NaNo, Day Twelve

Hey, readers, we're nearing the halfway mark of NaNoWriMo!  Short stats update, and then I have a special treat for y'all. :)

Word Count: 17,611 as of last night at 11 PM CT. (I haven't had a chance to write yet today.)
# of places I've looked up in NYC: 5
# of questions on my history homework: 102

Now for the special treat!  I have a blog post from one of my NaNo friends (I also know her on another website), Leilani Sunblade! (Well, that's not her real name. ;)) 

 Emma Alyron isn't fond of the danger and adventure so many of her siblings seem to relish. That's why she and her mother moved away from Alyron Village and to Port Metre in Beylend so many years ago. Now, with her mother dead, Emma is alone, friendless, and defenseless. She doesn't mind too much- at least she's safe . . . for now.

Meanwhile, Emma's ne'er-do-well brother, Jared, is in trouble once more. Having run up more debts than he can pay, he's fled from his creditors and headed straight to Port Metre, where he hopes his luck will change for the better. It seems to have when he runs into Emma and falls in with a group called the Circle of Eight, but soon he begins to wonder if he's jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

To make matters worse, Gwen Alyron and the Firhirt siblings are on their way south, in search of another Alyron brother, Jake. They too run into Emma, much to the consternation of both Emma and Gwen, neither of whom is very fond of the other. Gwen and the Firhirts' search is cut short, however, when friends arrive with news of a terrible emergency. Thanks to Jared, Emma knows a secret that could be the key to solving the emergency, but will she share it and not only help Gwen, but become permanently entangled in what she's been running from for so long? And that's not her only secret . . . will she risk everything for this?

Hello, everyone! I'm Leilani Sunblade, one of Emma's NaNoWriMo writing buddies, and that up there is the cover and synopsis for Secrets and Searches, my NaNoWriMo novel. At the moment, I'm about halfway done, with a wordcount of just over 25k. That represents about 2k (or about 18-20 handwritten pages) every day. And on each of those days, weapons are drawn, a battle is fought, and a victory is won.


That's before I start writing.


You see, completing NaNoWriMo, or any writing project, requires that I defeat my archenemy. (Yes, I'm in high school and I have an archenemy. My life is awesome that way. And I have a big imagination and a penchant for personification and drama.) You've probably met my archenemy, actually. He attacks most of us at one point or another. If we don't defeat him, he'll take us captive and we'll never get anything we actually need to get done done. Instead, we'll spend a lot of time reading, watching TV, doing crafty stuff, browsing the internet, and poking around in closets looking for a passage to Narnia. (Ok, maybe not that last one.)


In case you haven't guessed yet, the archenemy I'm talking about is Procrastination.


For the record, yes, I know, Procrastination isn't a person. It's an idea. But I'm a writer. More importantly, I'm a fantasy writer. And as I said, I have a penchant for personification, which is taking a thing or idea and giving it human characteristics. (For example: "Procrastination liked to attack me on Sundays, when the days were busy and my defenses were down.") When you combine those two things, you get a person who tends to turn her daily struggle with Procrastination into a series of epic battles, which usually involve pencils turning into swords (or occasionally lightsabers), a (surprisingly small) degree of damage to wherever we're battling, and lots of amusing banter. Impossible? Normally, yes. But when you're writing fantasy, impossible doesn't exist.


Almost all personification aside, though, my struggles with Procrastination really do feel like a battle sometimes, especially on the days I'm losing the fight. He attacks more and more as we move further into the month of November and my excitement slowly fades into the somewhat muddy morass of trying to figure out how to get my characters out of the problems I've thrown at them. I just have to do my best to keep fighting even when it seems like my well of inspiration has run dry and Procrastination is offering me a tall glass of strawberry lemonade. In my opinion, that's part of what the NaNoWriMo challenge is about: forcing yourself to keep writing, keep fighting, and send Procrastination back into the Pit of Despair where he belongs.


Anyway, thanks for reading, and thank you also to Emma for inviting me to do a guest post here! I hope I didn't just scare all her readers away, ha ha.


May your pencils stay sharp and your words fly true!
-Leilani Sunblade

Thanks, Leilani! :)