Just a quick update for those curious about the progress of the novel. I am still working on it and this week got back to it, though not at the November pace. There have been a few opportunities that have come my way on other projects that have slowed it down. However, I am working hard at putting something into it every day to move it forward.

I feel bad for it not progressing faster. I'd like to make grand promises about deadlines. Unfortunately, the best I can do is to state the truth. I'm dedicated to finishing this thing if it kills me. And, you all hereby have permission to bug me if you haven't seen a change for a day or 2.

A few days ago, I did a podcast interview with The Writing Show. It was posted last night and you can listen to me ramble on for an hour or so if you're so inclined (she actually had to edit out a half hour just to get it down to this size). We talked about Inheritance, the writing process, Nanowrimo and open fiction. I, personally have a hard time listening to my own voice, so it's hard for me to listen to it.

writing, open fiction, nanowrimo, novel, fiction

Well, if you've been watching the progress of the book, you've noticed the screeching halt that the last week caused. Given the magnitude of events in my life over the last week, I pretty much set the book aside. Things are starting to restabilize and I'm looking at starting back up. As of right now, making the official Nanowrimo deadline is going to take 1000 more words per day than the original target wordcount per day. While I'm still going to give it a shot to make it, I just wanted to state for the record that I'm pretty much considering the last week a giant timeout and will consider myself (even if they won't count it officially) as a win if I finish 7 days late. Either way, you'll be getting a rough draft for Christmas and that should make us all happy. Except for the folks in the trunk of the 65 Plymouth.

The goal was to spur the writing of fiction and I'm thrilled with the results and you as readers have warmly welcomed my story as well, making it far better than I hoped.

For those who don't want to read the whole thing, I'm posting chapters, one at a time. There's currently a 14 chapter lag, which will hopefully mean you'll be getting stable chapters that I'm not messing with majorly in terms of plot, etc. With that, here goes.

Inheritance
a novel by J Wynia

Chapter 1
On the Lindahl family farm's back 40 acres, early morning light filtered through the bright yellow aspen and birch leaves and right into Dale Worth's eyes. It was just bright enough to make him squint and pull his greasy John Deere cap down for shade.

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack of generic cigarettes and a Zippo lighter, making the threadbare spot above the pocket just a little bit worse with the brush of his hand.
In his other hand was the lever controlling the hydraulics on the flatbed towtruck. As he pulled out a cigarette from the pack with his teeth and lit it with his semi-free hand, he eased the 65 Plymouth onto the bed of the truck, the rusted frame and chains creaking and moaning as it went.

As the car settled into place, the trunk latch popped loose and Dale shoved his cigarettes back into the pocket, keeping the lighter in his hand to fidget with. He dragged his more than slightly overweight body up the side of the truck and onto the bed, making decidedly undignified noises in the process.

He reached into the toolbox behind the truck cab for a few bungee ties and slid as best he could around to the back of the car, smearing rust stains across the side of his jacket. He reached the back of the car and promptly dropped not only the bungee cords, but the lighter as well.

"What . . . the . . . fuck?", Walter managed to ask the empty grove of trees.

Staring out at him from the trunk, from the middle of a pile of bone, skull and rotting flesh was the still recognizable face of Todd, the bartender at Dale's favorite watering hole, mouth agape in a frozen scream and eyes clouded and empty.

If you've looked at the progress meter on the novel progress page, you'll note that I'm a bit behind. Currently, I have to tack on about another 200 words a day to finish on time. Not that bad, but the emotional impact of seeing other participants with wordcounts approaching 25,000 where I just cleared 8000 can be panic-inducing. However, when noting that of the 5 or so upcoming Minneapolis area "write-ins", something like 4 were during a normal business day, it's clear that many participants aren't burdened with needing to earn a living in addition to their novel writing.

I have mixed feelings about being behind. It's reminding me of how rusty my fiction skills are. It's reminding me of how different fiction writing is than non-fiction writing. It's causing an inner battle between my inner writer and my inner editor. The overall mantra of Nanowrimo is "write, don't edit". As such, having my inner editor kick in is a bad thing. However, to me there's a difference between the editor preventing me from writing a cheesy line or description and it keeping you from sending a priest by plane and leaving his son at home and taking him by car. In the latter case, the editor kicking in would have saved me 1500 words of rewrite.

At any rate, while I'm happy with the results so far, I'm also glad this isn't a 365 way of life. I'm not going in to work tomorrow, though that's unfortunately due to the hospitalization of someone close to me and not just to write. However, the net result will be quite a few hours extra tomorrow to get some writing done. I'm hoping to be nearly caught up by the end of tomorrow.