On NaNoWriMo

Today's total narrative word count is 1363, meaning that I wrote 713 words today. I'm glad.

I got recently mail from NaNoWriMo. They're preparing to start accepting registrations for this year's November. I've participated since 2003, and I won in 2005, but I'm not going to do it this year. There are two reasons: this "Starbirds" project is the only one far enough along that I could actually contemplate writing it in November, but I've already started the narrative and so it is disgualified from NaNoWriMo; and NaNoWriMo is too tight a deadline. I have, on occasion, written more than 1666 words a day, but I can't sustain it and still get anything resembling fictitious narrative on the file. I've dropped out each year after two weeks, at the point where I would have collapsed had I continued, and taken my health with me. The year I won I did it by a bit of a cheat. That story will never see the light of day.

This "Starbirds" project is sort of my own NaNoWriMo project, with the difference that I'm setting myself much more modest goals. My goal is to have at least 1000 words more in the total narrative at the end of a week than I had at the beginning of the same week. This allows me to set a realistic pace of 400–600 words a day while allowing several off-days each week. It gives me time to pursue my life at the same time without breaking me. Still, the 1000 words a week is enough that I actually have to work on the project often enough.

The "Starbirds" concept actually grew out of my last year's NaNo work. In the summer I started playing with the space colonisation concept I had in that project, and ended up with a (totally different) idea of humans on an alien planet who went there to colonise but found too much bad luck that they regressed to the stone age. Then, unrelated to this, I started playing with the concept of sapient birds. Put these two concepts on the same planet (or moon, in this case), and you have the world concept of "Starbirds".

"Starbirds", actually, is set a few hundred years prior to my original story. We start with the colonists on approach. We're (hopefully) going to see them crash and then find the birds. What happens then? I'll tell you when we get there.

Snippet (actually, today's verbiage)

Richard guided her to a wheelchair. The idea of being hauled around by someone three times her age didn't sit very well by her, but her gooey legs left her no choice. She sat down.

"The emergency?"

Richard did not answer. Instead, he moved behind the chair and started pushing. They exited the infirmiary to a long and narrow corridor, and turned right. The corridor curved upward rather fast, giving Minea a bit claustrophobic feeling. As they moved forward, the point where the floor seemed to hit the ceiling moved forward as well. This was all familiar to Minea, of course, as she had lived most of her adult life offplanet, and she had seen the corridors on launch day, as they were freezing the passengers, her included.

Richard didn't slow down a bit at the intersections with straight corridors but kept moving on. Their trek across the diameter of the ship seemed to take ages, but finally Richard slowed at another intersection, and turned, again, to the right. The corridor they entered was straight and had no curvature, thank God. The view at the
far far end, just barely at the edge of her visual acuity, was scary.

"What happened?"

Richard made no answer, just kept going keeping a brisk pace. As they slowly came closer, the details became gradually visible. There were scorch marks on the walls. What she had taken as the far end of the corridor turned out to actually be a blast door. It had deformed visibly.

"My God. What's in there?"

Richard stopped her chair a meter or so short of the blast door. "The bridge," he said in a toneless, fragile voice. "All officers were in there, in conference at the time."

"All dead?"

"All dead," Richard said. Minea could hear him at the brink of his tears.

"I'm sorry." It occurred her that she did not know if his marriage to the first mate had actually lasted, but it seemed such a rotten time to ask. So, time to go back to the problem. "Is there any immediate danger?"

"It's been sixteen hours since the accident. It took that long to get you thawed and awake. Nothing's happened since, but there is no-one on the staff who can tell if we're about to collide with an asteroid or something."

"So you woke me to pilot for you?"

"No, we woke you to take command."

Command? "Ah, so that's what the Lieutenant business was about. News for you, Medtech, I'm not a Lieutenant."

"You are."

"I was court-martialed, found quilty and cashiered."

"From the Terran forces. We are not in the Sol system anymore."

"Who cares?"

"The Captain did. You are a Lieutenant, and ranking officer on board, not counting the dead, but counting the frozen."

"The Captain gave me a warrant? What for?"

"The Captain commissioned you. He gave warrants for a dozen others with piloting training or experience. As to why..." Richard turned her chair around and started pushing it away from the lamented bridge compartment. "It was a long voyage, and we had lots of time to make contingency plans."

"Fine contingency planning from the Captain then, to have all her officers in the same room."

"Well, nobody really expected anything to happen."

"But you planned for it anyway?"

"Yes. In fact, one of the contingencies considered was the total destruction of the original officer corps. The Captain said ..." Pause. "You'd better read the log book yourself."

Minea sighed. It felt a bit like Richard was an angel bearing an order from God. You coudn't argue with God, and you couldn't argue with a dead Captain. Still, she felt it was a bad plan. She to take command? She, who had been broken by the brass, not just in a legal sense but emotionally. She could not trust her own judgment. It boggled her to think the Captain had trusted her with the ship and passengers.

It was useless trying to make a decision now, but she could pilot. "Richard, please find me a piloting console."