Teaser Tuesday – NaNo Style – NaNoBots

I’m still going.  I’m to 56K now.  I had one of my most productive write-ins this weekend at the Thurber House (previous home of James Thurber).  The writerly vibes must have been strong because I wrote 4K in 3 hours.

This is not part of that.  I wrote this about an hour ago.

Nanobots are completely Ceriodaphnia dubia in my mind in this scene.  (In case you weren’t paying attention, I work in a lab. Cerios are water fleas).  I just imagined I was counting cerio babies and looking to see if they were erratic or not.  Don’t worry.  Cerios don’t swim around in blood.  Their home is the water and they eat algae and a yeast and trout chow mixture, at least in our lab.

Here’s what a cerio mom looks like.  See all her little eggs inside?

Okay, this is nothing like what a nanobot looks like, I promise.  But shrink her down to, say, the size of the ball in a ball point pen.  Small, yeah?  Then she releases all those babies.  Imagine how tiny those are.  That’s what I count in a cerio test.

So that’s the size I imagine Dean’s seeing these nanobots as, except he’s looking through a microscope to see them.

Here’s the excerpt:

He watched her pull out two vials from a small refrigerator in the corner of the room.  Before it would have been possible for the average person to read the labels, he had already noted that one was Caleb’s and one was Lincoln’s.

Dr. McKinley took a glass pipette and drew a few drops of Lincoln’s blood from his vial and put it on a slide.  She did the same with Caleb’s blood.

“Here, watch them under the microscope.”

Dean peeked into the eyepiece and put Lincoln’s slide under the lens.  His blood was dark red and full of activity.  This microscope wasn’t strong enough to see the nanobots in detail, but he could see the little gold specks moving within the blood, searching for something to do.

Next he put Caleb’s under the microscope, careful not to touch the blood, even with his gloves on protecting his hands from direct contact.  Caleb’s blood was darker than Lincoln’s, but Dean didn’t know if that meant anything.  What were really interesting were Caleb’s nanobots.  They were bigger than Lincoln’s, though not by much.  They were also pale gray and moved with erratic, shaky movements.  He watched as one stopped and twitched in place, while another turned around in circles like a dog chasing his tail.

“What do you think it means?” he asked her.

Hope you enjoyed the excerpt and the look into my world 😉

Currently on new iPod: Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny) by A.R. Rahman and the Pussycat Dolls

Lots of love,
Sage

NaNo Victories

I’m still working on Nano Kid, my NaNo novel, but this week had a few NaNo victories I want to share.

First of all, I hit 50K already.  I made it at 1 a.m. on the 17th, which might be my fastest time for hitting the 50K.  Of course, now I’ve gotten lazy, lol.  I’m at 51,010, so you can see I haven’t gotten very far past my 50K.

I was able to write almost 7K on Tuesday, which I took off (and had to work today because of it).  I had two days of “almost 7K” during NaNo and before 50K, there was only one day where I completely failed to do anything, and that was just because I was sick and went to bed at 8 p.m.  This was way better than last year when I wrote like mad on the weekend, and then didn’t write at all on weekdays.

Another big victory.  There are over 170,000 people signed up for NaNo.  90 of them ended up on the shortlist for 30 Days, 30 Covers, a project where 30 professional artist design covers for 30 lucky NaNoers, one each day.  Each artist gets a choice between 3 synopses and makes a cover for the one they choose.  I was Day 16.  You can also see it on the Office of Letters and Light blog.  It also tells you my synopsis and information about the artist, Henry Sene Yee.

In case you don’t like clicking links, like me, here’s the cover:

Hope that turns out a good size.

I don’t think I’ve listened to anything new on the old iPod since the last post, so…

Current on new iPod: A Ruined Gaol from Doctor Who, Season 4 – The Specials

Lots of love,

Sage

Teaser Tuesday, NaNo-style – Stopping Dean

Yet another Tuesday, yet another teaser.  I’m 42K in and because I have today off, I’m hoping I’ll be able to finish my 50K today.  I’m certain that it will be longer than that (since DL just introduced a new subplot), but 50K today would be quite a victory.

Teaser time.  Here’s some context: Dean just saved Caleb from his abusive dad, who had whipped him with a belt and made him stand in a closet overnight.  Dean had him take a shower and connected to his laptop while he waited.  Caleb breaks every electronic thing he touches, and we’ve established that it might include the cybernetically enhanced, like Dean.

Dean held out his wrist for Caleb to see the USB cord extending from it.  “See, right here?”  He touched the open flap of skin he had moved aside to release the cord.  “That covers it so you can’t see it most of the time.”

He checked Caleb to make sure he was properly awed, but instead he looked horrified.  “Does it hurt?”

“What?  No.”

“Really?  What about when they connected it?”

“Please, I don’t even remember that.”

“That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”

Dean put his hands on Caleb’s towel-covered shoulders, noting that the boy flinched as usual.  “Look, Caleb.  You don’t have to worry.  I’m not going to let anything happen to you ever again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.  C’mon, who’s smarter and cooler and stronger than me, huh?  You don’t trust me to take care of you?”

Caleb hesitated, then nodded.  Well, then, that was a good place to start.

“I don’t want you to see my back,” he said, his words all rushed like they had been bursting to break out of him.

“I’ve seen a lot worse wounds,” Dean pointed out

“No, I just, I don’t want you to see it.  I can do the first aid myself.  I do it all the time.”

Dean shook his head.  “It’ll be better if I do it.  You won’t have to worry about missing part of your back, and I’ll make sure the bandage is so secure and comfortable.  I get trained in this stuff, y’know.”

“No!”  Caleb darted towards the bedroom, but he was no match for Dean, much less in his current state.  Dean dashed after him and reached his arms around Caleb to stop him.

Everything stopped.

Hope you enjoyed.  Back to the word count.

Currently on iPod: I Move Along from Chicago

Lots of love,
Sage

NaNo Update, Post 2

Stats for Day 12

Word Count:

Word Count: 36,197

Daily word count: 2056

What my characters are doing:

Dean: Recovering from his entire body locking up

Caleb: Being captured and nearly suffocated by two cyborgs

Other stuff:

I’m not writing, so why am I not in bed?

Currently on iPod: I Hear the Bells by Mike Doughtery

Lots of love,

Sage

Teaser Tuesday, NaNo Style – The Cherry Stem

Here we are on our second week of NaNo, and I have a teaser for you.  Yesterday I was sick with a cold, which sucked, except that I got almost 7K written.  Right now I’m at 28K, yay.  Also, I feel way better.

I had some cute scenes I wrote yesterday, and this one is my favorite.  So from Nano Kid (aka the Cyborg Spy Boy-crush MG, if you knew it by that name):

Caleb had been enjoying his burger so much that he forgot about his milkshake.  That was until Dean reached over and pulled the cherry off of it by the stem.  “You didn’t want this, right?”  He popped it in his mouth, stem at all.

“Hey!”  But Caleb didn’t mind as much as he pretended to.  He grabbed his spoon and began eating the whipped cream off the top of the milkshake.

“You’re supposed to drink it,” Dean pointed out.  Then he stuck out his tongue and showed Caleb the cherry stem.  It was tied in a knot.  Like he had tied it with his tongue.

“Wow,” Caleb said.

Finn snorted again.  “Anyone can do that.”

“That’s not true,” said Dean.

“I can.”

“Prove it,” said Dean, smugly.  There were no other cherries around.  Finn’s cherry lime-aid had turned out to be pink Sprite.

But Finn held out his hand.  Dean looked at it and then back at Finn’s face.  Very slowly he took the stem, untied now, out of his mouth and laid it in Finn’s hand.  Finn popped it in his mouth, worked the stem around inside, then stuck his tongue out with the stem on it at Dean, whose eyes had never left Finn.  He took the newly tied stem off his tongue and placed it on Dean’s plate.  “See?  Not so hard.”

“I stand corrected.”  Dean’s voice was as quiet as Caleb had ever heard it.  He wondered if Dean was embarrassed to be proven wrong, although he didn’t know how wrong Dean had really been.  Caleb was pretty sure that he couldn’t tie a cherry stem with his tongue.  Not that he would try it with that stem.  It had been in two other guys’ mouths already.

Hope you enjoyed that.

Since I am so ahead in word count, I will try to post more about NaNo in my blog while it’s going on.

Currently on iPod: I Don’t Feel Like Dancing by Scissor Sisters

Lots of love,

Sage

NaNo Post 1

Word count:

Current word count: 12,546

Current daily word count: 2029

What my characters did today:

Caleb: Read books in a library

Dean: Cut open his arm, then electrocuted himself.

(Wildly different lives, my boys have)

Other stuff:

Write in: Food and word wars and conversation, oh my.

NaNoWhyMo

I’m taking time out from writing my NaNo novel (10K in, yay) to write this post.  Appreciate it. 😉

So why do NaNoWriMo?  It’s a valid question anyone might ask.  Someone like Laura Miller in this Salon article.   I don’t want to go point by point over her article, although I’m still scratching my head about how having more writers is somehow taking away something from the readers.  (I mean, this NaNo author is only on her 91st book of the year, having taken on challenges for writing and reading this year.)

Instead, I’d much rather talk about some of the reasons that people I know have done NaNo.

1) They’ve always wanted to write – Simple enough reason.  There are so many people who hear that you’re writing a novel and answer with, “Oh, I have always wanted to write.”  Well, NaNo gives them an excuse to try their hand at it.  If it doesn’t work out, oh well, they tried.

2) They’ve started novels, but that inner editor keeps them from completing them – NaNo doesn’t suggest allowing yourself to write crap because they only want to see crappy novels come out of it.  They’re giving the writer permission to not go back and fix their opening paragraph 100 times before moving on to the next one.  And they’re allowing for the people who just want to write something fun without any intention of getting it published.  And what’s wrong with that?  Anyway, the serious writers will revise like hell when December (or March) comes.  The agents can tell the ones that didn’t pretty fast.

3) They want to try something new – I do this every year.  The new thing this year?  I’m being social with my NaNo.  Previous years, I’ve hung out with a friend while I wrote, but this year I’m trying to make new friends by going to the write-ins and kick-offs, and posting “I’m in this coffeehouse if you want to join me” on my regional forum.  But, as I mentioned in my earlier NaNo post, my other “new things” have included genres and POVs.

4) They need an excuse to make time to write – It’s only 30 days, guys.  And if something comes up that makes it impossible to finish, then it does, and it’s not the end of the world.  So there’s pressure, but only sort of.

5) Social aspect – Writing is kind of a solitary thing, but NaNo encourages you to go to write-ins and meet people, to hang out on their forums and chat about writing.  Sometimes you find other writers and keep on hanging out with them.  Isn’t that cool?

6) They just want to have fun – And there’s nothing wrong with writing a novel that takes a million dares and is set in five alternate universes, and written from the POV of a dog with soul that’s an invisible shade of green.  And then it wakes up and it’s all a dream.  And the bad guys tempt him to their side with cookies.  For a month, you wrote something and you enjoyed it.

See, the thing with #6, with doing NaNo at all, IMO, is that it opens you up to be creative.  To use your imagination.  And whether a writer or a reader, I don’t think an imagination is a bad thing to have.

Okay, back to that novel.

Currently on iPod: Transistor by Scissor Sisters (Now that Halloween is over, I’ll be going back to the alphabetical order thing, I just have to get it set up)

Lots of love,

Sage