NaNo18

[NaNo18] Day 5

Faith Hakimian

WHISKEYHILL

It’s already Day 5 of NaNo, and I’m a little ahead of schedule. So far, this feels way different than any NaNo I’ve done in the past. The words are coming easier, though it feels like there’s an absolute ton of chaff I’ll be sorting through once this is over. Okay, so that part’s normal enough. Anyway! Enjoy another snippet down below.

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The first indication that things weren’t going to go the way we expected them to was the fact that we woke up the next morning to the sound of rain. Lots of it. Normally, that would have been a good thing. Despite the name, Verdant is usually anything but—at least, our little corner of it. And while mining and a burgeoning manufacturing business based on the stuff that gets taken out of the ground provide the basis for most of the economy here, there’s also a fair amount of agriculture that goes on as well, since that’s the only way you’re going to be able to feed everyone unless you want to ship in food from another planet. That might have worked back when the colony was smaller, but now that there’s a good half dozen towns with more than ten thousand people in them, it’s just not feasible anymore.

Hence, agriculture. And anytime you’ve got agriculture, you need water. I mean, anytime you’ve got people anywhere you need water, but step that up a notch to water the animals and the plants you’re using to feed the people and things jump into a new realm really fast. But you’re not here to listen to me and my uneducated views on economics and ecosystems. So let me get back to the point.

While rain in the general sense is a great thing for the colony at large, it’s not the best thing for a twenty mile hike with a bunch of cows over the course of two days that’s going to involve some sort of camping. In fact, it’s probably about the worst sort of weather you could have.

Fine. Not the worst. That would be snow. Or maybe record breaking heat. But rain’s not great either, and while it was bad enough for the cows and the horses and the people who were going to be herding them east to Move, it was going to be even worse for the jeep. And by worse, I mean that it was a deal breaker. The road between Orsmith and Move, while it exists, is mostly dirt and occasionally gravel. Which means that when it rains, it becomes mud. Thick, nasty mud of the sort that sucks wheels down to the axles and doesn’t let go. There’s a centuries old joke about the difference between a four-wheel-drive vehicle and a rental vehicle being that you can take the rental everywhere. The jeep might have been both, but when physics itself starts conspiring against you, there’s not a whole lot you can do.

NaNo18

[NaNo18] Day 1

Faith Hakimian

WHISKEYHILL

Day 1! It took me a while to get into the swing of writing, especially since this is the first time I’ve done NaNo with characters as well established as Tanner and Miranda. The tone was a little… off for the first thousand words or so, but I started getting the feel for things after that. There’s not a whole lot story-wise for today, just an excerpt that I like well enough. Enjoy it below!

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So. The babysitting job. Getting a group of about twenty colonists from Orsmith out to Move, twenty miles away. You’d think it would be simple, right? Even without much infrastructure, there’s still roads enough to get you through, and like I said, both Orsmith and Move are more or less central to the whole Verdant colony. They’re a little rustic, but hardly the uncivilized, wild edge.

Which would lead you to wonder why a group of twenty able-bodied folk felt the need to hire a pair of bounty hunter/mercenaries to get them there. Or it should. Should have raised up red flags for me and Tanner, too, but I was too busy laughing at the silly little colonists, and Tanner was too happy to have found something that wouldn’t bust up his leg any worse than the sheep-thing had already done.

Musings

[Blog] NaNo Cometh

Faith Hakimian

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Six days! Six days until NaNo starts! Six days to get all that last minute planning in, six days to enjoy the fleeting treasure known as free time before the words swallow it all. Six days until we get to begin this wild creative rush.

I’m excited, friends. Nervous, too, but that’s how you know you’re doing it right.

Naturally, standard rambling blog posts will be on hiatus for the duration of the month, replaced by scraps and snippets (or longer bits!) from my great big Tanner and Miranda project, tentatively titled something fun and ridiculous like “Trouble on the New Frontier” or “The Tanner and Miranda Chronicles”. I’m not sure. Titles are hard.

What about all of you? Who else is doing NaNo this year, and what are your projects? Let me know down in the comments!

Musings

[Blog] Autumn and Winter and Early Sunset

Faith Hakimian

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As happens at this time of year, the days grow shorter and darker and the nights grow longer and I remember once again that this is my favorite time of year. Those who know me know that I can, at times, be a bit of a homebody– and these cooler, quieter days are made for staying at home with friends and family, for drinking tea and hot cider, for sitting in front of a crackling fire and maybe talking or maybe not as the mood takes us. The fireplace is a little harder to come by down in California, of course, but we find ways to make do. And I think that’s why I love it when the sun sets early. It makes it easier to just sit, to just relax together.

Musings

[Blog] The Pantser (somewhat) Tamed

Faith Hakimian

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I’m watching November approach with the usual levels of excitement and trepidation. I’ve participated enough times that the 1667 word/day goal no longer sounds absolutely insane, though the looks of concerns every time an innocent bystander stops long enough for me to tell them about the chaotic glory that is NaNoWriMo, the looks of concern they give me when I say the phrase “fifty thousand words in thirty days” remind me that this whole undertaking is a little bit nuts.

Fun, for sure. But also nuts.

And usually, I go into it with minimal levels of planning. By which I mean that I have a single sentence synopsis and rough ideas for most of the main characters when writing starts on November 1. And so far, it’s worked pretty well.

I wonder, though, if this year will be different. With one exception, it’s easily the most established story I’ve chosen to work on for the month. It’s also going to be a substantially different format and far more episodic than I’ve done in the past, and honestly, I don’t know if that’s going to make it easier or harder. Or neither?

I’m not saying I’m planning everything out. Maybe it would be a good thing if I did, but I haven’t managed to do it yet, and with less than three weeks before writing starts (!!!), I can tell you right now that it’s not going to happen. But instead of needing one big plot (which I kinda still do if I want to string all these stories together in a sensible manner), I’m going to need a bunch of smaller plots to get me from point A to point B.

Only time and writing will tell how that’s going to work out for me. Wish me luck?

Musings

[Blog] NaNoWriMo 2018 is on its way!

Faith Hakimian

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I’m so excited! And mildly panicked, but that’s part and parcel. It’s October and that means NaNoWriMo will be here before we know it, and I’ll descend into the madness that is an average of 1667 words per day while still maintaining a ghostly semblance of normal life.

If you read the comments on last week’s post, you may already know this, but my project for this year is going to be a compendium of Tanner and Miranda stories, roughly compiled into an overarching story. That’s the plan, at least! We’ll what actually happens.

Regardless, my plan is to post bits and pieces more or less as I write them– parts I particularly like and do a decent enough job of standing alone– so look for that starting next month, and watch as I slowly lose my grip on reality and what it means to have a normal sleep schedule. I mean, that part isn’t exactly my plan, but I’ve done this crazy thing enough times to know what’s coming.

Writing Prompts

[Blog] Writing Prompts Round 3

Faith Hakimian

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It’s been a week, and I’ve got responses to your prompts! Thanks to those of you who submitted! As promised, here’s some snippets from Tanner and Miranda’s adventures. I can’t confirm or deny if these are “cannon” per se… but they’re the sort of thing that might happen. We’ll see how many work their way into bigger pieces someday.

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I was afraid to ask where Tanner had gotten the truck. The truck. The honest-to-goodness, Earth-made, antique, gas-burning, two-door, flatbed, ratting, rumbling hunk of metal that coughed and sputtered its way right out of the pages of history and down the street until it stopped right in front of the boarding house. I should have known I wouldn’t have to ask.

“I told you a few of these old beasts made it out to this end of the galaxy.” He sat in the driver’s seat, grinning ear to ear. I stood and stared at him and tried to figure out when and where he’d learned to drive stick.

When I finally found my tongue, I only managed one word: “Why?”

He cackled. “Because. Come on. Get in!” He leaned over and popped the door open with a rusty creak that would have sent any proper vehicle straight to the junkyard. And yet, I got in. And we spent the rest of the day cruising down the back roads of Halverston in a crazy, out of date contraption. And it was one of the most enjoyable things I’d done in years.

—

“I’m going to crash it.”

Those weren’t the sort of words you wanted to hear coming out of your copilot’s mouth. Not ever. But especially not when you were seconds away from being home safe. Not when you thought it was finally over.

Funny how they didn’t surprise me, though. It was the fact that I agreed with him that would have worried me if I’d had the time.

“Big explosion?” I asked. I was already reaching up to flip off the safeties and the dozen automated systems that would make our plan impossible. The cockpit shrieked in consternation.

“The biggest,” said Tanner. And he grinned.

“You’re sure it’ll work?”

“Nope. But I think it might, and that’s good enough for me.” He glanced over at me and winked. “Given the circumstances, you know.”

I snorted. “Fine. Good enough. Bail out in 3… 2… 1…”

—

“Please pass the salt.”

“I told you! I told you it was a terrible idea! I told you and you didn’t listen!”

We were running. People were shooting– at us. My carefully laid plan was strewn behind us in ruins, and somehow we’d managed to complete the job despite it all. All that was left now was getting out alive. And yelling at Tanner for getting us into this mess in the first place.

We skidded around a corner and crashed to a halt behind a couple of huge storage barrels. We panted. We gasped. We held our breath as our pursuers thundered by and didn’t see us.

I waited a good thirty seconds before laying into my brother again. Given that he was doubled over giggling, I don’t know how effective I was. I punched him in the shoulder in a vain attempt to make myself feel better.

“Since when do you put salt on anything!? You never do! That’s how you convinced me that freaking saying ‘please pass the salt’ was a good code phrase!”

He barely managed to get out his answer between bouts of hysterical laughter. “I know.” More laughter. “I know. I know. But–” And he started cackling so hard that I was sure he’d bust a rib. And it would serve him right. “But you wouldn’t believe how bland the food was.”

Writing Prompts

[Blog] Writing Prompts Open! (Round 3)

Faith Hakimian

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I’m at it again! Send me your writing prompts, and I’ll respond this time next week with a short bit of fiction inspired by your lovely words, pictures, scraps of music, etc. But! This time I’ve got an added twist: your prompts have to be simple– one picture, one piece of music, one word or phrase… and I have to respond with something set in Tanner and Miranda’s world.

Sound good? Bonus points if it’s not something that looks like it should easily relate to the shenanigans of brother/sister bounty hunters on a newly colonized planet.

Also, if you’re looking for a little bit of a challenge of your own, here’s a prompt for you! Feel free to respond or not, with fiction, non fiction, poetry, or whatever floats your boat.

Musings

[Blog] Different Sorts of Progress

Faith Hakimian

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This week, it’s felt like I’m not making any progress with writing at all. The words just aren’t coming, as, sometimes, they won’t. I’ve come down off the giddy high of completing a chapter, only to find that the one I need to write next is different enough from the first that I almost need to relearn what I’m doing. And I’m not going to lie… it’s a little frustrating.

And yet, despite the lack of a climbing wordcount to provide evidence that I have, indeed, been working at this recalcitrant beast of a novel, it hasn’t all been a waste. Because aside from the different pacing causing me some trouble, every time I get stuck it’s been an indication that I don’t have things structured and plotted and planned as well as I thought I did.

So I’ve been going back and outlining and answering all those niggling little questions that keep pulling me up short: “Is that really how the captain of a bunch of bold outriders respond to that situation? Or is that how I think I would/ought to respond to it? What exactly is the method of government in this fictional kingdom thingy? And how big is it?

And there, I have made progress. Organizational progress. And while I fully admit to having, at times, used such things as an excuse to keep from doing the so-called actual work of writing, for once, that’s not true. Because while I may have not made it much farther, at least every question I’ve answered has made the next sentence a little easier to write.

Musings

[Blog] Babel

Faith Hakimian

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Languages fascinate me. English, of course, holds a special place in my heart, both for its myriad quirks and the fact that it’s my own native language, but my interest reaches a bit beyond that. By which I mean that I’m an amateur, wanna-be polyglot, and proud of it. I’ve picked up a fair amount of Spanish, thanks to living in California and a near obsession with keeping up my streak over on Duolingo. I gained some ability with Armenian during my grand adventure there last year. I’ve dabbled with German enough to realize that it’s both really hard and really cool.

I love the way different languages express the same idea, and the way that each one is going to slightly change the way you see that idea. I love the way it causes you to look closer at something you’ve always taken for granted, or the way it makes you think about the idioms you use every day. I’m intrigued by the gap between words and concepts, and the different way different peoples bridge it. So it should come as no surprise that I’d love to get to the point where I can write a decent story in more than one language.

Come to think of it, some of this can probably be traced back to my high school Latin teacher. I wasn’t the best student in his classes, and at the time I was far too frustrated with being forced to learn a language to realize that I actually enjoyed them, but there was one final project he assigned that I loved, even at the time: we had to choose a fiction book and translate a chapter from English to Latin. And he let me choose the first chapter of Mossflower by Brian Jacques.

Like I said above, different languages make you look at things in a new way, and finding the best way to translate it forces you to get down to the nitty-gritty details of meaning that you might otherwise gloss over. I’m not sure how good my translation was at the end (and honestly, I was in tenth grade, and only a middling Latin student, so I have my doubts), but it was fun. And while I’m putting more weight on it now than it earned then, if a high school student stumbling through as direct a translation as she could manage could affect the way she read a children’s book, how much better could it be if she actually gets good enough to do it on purpose?