A Brief Silence

I am the Warden!!

I've been quiet for the past couple of days and it will likely continue into the remainder of this week.

Anyone who's followed this blog to any significant degree, friends, and family will know the circumstances behind what I am currently going through. There's little I can say on the matter other than I have been confronted with a serious financial concern regarding my recovery and it has taken top priority at the moment. On the advice of my lawyer, I'm not clarifying this topic.

As a result, I'll be silent online this week as I use all my resources to tackle this matter before getting back on track. Needless to say, something has to get the knife and that will be NaNoWriMo. Every other obligation and project on my plate has something financial involved; NaNo does not. That does not mean the novel itself, Messenger, is no more, just not at this moment. I've become intrigued by what's transpired in the novel so far and want to take it further for many reasons outside of this annual challenge. As it stands, I have 27,088 words completed to date and I'm very satisfied with that amount considering the circumstances and my first effort.

The time will come when I can explain things in detail (my fiancee's still persuading me to write an auto-biography as my NaNo submission), but it's not now. 

NaNoWriMo... or NaNoWriNoMo

I am the Warden!!

No, let me correct that.

(sigh) I am the Warden.

This novel, she puzzles me, intrepid readers. It pains me to admit, but I haven't written anything solid for the past three days. If I have any defence, the time was spent working on other projects, particularly the Adventurer gamebook, Fires Across the Plains. I had a different goal set to accomplish that project in time and needed to fire it off regardless of anything else for the sheer sake that it's a paid contract. (And technically my first in years, therefore the first of my full-time career.)

Now I have to confess. Part of that last paragraph was a lie. I could have easily put in the work on my novel, Messenger. I simply didn't.

We've established already this is my first serious attempt at completing any fictional writing aside from the occasional brief story used in RPG supplements and personal campaigns and taking this vehicle from 0 to 60 in 6 seconds has proven to be a true endurance challenge. When I started, I had it my mind to write a complete work of fiction from beginning to end and I've been treating this as such, save for the advanced planning and conception stages other projects require. It's worked out well during the initial stages of the story, starting from intense action and intrigue, some burglary, story-based dialogue as the protagonist learns their mission, escapes from enemies, even wanders the Wild for a chapter. While the last chapter was quite the challenge - I've never written a lot of exposition and travel scenes before - this new one has truly escaped me.