene instead of just have them talk for conversation's sake.
I'm almost to a really crucial tipping point of the story too, which is quite exciting and a little alarming, because everything changes after this point, and the characters are never really the same. It can be so easy to get caught up in the easy, fun parts of the story and want to linger there, just keeping the characters blissfully ignorant of any real danger or conflict.
But, though change can often be painful, it's often necessary, and in the case of Dragons' Bane's characters, it's definitely necessary. So, though I've enjoyed writing the sweet and simple moments, I'm also ready to get into some of the harder parts of the story, really find out what the characters are made of. The price might be high, but the reward is well worth it. Will they reach it safely? ...Well, I guess you'll just have to find that out when I'm finished. ;)