Word Count Goal: 26,672

Achievement: 29,034 (2362)

Soundtrack: Doctor Who Season 1.

I had a lot of fun writing today’s scene. You can tell by my word count. The NaNo site is glitching so it doesn’t tell me how much I’ve written so I’m back to relying on my Word stats. The words flew easily today because I could tell exactly what was happening and how. I only paused to do some research about something I’ve never done myself, but I read a bit and watched some YouTube videos so I think I’ll manage to pull it off. I don’t want to reveal what it is but suffice to say it’s a totally awesome dream date!

I think I’m really starting to portray Lachlan as this horrible kind of guy. Not intentionally, you know, but the way Edward Cullen is represented on the page is basically in two different ways: First there’s the guy who’s in love with Bella and would do anything to protect her, and then there’s the stalky paedophile who watches her sleep. Well, Lachlan’s starting to reveal that he’s a bit of a control freak as well, which is totally appropriate because that’s exactly what I’m aiming for. I want Lachlan to represent everything that Edward, Patch and Daniel stand for in their novels (Twilight, Hush Hush and Fallen respectively). Most girls can’t see past their abs, hands and eyes to the controlling, manipulating assholes that lurk beneath. Part of me thinks there’s a real irony in that: the whole ‘beauty is only skin deep’ really applies to those YA ‘boys’ (who are really hundreds or thousands of years old but still fall in love with teenage girls like it’s all the rage). At the same time, Lachlan is totally hot but totally an asshole – only Tina doesn’t realise it yet. She’s starting to suspect, but every time she confronts him, he confuses her again with his magic. I can’t wait til she breaks free and kicks his ass demon-hunter style.

I always knew it was an awesome idea to have a male witch in this book.

I’m under your spell
Nothing I can do
You just took my soul with you
You worked your charm so well

Joss Whedon reference FTW!

Word Count Goal: 25,005

Achievement: 27201

Storytime listen count: I think I’m done. It’s too familiar to me now and I can’t write to it anymore.

I’ve got to say: writing Tina’s date with Lachlan is so much fun. You can tell Lachlan’s doing something to keep Tina enthralled and under his control, and sometimes Tina fights back to gain a second of lucidity before falling under his spell again. She also stopped him from making an advance on her in his car, and in Tina’s spellbound state she’s decided he’s too perfect to cheat on Chelsea so he broke up with her before asking Tina on a date. I don’t know if this is the truth or not, because basically Tina’s lost it and is in the worst case of insta-love ever! I’ll have to see how she interacts with Chelsea at the party scheduled in the next couple of days. My subconscious brain is planting seeds that I don’t know the answers to. It’s been a long time since I’ve written like that, and I love it.

It’s absolutely fascinating holding together all these characters and plot points in my head. I can’t wait to see how it turns out. I asked for some help on Goodreads, Twitter and Facebook to see if anyone could suggest a totally awesome date and from the responses I picked… well, you’re going to have to wait until I’ve written it to find out!

I only feel really sorry for Ten, because he hasn’t done anything wrong even though Tina half-thinks he has! It sounds complicated, but suffice to say it’s all Lachlan’s fault! And Lachlan’s not even the ‘bad guy’ of this novel!

Word Count Goal: 23,338

Achievement: 25,506

Storytime Listen Count: 126

I barely even know where my word count went today. I finished off the confrontation with Chelsea, Connor revealed some important plot things to Tina, and then Tina got ready for her date with Lachlan while going a little crazy. It doesn’t sound very interesting but I haven’t told you everything because if I did, you wouldn’t want to read the book. Basically I ended one scene and set things up for the second peak, which I’ve only been looking forward to writing since I started plotting the book and is basically the whole reason the book even exists! So the word count was really flying today and I could keep going except that I’ve made the bare minimum, left it at a part that I can’t wait to start writing tomorrow, and my fiancée is patiently waiting for cuddles because he finished his words earlier than me.

All I will add is that I’ve reached the halfway point, and I’m pretty sure this novel is going to write itself above 50K words. Which is good for me! I want it to be at least 60K. Also, I’ve considered changing the opening scene from a fully-fledged family demon vanquish to an earlier time when Tina received her capacitor cuff that forbids her from using her lightning vanquish because of the events that happened in Weather The Storm. I’m toying with the idea, but I’m just not sure if a) it’s an interesting enough opening scene compared to an awesome demon hunt and b) people can put 2 and 2 together and not complain that I didn’t add something that I myself found boring enough not to want to write it in the first place!

I also need to add that reaching 25K was a lot easier than getting through that 10K barrier that stopped four novels this year before this one! Once NaNo’s over I am tackling those books again so I have more material to put out next year and 2013.

Word Count Goal: 20,004

Achievement: 22,106

I do violence very well. I’m not ashamed to admit that. In a review for The Edge of Darkness, a blogging and widely-read friend of mine gave it 5/5 for violence, while only 3/5 for sex and language (and none for substance abuse). I think part of my ability to describe violence is because I’m really quite mild-mannered, shy, and and introvert. I don’t really stand up for myself because I think it’s better to avoid conflict at the cost of my self-esteem (which is something I’ve tried to work on in the past couple of years, but it’s really such an ingrained part of me now that I’m not sure I could ever learn to avoid it). But I always end up imagining really horrible things happening to people who’ve been mean to me or walked all over me or just generally not respected me as a human being.

And I know that this sounds really lame and sounds like I think my book will appeal to everyone (which I know it won’t), but my high fantasy that I’m currently querying as Young Adult has its fair share of violence as well (that can easily be re-written to be not so graphic). So much so that I’m quite comfortable adding a bunch of adult fantasy agents to my query list as well. Innocence is 14 when the story starts, but she ages to sixteen in the first book and to eighteen over the next few books, and possibly (because I haven’t written it yet but I could easily make it happen) to her 20s by the end of the series. Some of the violence is passive but graphic (passive violence – think about that for a second, because I freaking love writing it). Some of it’s not very nice. It’s a lot of fun to write and I hope it’s a lot of fun to read, but it’s not nice.

Today I wrote a scene that’s by any stretch of the imagination not nice. I haven’t figured out if it’s a dream, or if it’s a spell that Lachlan’s responsible for, or if it’s a hallucination, or if Tina is going crazy because she’s falling in love with Ten, still in love with dead Noah, and Lachlan is casting spells all over her to try and make her fall in love with him. Suffice to say I can wait patiently and let my brain work out what the hell just happened. And it was a lot of fun to write :P