Tag: NaNo21

Fiction (Excerpts)

[Excerpt] The Shattered and the Infinite

Faith Hakimian

One of several possible intros for The Shattered and the Infinite, my project from last November. Enjoy!

Complexity Jones must have slept, because the soft green numbers on the bedside clock read 6:12 AM. It had been just after three-thirty the last time she had looked and given up hope of getting any rest, but maybe that had been what did it. Besides, these days two and a half hours was the best she could hope to get. Even so, her body ached. Whether that was because of the physical work she had thrown herself into the day before or just the wages of however many months of lost sleep she couldn’t say. And it didn’t matter. Either way, the result was the same.

On the other side of the bed, Kemp still slept, his breathing slow and even, a comfort in the quiet morning. She’d given up envying him for it. Better that one of them get a little rest than for both of them to exist in this miserable, exhausted haze. And she was used to it. The nightmares had started shortly after the Distortion had first appeared, and she hadn’t slept well since then. Five years, give or take. No wonder the dark circles under her eyes made it look like she’d lost a fist fight. No wonder her body rebelled whenever she had a day off, and she spent twelve hours in dreamless blackout.

But this wasn’t her day off. And there was no reason to try to beg and borrow and steal another useless moment with her eyes shut and her mind spinning and awake when it wouldn’t do her any good. Better to start the process of coaxing her body back to something functional.

She swung her feet to the floor, ignoring the complaints from her back, her neck, her shoulders. They always fussed. The pain always eased with movement. Coffee helped too. It would have helped more if it was the real stuff, but that didn’t exist anymore. Not here.

Her foot brushed against a pile of clothes as she moved through the bedroom. The twinge of guilt and the impulse to clean were quiet these days, a trivial concern at the end of the world. All things considered, it seemed better to use every chance she had to lie in Kemp’s arms and talk about the things they had thought they would have a lifetime explore. Let the apartment be a little messy. It would be the least of her regrets. Nothing compared to what she would feel if the end came and she thought she could have spent more time with anyone she loved.

In the living room, the big picture window looked out over Loborough. It was still dark, still predawn for a few more minutes, but not dark enough that she couldn’t see the scars the Distortion had left on the city. There were so many swaths of barren ground. Voids where there should have been buildings. Empty flats where there should have been parks. A shattering world where it should have been whole.

Musings

[Blog] Hey look it’s December

Faith Hakimian

Hey guys! Apparently it’s December now. 2021 is all but over. Weird.

Anyway! So, NaNo is over and I hit the 50k goal on the day before Thanksgiving (yay!) despite work busyness and such. The whole planning thing went remarkably well, to the point where I’m pretty sure it’s going to affect how I write novel-length things from here on out. More on that next week!

I hope all of you are well as we head into the holidays, and that you get to spend good time with friends and family. Merry Christmas!

((Technically, this is not something I wrote last month. However! It’s currently the first three paragraphs from that project, so I thought I’d share them here with you.))

Complexity Jones must have slept, because the soft green numbers on the bedside clock read 6:12 AM. It had been just after three-thirty the last time she had looked and given up hope of getting any rest, but maybe that had been what did it. Besides, these days two and a half hours was the best she could hope to get. Even so, her body ached. Whether that was because of the physical work she had thrown herself into the day before or just the wages of however many months of lost sleep she couldn’t say. And it didn’t matter. Either way, the result was the same.

On the other side of the bed, Kemp still slept, his breathing slow and even, a comfort in the quiet morning. She’d given up envying him for it. Better that one of them get a little rest than for both of them to exist in this miserable, exhausted haze. And she was used to it. The nightmares had started shortly after the Distortion had first appeared, and she hadn’t slept well since then. Five years, give or take. No wonder the dark circles under her eyes made it look like she’d lost a fist fight. No wonder her body rebelled when she had a day off and she spent twelve hours in dreamless blackout.

But this wasn’t her day off. And there was no reason to try to beg and borrow and steal another useless moment with her eyes shut and her mind spinning and awake when it wouldn’t do her any good. Better to start the process of coaxing her body back to something functional.

NaNo21

[NaNo21] Update 1

Faith Hakimian

Here we are on Day 3! I’m a bit behind but not horribly so, and I can blame [most of] that on the act that my laptop ran into some difficulties. As in, the darn thing wouldn’t boot up. Turns out, the internal hard drive actually needs to be seated and connected for the computer to see it. Who knew?

As for writing, I’m getting into the groove and it’s so nice to be able to start putting the words down for this thing after working on the planning! Here’s an excerpt that I thought came out pretty well.

Faline narrowed her eyes again. The expression was less than playful this time. “Lex. You need rest. We need you.” She nodded toward the massed refugee housing. “I need your help.”

“I’m here, Faline.” She gave a faint shrug. “I’m here.”

“Are you?”

Lex spread her arms. “You see me, don’t you?”

“I see something. A husk, maybe. You know this matters, right? Everyone says the world is ending, and maybe it is. But even if it is, even if the Distortion breaks past the pylons tomorrow and swallows us all, this matters.”

“Of course it does. I never said it didn’t.” The words hissed through Complexity’s teeth. “I’m here, Faline. I’m here because these people shouldn’t have to spend their last days in any more agony than the rest of us. But me being and more or less sleep deprived isn’t going to change a thing.”

Faline scowled. “And what if these aren’t their last days? What if we survive this?”

Complexity laughed. It was a dark, angry sound. “We’re not going to survive this. No one wants to say it out loud, not yet. But everyone knows. All we can do is to try to make it as painless as we can before the end finally comes.”

For a moment, Faline didn’t say a thing. She stood there, emotion hanging from her like a cloak, but she didn’t say a word. When she finally did, the words came out quiet, so low that Lex was surprised she heard them.

“We’re still alive. We’re not done yet. You hear me, Jones? We’re not done yet.”

Musings

[Blog] Here we go!

Faith Hakimian

Last blog before NaNo! Now, if I was really organized and professional and all that, I would have built up a buffer to get through November so that I didn’t have to worry about it while aggressively noveling.

However.

I am not. And so I didn’t.

And if I’m honest, even this one is more me rambling than writing anything structured enough that I could generously describe as an essay. Which, to be clear, is fine by me. Mostly, I’m really excited for next month. Which I think I’ve been saying on and off for the last two. Oh well. It’s still the truth.

This will be my twelfth time participating in NaNoWriMo. (Get a hobby, you say. I already have one, I reply.) I’ve reached fifty thousand words eleven times. The one time I didn’t, it was the year my college campus got hit by one of those infamous California wildfires, so I’d argue that I had a good excuse. Now, here’s where the numbers get a little less ideal: of those eleven manuscripts, I have… one that qualifies as a proper draft. Three if you count the two that gave me the skeletons for the various Tanner and Miranda stories.

Like I said: less ideal.

That’s not to say I consider those other eight (or nine, counting the unfinished one) to be failures. If nothing else, they greased the gears and got me writing. So what if none of it is much good? You can’t edit words that never made it to the page, and you don’t get better without practice. And considering that I participated in my first NaNo when I was sixteen, that counts as a lot of practice. And a lot of encouragement from an exuberant writing community. And a lot of exposure to all kinds of different writing advice and methods. Enough that I had a lot to work with when figuring out my own.

So here I am. 2021. Doing it again and trying to take it a step further. We’ll see how it goes.

What about the rest of you? Anyone doing NaNo this November? How are you feeling here, standing on the brink? Ha!

Musings

[Blog] The Art of Writing

Faith Hakimian

In the process of outlining next month’s novel, I’ve been paying a huge amount of attention to the basics of structure. By which I mean I’ve been working my way through my copy of Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat Writes a Novel, which is itself a rendition of Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat which was written specifically on how to structure a screenplay. Both books are utterly brilliant and thoroughly helpful, and are basically expansions on the best writing advice I’ve ever received: “The three most important things in writing are structure, structure, structure.”

First off, I’d like to say that I’m a little embarrassed at how long it took me to start figuring out even the most basic structure. And by that, yes, I do mean grade school beginning, middle, end type structure. Oh, sure, I could have told you that stories needed all three, but beyond that… not much. And I was (and am still more often than I’d like) categorically bad at actually including all three of those oh-so-important parts.

Look, I said I was embarrassed about it.

But! I’m also getting better. Way better! And following a proper beat sheet is a part of that, which is part of why I’m so excited about this upcoming month. It’ll be the first time I go in with a complete plan instead of trying to implant structure afterwards. Which might– might— mean I come out of this with a usable first draft, instead of the glorified planning phase I usually end up with. And I have nothing against the glorified planning phase! It’s fun! It’s often helpful! It’s part of why I’ve been doing NaNo for so many years. But I think going in with an outline is the next step. And I think I’m ready to take it.

Musings

[Blog] NaNo Prep, and all the excitement that comes with.

Faith Hakimian

It’s that time of year! Already! National Novel Writing Month is right around the corner, somehow, which means that the planners are busy planning and the pantsters are (maybe) coming up with a launchpad idea to take them through. Normally, I’m one of the latter. Like, hardcore. I’ll have a vague idea of the story I want to write, and if I’m lucky it’ll include helpful things like important characters and a potential ending.

If I’m lucky.

And while I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself for my past few NaNos, I’ve also recognized that there are some distinct weaknesses to that style. Especially for someone like me who has Way Too Many Projects going at the same time, meaning that I don’t really spend the time to fix the chaotic tangle I end up with on December 1.

So, this year, I’m doing something different. This year, I’m planning. GASP.

And this isn’t like all my half-hearted attempts in years past where I tell myself I’ll plan, and all of a sudden it’s Halloween night and I definitely haven’t planned. In fact, I’ve been actively outlining and organizing since the beginning of September, and even if November were to start tomorrow I’d already be way more prepared than I’ve ever been before.

Right now, I’m slowly fleshing it all out in Scrivener, starting with chapter titles (which I’m really liking) and all the way down to decent summaries of each scene. Basically, it means I’m spending all the time wracking my brain to figure out where the story is going now instead of when I’ve already started writing the prose. Frontloading the delays, if you will.

Or I hope so, at any rate; this is all a massive experiment, and while it seems right now like I’ve been a planner in denial all this time, it’s also possible that I’ll decide that I’m a free spirit after all and fly off the rails as soon as I start typing. But I hope not.

But anyway! Take a look below for a sneak peak! Or, if you’ve got a project of your own, swing by the comments and let me know!

(And yes, I’m still working on Tanner and Miranda. Both projects are up right next to each other. Because I can’t do anything the easy way.)

What if… things could be better? What if this wasn’t the end?

When a shattered world starts crumbling faster, a woman must be willing to lose everything she loves for a chance to do the impossible and save it all.