NaNoWriMo '13 is off to a pretty good start! Assuming I can get some words written tonight, I'll be on par to pass 10k. I have a pretty good idea for my NaNo since I spent part of this week working on an outline, but right now I'm procrastinating because I'm about to start the action. Now that my protagonist has his quest, I'm not really sure what the next step is. He seems to be pretty good at bumbling into plot where I least expect it, so he should lead me through. I hope. Go, Adair, go! Find the two who will help you! And find the plot which is hiding around here somewhere, while you're at it. ;)

I'm really happy with how I'm doing my outline this year because, knock on wood, it seems to be keeping me on track. I think that was my problem with last year's NaNo and why, a year later, I was still fumbling my way through the first draft: I didn't have a good outline. I'm using color-coded sticky notes in my writing notebook:

-Blue: my plot
-Yellow: missing parts of the story I still need to work out
-Purple: quick references to my characters and their tasks and basic info (Adair's my main character, Blythe is the secondary main, and Drake is pretty much on par with Blythe, but comes in later. I still need a name for my baddie...)
-Orange: assorted minor characters and their type of magic
-Pink: tasks/plot points that I'm looking to add at some point; either I don't know where they go, they span the story, or they relate to more than one character.
It's arranged so the top blue line is the start of the story (about 9000 words so far), the middle two rows are middle, and the bottom row is the end of the story. I know Scrivener can do something like this, but I'm a really visual person so I work best with something physical I can hold.

I've already removed two of the question mark ones and replaced them with blue plot stickies, so this seems to be working! It's also helpful that they're on sticky notes because that means it's easy to replace them when I decide to change something up. :)


And while I was procrastinating today, I played around with that avatar generator again to try to get a feel for the main(ish) character I don't know well yet. Drake won't be showing up in my writing for probably another week (a few days at least), but I'm very much itching to write about him! Right now all I know is that he's Blythe's former teacher- and soon to be current teacher since he has similar magic to what she's just now discovering- so he's a little older than Adair and Blythe. He used to go by "Drake Dualdagger" when Blythe knew him a few years ago, but I'm getting the suspicion that he's now calling himself "Firedrake" because of his current draconic and fire theme. I also know his magic is mind-control, he's cheerful, kind of mischievous and a little morally ambiguous, and while Blythe prefers swords and the occasional dagger, his style of dance/magic is more likely long daggers and lit torches.

(I also have a version with swords instead of torches.)

This avatar isn't quite what I had in mind, but it's close; he has a very theatrical appearance for his stage presence, so this isn't even as over the top as he'd look. (He has red dragon scale tattoos covering his arms and his hair is partly dyed, but the color on his face is just paint.)

Okay, I've procrastinated long enough. Time to get back to work!

~Meri