I fell into a bit of a slump two days ago, only managing 400 words for the entire day. My plot had gotten away from me, and I had to get it back. The idea that may well have saved the whole book came to me while drying my hair, of all things. Just goes to show you what these things are good for.

The trouble – or at least my trouble – with something like NaNo is that when I sit down to do one creative thing, other ideas start clamouring for attention. The worst is when I had essays or other school work to do. Just before exams is a brilliant time for ideas. It’s like inspiration lies in ambush, waiting to jump out at you the minute you’re too busy to do anything with it.

I’ve had lots of ideas for art lately. I tricked my artistic muse, though, and drew my NaNo characters. You can see the big versions of the pictures if you click on the thumbnails. I’m fairly new to digital painting, but I’m getting the hang of it. It’s so great to be able to erase all your mistakes without messing up the page…

So yeah, here are my two main characters. He’s a werewolf, she’s his ex-girlfriend, and they’re both heading for a lot of trouble right now. If only I could stop with the exposition and set-up and actually throw them into the plot, that would be brilliant. As it stands, I have 35k words of mostly setting the scene. I think a lot of them will be cut, without tears or regret, come the 1st of December. In the meantime, though, that very detailed account of the random Halloween party and the walk in the botanical gardens are entirely necessary. Absolutely.

I’m pushing my characters onwards now, though. Enough of this hanging around. I want them to get at least as far as the actual plot before the end of November… preferably a good bit of the way through.

But that’s what NaNo is about: tangents, stream of consciousness, and a total lack of editing. Onwards and upwards, week three awaits!

Still on-track, and having more and more fun with my story. I have a feeling that a lot of this stuff will be cut during editing; I doubt that an in-depth description of the party that my characters are currently attending is very vital to the plot. Or relevant at all. But it’s being written anyway because relevance is for December.

I don’t spend all my time writing, though. Oh, no. Daylight is scarce these days, so the way it’s been working out is that I’d draw while it’s still bright outside, then write in the evenings. The past few weeks I’ve been working on a drawing of a character from a different story, my NaNo novel of 2008. I just finished it today, so here it is:

(click for full view)He’s a mercenary, that’s why he’s got so many weapons and stuff. I’m really happy with how he turned out. I love having visual representations of characters, and this is the best I’ve ever managed as far as my own characters go.