NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month - my NaNoWriMo diary

NaNoWriMo is over!



NaNoWriMo has ended. I've been a winner this year and enjoyed the process. I learnt quite a lot about how I write, what I write and how to write. I learnt how to tackle a project this big.  I learnt that deadlines and a single minded attitude can succeed. I also learnt I enjoy writing.

I look forward to doing it next year.  This blog will become active again in Oct/Nov 2006 for NaNoWriMo 2006.  We need a Municipial Liason for Berkshire next year.  I might volunteer for it.

My NaNoWriMo history to date:
2004 NoMan Inc. (6129 words)
2005 Time enough for hate (50884 words) - WINNER!!!

See you next year!

December 03, 2005 in Diary | Permalink | Comments (0)

Time Enought For Hate by Raymond Cuttill

The ruthless executive wants to make a killing on the Stock Exchange after the 1929 crash

The naive professor thinks Hitler could be killed

The neo-Nazi wants to save Hitler

The feminist wants to make all men passive

A time transport can be a dangerous thing, especially if you have an axe to grind.

Here is my extract. Please note two things

(1) If contains some items of a sexual nature.  The more explicit scenes are NOT in the extract and there is one F word replaced by “****”.  You have been warned.

The explicit sexual material in the novel proper is completely necessary for the plot.  (And there are WMDs in Iraq) but more seriously it does suit the characters purposes/mood at the time and if it were ever published it might/might not be toned down.

(2) I know this requires serious editing, possibly with a blow torch.  Comments welcome.  I can take it. I’ll just go back in time and shoot all your grandparents.  Oh, I forgot, I can only do that in my story.  Back to reality, it is a first draft.  There might be further drafts. If not this might be a loss to literature; on the other hand if there are, it might be a terrible waste of good trees.  History will tell.  Now if only I had a time transport I could collect my royalties before writing it.

Time enough for hate

By Raymond Cuttill

From Page 1 --

"We've done it! We've done it!" exclaimed Professor Ian Swift excitedly, almost jumping up and down.

"Now we can alter time any way we want! History is no longer fixed." he said as Jim Carlton walked into the control room.

From Page 30 –

They arrived at the hotel. As Schuller was collecting the keys from the receptionist they heard

“Good evening, Mr Capone” said the doorman behind them.

They turn to see Al Capone and some men entering the hotel lobby. Al Capone strode right up to Andersen.

From Page 66 –

There was a huge flash.  The city of Hiroshima vanished in a ball of fire.  That now well-known mushroom cloud began to form.

“Okay”, said Schuller, “You can open the shutters now”

The German officers eagerly did so.  Hitler peered out. 

“With this weapon, I can rule the world”, He said.

“With two of those bombs, and this Time Plane.  I could go back to 1914, and bomb London and Paris.  The Third Reich has truly arrived”, He said jubilantly almost bouncing with joy.

From Page 87 –

Neanderthal, she thought. What is he going to do with me? What does he want?

To settle the matter, he let the spear drop to the ground, and threw the animal skin off over his shoulder.

Continued …

In response to any kind of threat the choice was running or fighting, the so-called flight or flight response

Lucy thought that she had the choice of the flight fight or **** response

More from Page 1 --

"A millionth of a second! That's hardly time travel.", said Jim.

Jim looked out of the control room, down at the cargo hold of the massive Boeing 858, the only cargo aircraft in the world that could handle the time transport.

The time transport considered two main components both for which were mounted on the floor of the cargo deck, and nearly filled it to the ceiling.

There were several people swarming around the electromagnetic gravitational generator, affectionately known as the EGG although it was perfectly round. It was a huge ball of superconductive coils supplied with liquid helium in the platform that the ball rested on. This generated a gravitational field, which when manipulated in the right way created time travel. The trick was to manipulate the gravity waves, so they didn't crash the entire plane in everything in it but at the same time, did create, time travel

Beyond it was the nuclear reactor of a kind often used in nuclear submarines.  Small but powerful it supplied the electro gravitational generator with the necessary power.  Essentially a cube several yards on each side.  For the most part, it did its job, and just sat there and hummed.

All this fitted just in the cargo hold of the Boeing 858, which  had the advantage of vertical takeoff and landing, very handy if you visit the past, where there are no runways.

From Page 34 —

"This grandfather paradox doesn't exist. What it turns out, is that if you alter time then you alter time.  Whatever you do by travelling back in time that affects your grandfather, that action affects your grandfather. FULL STOP.  It does not affect you in that sense.  In other words, you can't shoot your grandfather, and then you disappear because he is dead, and you can't have been born.  The fact is, he is dead, and you weren’t born but you exist, because you came back in a time transport from a time stream where you were born but that time stream no longer exists.  Only one actual time stream exists.  The time stream that now exists is a one-way your grandfather was shot and you weren't born.  If you go back to the present.  You will find you did not exist; nothing you did has happened; you do not have a job, someone else may have that job; you do not have a wife, someone else, may have married her.  And that assumes that very little has changed from shooting your grandfather.  Who knows what he may have influenced or affected himself or his children, your parent all your aunts and uncles or any of your cousins."

Continued…

"Oh, come on, Professor.  You're being melodramatic.", said Parker jeeringly,"Perhaps your wrong. If I go back and meet myself and because two of us can't exist in the same time there some kind of catastrophe like a nuclear explosion or whatever "

"Now that doesn't happen.  You been reading too many science fiction stories. If you travel in time what you do is move a set of molecules, yourself for example, to another time, which they existed before.  You do not alter history or anything else, in any other way.  The problem is what you do when you get there.  If you then do something which could be is trivial as bumping into someone it could in some small way affect their life; their lives could affect thousands of other people's lives, and in some way perhaps ultimately affect you or at least the you that originally left on the time journey."

Continued…

The Professor then went into lecture mode, "Every molecule in the universe has its own timestream.  Therefore if you pick a molecule in this table, it is there now.  It was there a second ago.  And it will be there a second from now.  And they each have in some sense their own separate existence, separated by time.  Now if you take that table and transporting it through time and back to a second ago, there is another table there.  It is the table that was there a second ago.  It's the same table but it is from the second earlier.  You have made the table travel through time, so the two tables normally separated by time, can now exist in the same time as two separate tables, and therefore potentially can collide with each other.  It would be two tables colliding together, as some speed, rather like a car crash.  Therefore, in order to ensure the table, the time transport and the plane and everything else in it do not collide with itself, we make sure that we're moving away from where we were at all times.  The thing is we can't just travel through time and say I'll avoid the obstacles when I see them, because we can't see them.  In other words, if I moved to the future, or even if I moved to the past, I don't know what was there, one second ago or even one day ago, for sure.  Now let's say you made a movie about time travel, and you fitted a time transport in a car, say, one of those antique DeLorean cars, and you drove it in a car park.  As you transported back into the past, if there was a car parked in the car park yesterday you would collide with it on your way back to a hundred years ago.  You simply can't say I'll drive back to a hundred years ago, and simply arrive there.  You drive through all the previous car parks on your way.  Potentially, you could collide with every car that has been in the car park since it's been built, and you can't see it and you arrive back at the time and it was parked.  In other words, we’re potentially flying blind into the past or into the future and we could fly in the something that was all will be there and we can't tell until we hit it.  Hence the use of a plane and carefully calculated routes, so that we don't firstly collide with ourselves, and if possible don’t collide with anything else. “

Continued…

"In some ways it's like Chaos Theory.  Sometimes in Chaos Theory, a butterfly could flap its wings and cause a storm a 1000 miles away.  Because at that time the entire weather system is on a knife edge, and it can tip either way.  Imagine for example, if you went into the past, and eat an apple, you’d think it wouldn't make much difference.  Perhaps, perhaps not.  Perhaps nobody will know we have one more or less apple is eaten in the past.  On the other hand, let's suppose you eat the apple that that very day was going to fall on Newton's head and give him the idea of the gravity.  Perhaps he doesn't get the idea, or perhaps not that way, or at that time.  So already, time has been altered.  Maybe somebody else gets the idea first.  Maybe somebody gets a completely different but plausible idea.  But there interpretation or mathematics is done in a completely different way.  This could alter completely our understanding of gravity.  It's like playing we dynamite and saying, I hope this doesn't go off.  Most of the time, you could be right.  It won't go off.  But you only have to be wrong once.  There are all sorts of potential complications, for example, most of as a caring various microbes, viruses and bacteria from the future.  Quite a lot of these have evolved since the time we're currently in.”

Continued…

That's just one of the things we've got to think about.  A complete policy of non-interference.  Not even accidental interference."

November 29, 2005 in Diary | Permalink | Comments (0)

Day 27 – 50884 words – Winner!!

I made it!!!  First NaNo win!!! (Longest previous story 14K at school 40 years ago). A week ago I was on the 21K.  I had a week off and averaged 4K a day.  I did an all-nighter for the last leg and finished about 530am.  The last 1,000 was like pulling teeth. When I got to 30K I was out of plot but a lot of my scenes deserve much more verbiage.  My gunfights seem to last less than a page. Rather than re-write, which is needed, I added more scenes as it’s quicker. Anyway I got to 50K but I didn’t run around outside the house in my dressing gown and slippers shouting about it because it is 530am; its dark, its cold and out of politeness to the neighbours, but I made it!!!

From NaNoWriMo -

You've Won!

Dear Novelist,

You did it.

Despite everything else going on in your busy life, you managed to pull off the creative coup of writing a 50,000-word novel in just one month.

When the going got tough, you got typing, and in four weeks, you built vast worlds and set them in motion. You created characters; quirky, interesting, passionate souls with lives and loves and ambitions as great as yours. You stuck it out through the notoriously difficult middle stretch, and pressed onward as 80% of your fellow writers dropped out around you.

And now look at you: A NaNoWriMo winner. And the owner of a brand-new, potential-filled manuscript. It's an amazing accomplishment, and we're proud to have had you writing with us this year.

Before we let you head off to your celebration (or nap, as the case may be), we have some NaNoWriMo Winners' booty to share with you.

and that's about it. On behalf of everyone here at NaNoWriMo headquarters, I offer you my congratulations. We look forward to noveling with you again next November.

Warm regards,

Chris Baty
Director, NaNoWriMo

November 28, 2005 in Diary | Permalink | Comments (0)

Day 26 – 45217 words – Wow! Nearly there

Besides going from 37K to 40K, I went from 40K 6:09pm today to 45K 12:16am (6 hours and 7 minutes later.).  A total of 8K.

Personal best and I may even go for the finish tomorrow (Sunday)

Oh and Hip Hip Hooray, God Bless the Queen etc.

November 27, 2005 in Diary | Permalink | Comments (0)

Day 25 – 37069 words – Now I’m cooking on nuclear power!

Just over 7K today to bring me to 37069

I’ve discovered some things about my writing.  My fight scenes are terrible and over in a paragraph or two. I shall have to work on that.  My dialogue is not too bad, IMHO. But where I really excel is in sex scenes.  Not that most of this will see the light of day.  I am writing science fiction not erotic fiction.  But if I get started on a sex scene, one I really enjoy, I can expound every detail for hours.  Hence the last 3K on my word count is all from one sex scene (admittedly it involves a woman stealing some gene therapy material from the lab that the man works during a gap in the sex scene, which is in the office).  So when I intended to go for 35K today and was worried because I’d finished the story but had some scene ideas I could shoehorn in, I now are much more confident about finishing.  The rest of the scenes will probably be one long orgy.  It’s not what I intended to write but it’s a learning curve and it’s fun.

November 26, 2005 in Diary | Permalink | Comments (1)

Day 24 - 30012 words - But I'm done, oh Dear

Good news: 30K

Bad news: I’ve got to the end

Now there are scenes I can add but 20K is going to be a struggle. I had to add some extra description to one paragraph that interrupted a conversation.

But anyway I’m at 30K

November 25, 2005 in Diary | Permalink | Comments (0)

Day 23 - 25794 words - HALF WAY THERE!!!

Hooray! 25K at last. I'm halfway there.  Very, very late, but halfway there.  There are still people at 20 K or below, and some of them still will probably finish too.  Now I know I can definitely do 25K.  All I have to do is another 25K.  Admittedly much quicker than before, but I have the rest of Nano off.  If I can average 4K or more then I can finish.

Every word is a lifetime record anyway.  My best previous ever was a 14 K. story when I was at school, 40 years ago.  Now I'm close to finishing a novel.  Minor details like editing and punctuation would have to wait.  Not to mention plot consistency. I did lose track the one on my characters for a chapter or so.  But the bottom line here is   I am now confident of finishing.  Three cheers.  Hip Hip Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

November 23, 2005 in Diary | Permalink | Comments (0)

Day 22 - 22426 words - still going

Getting closer and closer as the end approaches.  Not doing enough to catchup but tomoorw is the last day I work prior to the ne dof NaNoWriMo. I will have 7 days of no work and all NaNoWriMo starting Thursday. I've proved that I can do 5K a day and I have to do that 5 times plus a bit and I'm done, so I'm reasonably confident.

November 23, 2005 in Diary | Permalink | Comments (0)

Day 21 - 21000 words - getting there

Still progressing.  Found I had lost a character who went off to look for someone else but then disapppeared.  Found a not very plausible reason for him to be away.  It adds to the word count and anyway I'll change it on any future drafts (assuming there are any future drafts).

November 22, 2005 in Diary | Permalink | Comments (0)

Graphics of my progress

November 21, 2005 in Diary | Permalink | Comments (0)

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