In this blog post, I am going to include the entire first chapter of (the first draft of the) novel I'm writing this November. But, inevitably, I'm going to ramble on at some length first, so if you want to skip that part and just get to the chapter you can click here.
So anyway, as of my last blog post a week ago, I had written 2,218 words out of the goal of 50,000. That meant that in order to finish the novel by the end of the month (and assuming I didn't write any more the day I made that post—which I didn't), I'd have to average a bit over 4,778 words a day every remaining day. And did I do that? No, of course not; that would have required me to display something vaguely resembling competence or willpower. But to get into more detail, let's take it day by day, at least until my unreliable attention span wanders and I stop doing that.
On November 21, the day after I made the last blog post, I did get more writing done, and I switched to using LibreOffice rather than Word as I'd intended to do. This itself, as it turned out, inflated my nominal word count by five words, since LibreOffice apparently counts words slightly differently than Word does. But I did get a significant, though unimpressive, amount of writing done: 2474 words, to be exact, so more than I had the first day (but not enough to meet the daily average I'd need to get it done at this point). This comprised the entirety of Chapter One, which meant I'd gotten through at least one thing that had been blocking me; as I said previously, I'd put off Chapter One and started with Chapter Two because those two chapters involved different sets of characters whose stories the novel would alternate between until they met up near the end, and I didn't have a sufficient idea of how the odd-chapters characters' story began to start writing it. Now, apparently, I did, and Chapter One was done.
And then on the 22nd and the 23rd... I slacked off. I got nothing done. Well, that's not entirely true; I did get some things done; but I got no writing done on my novel. I don't really have a good explanation for this, other than the fact I'm just a horrible procrastinator. I had a pretty good idea what Chapter Three was going to be about; I just for whatever reason couldn't make myself sit down and write it.
But then, on the 24th, something happened that hadn't happened in a long time. I had a day off. A day that I didn't have to work, and didn't have any other obligations that would take up my time instead. A day I could devote entirely, or at least largely, to writing.
Instead, I devoted a good part of the beginning of the day to sleeping.
Though really, this is something I needed. When I wrote in the previous post about reasons I wasn't writing more, there's one reason I'd meant to mention but forgot when it came time to actually write the post. Yes, I've been very busy with work, and yes, I've maybe been wasting too much time on Tumblr and other distractions. But also—and in large part because I've been so busy with work—I haven't been getting enough sleep. I think the 24th was about the first time in a long time I'd actually gotten at least eight hours of sleep, and there were many nights I've been getting as few as four. Now, yes, I probably should get to bed earlier, and I think I have been getting better about that, but that can only go so far; there are some days I have late work schedules and end up working past midnight (though this is relatively rare), and even when that's not the case I often don't find out my work schedule for the next day until fairly late—and I can't really go to bed before I find out, since I don't know what I need to plan for the next morning. So I'm almost constantly tired, which makes it hard to focus on things whether I'm at work or not.
I've frequently run across articles online—I think this was the most recent—discussing the consequences of insufficient sleep, and describing studies of the capabilities of subjects who get less than eight hours a night. Some of those articles say that someone getting by on six hours of sleep (and I haven't actually kept a careful record of my sleeping hours, but that I'm averaging six hours or less seems all too plausible) is as cognitively impaired as if they were drunk. (I've never actually been drunk, but if it feels anything like being constantly tired I don't think I'm missing much.) I don't know whether that's true—obviously not every article on the web is reliable, and I haven't bothered to actually look into the studies the articles cite—but if it is, it seems likely that sleep deprivation is another factor in my lack of productivity, and I can't help but wonder how much more I could get done if I were getting the recommended eight hours of sleep a night.
Anyway, though, once I finally did get up on my rare day off, I did what I did the last time I had a day off, which is plot out a schedule for what I wanted to get done that day. And, like the last time I had a day off, with the schedule in place I did manage to mostly stick to it. And of course one of the items on my schedule was working on my novel. In fact, I perhaps should have scheduled more time for working on my novel, but I had other things I also hoped to get done that day and only slotted three hours for that (plus another half hour for planning). Still, in those three hours, I made substantial progress. Six thousand two hundred and thirty-two words of progress, to be exact. Which isn't as much as I should have been writing per day at that point to be on track to finish on time, but was, well, more than I'd gotten done any other day.
I don't know whether I'll have any more days off this month, though, and I certainly haven't since. (Including today; I'm at work right now as I'm writing this post.) And on the 25th, I once again got nothing done. Well, almost nothing; I did manage to eke out forty-three words, but that's... pretty much negligible. The problem, aside again of course from general procrastination, was that I was again at something of a block; I'd gotten to a point at which our odd-chapter heroes were confronted by pirates, and... I had no idea how they were going to get past the pirates. Again, some time planning might have helped this, and if I'd outlined the story before the beginning of November as I'd originally intended and as I really, really should have, this wouldn't have been a problem. But in any case, I finally did work out how things would proceed from there, and on the 26th I got 2,690 words done—not nearly enough to be on track, and not nearly as many even as I had written two days before (then again, that day I hadn't been working), but more than I wrote on the first day, anyway, and at least it was something.
And with those words written, that means that to complete fifty thousand words by the end of the month I have to average a bit over nine thousand two hundred words a day—including today (which isn't impossible; I've still got time left today, including some time I'll have free after work). That... won't be easy, but it's not entirely impossible. I won't say I work well under pressure, because I'm not sure I ever work well, but I think I may at least work better under pressure than I do without it. Anyway, it seems the rate of my writing so far, when I've actually devoted time to doing it, has been a bit over two thousand words an hour, which means I'd have to spend an average of four or five hours writing each of the remaining days to meet the goal, which... I hope is doable?
I'm definitely not going to finish the novel by the end of the month, though. By which I mean, I still harbor perhaps unrealistic hope that I can still finish the fifty thousand words by the end of the month, but that won't be the finished novel; fifty thousand words would be very short for a fantasy novel, and whatever else you may say about my writing, it's... rarely short. As I said, I last completed a November novel writing challenge about fourteen years ago (and I still really need to do some rewrites on that novel and try to do something with it), and out of curiosity I checked how long that novel was. It was (by at least one application's word count) 101,477 words. Twice the fifty-thousand word goal. And that was all written in November; I didn't write fifty thousand words in November and then continue the novel later. But then, I didn't have my current work schedule then, and, at least as importantly, that novel I'd had at least roughly outlined before November began, so I knew where I was going with it. This time... well, I know all the main characters now, and the general outline of what's going to happen at least up until the point the two groups of characters finally meet up, but I don't know how the story ends, and I don't know what the coveted treasure that is the story's main MacGuffin actually comprises. But then, I guess I don't actually need to know those things until I get near the end of the story, and that's not going to happen this month. I'll get fifty thousand words done by the end of the month (at least, I'm still committed to trying), but I'll have to be satisfied with that; I'm not going to finish the novel.
(Okay, it would help to know how the story's going to end so that I could foreshadow some of the ending events and set up some things that can pay off in the ending... but that can be addressed in the rewrites.)
Speaking of looking at the novel I completed fourteen years ago, I was also curious about the average chapter length, since I was worried the chapters of my current novel were a bit short—so far the average chapter length is just under 2,700 words. But the chapters in that previous novel averaged about 3,250, which isn't much longer, and according to what I've found online in a search about usual chapter length 2,700 words is somewhat on the short side but not unusually so. It's fine. I have much bigger things I should be worrying about.
And speaking of chapters... I said at the beginning of this post that I was going to include the full text of Chapter One of the novel in this post, so I guess it's about time to do that. Please keep in mind that this is only a first draft and is going to be heavily rewritten, but also that I'm not a great writer so even after the rewrites it may not be much better. Anyway, here it is:
Chapter One
“If you have any advice on how to fight a ghost wizard, I’d love to hear it,” Rabhi said.
The spectral wizard laughed, a hollow sound that echoed far more than it should have in this irregular chamber. He took his transparent hands from Tiressa’s shoulders and drew back, a gap-toothed grin on his bearded face.
“You’ve been sailing the Dreamsea a long time,” Virotta said. “I thought you might have encountered something like this before.”
Freed from the ghostly grip, Tiressa, her face almost as pale from shock as the ghost’s, staggered back and stumbled to a seated position on the stone-tiled ground.
“This? You think I’ve encountered something like ghost wizards before?” Rabhi retorted. “Because no. No I haven’t.”
Drawing himself up to his full height, the wizard laughed again. “There is nothing you can do! Even death could not stop the great wizard Ardalothian!”
The ghost was nearly three times Rabhi’s height, or twice Virotta’s; if he hadn’t been a giant in life—and there was nothing in the dimensions of the furnishings of his lair to indicate that he had been—then he was magnified in undeath. He was white and transparent but otherwise looked very much the stereotyped wizard, to a much greater extent than any other wizard Rabhi had met: a long, crooked nose; a long, scraggly beard; a tall, pointed hat. The only spot of color was his deep-set eyes, which glowed a baleful red.
“Well, we’re damn well going to try,” said Uda, drawing her sword and running toward the wizard. Rabhi drew her own scimitar and followed her friend.
From behind her, a crossbow bolt flew through the wizard, not doing any obvious damage to its ghostly form. Rabhi didn’t look back, but judging from the angle the bolt came from that was probably Wannel. Good for him; the boy may be new to the Dreamsea and still learning the ropes, but at least he was brave enough to try to put a fight when the time came.
The wizard raised his arms, and a green ball of light glowed between his hands, illuminating the room. It was a hemispherical chamber, its walls covered in pilasters and filigrees, and its floor with complex geometric patterns inlaid with glittering paints. The ship’s navigator, Dessane, still lay against one wall, unconscious or dead. All manner of strange instrument lay on tables and shelves around the edge of the room.
Out of the corner of her eye, Rabhi noticed a golden astrolabe. That was what they came for; she’d have to be sure to collect it before they left. Not right now, though; there were more immediate concerns to deal with.
Such as the green orb that the wizard now hurled in the direction of Rabhi and Uda. They leaped in opposite directions to dodge, and when Rabhi landed on the ground she tripped due to the absence of the concussive force she had expected, falling on her front and scraping her arm. She pivoted to look at the ghost wizard, who was still leering malevolently.
Rabhi regained her footing and charged at the wizard, and saw Uda doing the same. Both swung their weapons at the ghostly wizard—and both met no resistance, their blades passing right through its transparent form.
The wizard laughed again.
“You have not the means to harm me, let alone destroy me!”
He threw his arms wide, and red bolts like lightning spread out from him and filled the room. Rabhi gritted her teeth and braced herself—but she felt nothing. Not the electrical shock she expected, not heat, not more than perhaps a slight tingle, and even that she wasn’t sure wasn’t her imagination.
She looked again at the wizard looming over her, who for the first time wasn’t grinning.
“Nevertheless,” the wizard said, “it seems in death I have little power to harm you either. Perhaps I need a body, in order to regain my former power.” He looked around the room. “And I see several here to choose from!”
Before Rabhi could react—though she wasn’t sure what she could have done anyway—the wizard suddenly bent down and flew forward—directly toward the seated Tiressa. Its entire double-sized body seemed to flow into the unfortunate rigger… and it didn’t pass through or come out.
Rabhi didn’t know what had just happened, but the ghost was gone. She started walking toward Tiressa, who was getting unsteadily to her feet. At the side of the room, Dessane, apparently not dead after all, finally regained consciousness and started to stand as well.
“Tiressa!” Rabhi called out. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” the rigger said tentatively, her voice, usually high-pitched anyway, sounding even more high-pitched and childish.
And then suddenly she laughed, a laugh very like the wizard’s, and her eyes glowed red.
Just after, her eyes—no longer red—widened, and she clapped her hand over her mouth.
“The wizard!” Virotta said. “He’s possessed her!”
“No,” Tiressa said. “I don’t—”
Her expression twisted into a leering grin, and her eyes glowed red—only for a moment, before she was herself again, but for that moment it was unmistakable.
“What’s going on here?” Nibber said, having just arrived. “Who’s that guy over there?” Nibber’s lateness was understandable; as a jonder, he had a stubby, legless body and moved by hauling himself along on his arms, so he couldn’t get around nearly as fast as the human crew members, so he usually took longer to get places.
Rabhi looked where Nibber was pointing, which seemed to be somewhere in the far side of the room. “What guy over where? I don’t see anyone.”
With his other arm, Nibber quickly drew a throwing knife and hurled it in the direction he was indicating. Suddenly a startled-looking man who Rabhi could have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago clutched his shoulder where the knife had hit him, and then, after a glance at Rabhi and her crewmates, ran for a nearby door.
Rabhi turned to Virotta and Wannel, who by now had joined her at Tiressa’s side. “Take Tiressa back to the ship,” she told them. “I’ll go after our mysterious friend.”
Uda went with her, as she had guessed she would, and the two of them ran for the door the unknown man had just fled through. They got through it just in time to see him duck out another door at the end of the corridor beyond.
People often tended to underestimate Rabhi’s athletic capabilities based on her appearance; she might be short and fat, but she could run a lot faster than most people expected when she needed to. And the wizard’s lair in the moon wasn’t that extensive; the man could give them a bit of a chase, but there were only so many places he could run to, and Rabhi had little doubt they would catch up and corner him before too long.
And they did. After passing through several more doors they finally pursued him into a round room with a pool of blue liquid in the center and soon Uda put on a burst of speed and tackled him—Rabhi might be fitter than she looked, but she wasn’t at Uda’s level. The man struggled a bit in Uda’s grip but then apparently gave up and just glared up at the two women.
He was middle-aged, with a fringe of gray-brown hair around a large bald spot on top, and shaggy eyebrows currently drawn down in anger. He wore a brown robe with a fret design in gold thread down each side, and brown slippers that struck Rabhi as somewhat impractical. Maybe if he’d been wearing better shoes he would have been harder to catch.
“Who are you?” Rabhi demanded.
The man frowned and squinted his eyes. Rabhi got the impression he was trying to think how to respond.
Then he smiled, and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “The wizard Ardalothian will never be defeated. He has a body now, and with it he will regain his power. It will take time for him to cement his control, but it will not be stopped.”
“And you’re… what? His servant? His familiar? Some random fan?”
“I will see Ardalothian’s purposes fulfilled.”
“That in no way answers my question.”
Uda hauled the man to his feet. He winced as she twisted his arm in lifting him, but she kept a firm grip on his hands behind his back.
“Let’s take him back to the Noggins,” Uda said.
“Wait, let’s start at the beginning,” Captain Alagela said. “How exactly did you end up fighting a ghost wizard?” Aside from the captain, there were four of them in the room—Rabhi, Uda, Tiressa, and the man in the brown robe. Uda no longer held the man’s arm, but she stood blocking the door—the only exit from the room—in case he tried making a break for it. As for Tiressa, she seemed herself at the moment, but the possessing wizard’s control over her had seemed intermittent and unpredictable, so there was no telling how long that would be the case.
“Well, so we went into the wizard’s base,” Rabhi said, speaking loudly to be heard over the moon raging outside. “But almost immediately we came to an intersection, and we weren’t sure which way to go—Maz had given us pretty clear directions to get to this place, but he hadn’t said anything about where in the base we could find the astrolabe.”
The gold astrolabe now stood on the captain’s desk—when Rabhi, Uda, and their captive had returned through the room where they had met the ghost wizard, Rabhi had seen it still there, and she had made sure to pick it up. She had hoped one of her crewmates might have remembered to take it, but hadn’t been surprised that they hadn’t.
“I think it was Dessane who suggested we split up,” Rabhi continued. “So Uda and I went one way; Dessane and Tiressa took another passage; and Virotta, Wannel, and Nibber took the third.
“We came out into this room with all these… cages. Most of them only had skeletons or, like, empty shells; whatever animals had once been in there were long dead. But one of them had some kind of… worm chicken thing that was still alive, and… stared at us. Anyway, though, it was kind of a mess, so it took a while to search the room to see if the astrolabe was there, but while we were searching we heard screaming, and so we followed the sound to where Dessane and Tiressa had gone, and when we got there Dessane was lying on the floor and there was a giant ghost wizard grabbing Tiressa by the shoulders and… and what happened from there we already told you.”
She absently rubbed the spot where she had scraped her arm on the ground. Her skin there was unblemished now; on boarding the ship she had touched the pink orb mounted on the deck, and her arm had healed almost instantly. They’d only found that orb a few weeks ago, but it had already proven a very handy thing to have around.
“I hate wizards,” Uda said.
“Uda, we work for a wizard,” the captain reminded her.
“I hate most wizards. And I’m not Maz’s biggest fan either.”
“The wizard Ardalothian will regain his former power,” the brown-robed man said in the same hoarse whisper as before, “and will spread his rule over many worlds.”
“Is there something wrong with your voice?” the captain asked him.
“I have my reasons for speaking like this.”
“He likes answering questions in ways that… don’t really answer the question,” Rabhi told the captain. “Apparently it’s kind of his thing.”
Captain Alagela turned to Tiressa, who was shaking but had regained some of her color.
“How are you feeling, Tiressa? Are you up for telling your side of the story?”
“I’m fine… for now,” Tiressa said, though the quaver in her voice somewhat belied her words. “I can… I can talk, yes.” She took a deep breath and continued.
“So like Rabhi said, Dessane and I took the passage on the left.” (Rabhi had not in fact said that, specifically, but decided it wasn’t important enough to bring up.) “We went down a stairway, and passed another door on the right, but anyway we came to this chamber will all these shelves, and… I saw it. The astrolabe. We found it.
“But then when I walked toward it these symbols on the ground started glowing, and then suddenly this… this giant white figure burst up from the ground, laughing. And it raised one arm toward Dessane, and kind of made a move like this—” she closed one hand in a loose fist and then flicked the fingers outward—“and he kind of went staggering backward across the room and hit a wall and was knocked out. And then the ghost leaned over and grabbed my shoulders, and stared into my eyes, and I—and I could feel something; it felt like something was going into me—and, and, and—”
“And I think that’s where we came in,” Rabhi cut in. Tiressa seemed on the point of sobbing, and Rabhi wanted to spare her from recounting any more than she had to.
“Hm. When we get back to Maz’s tower I think I’d like a hard word with him,” the captain said. “Would have been nice to have some warning that the wizard whose treasures we were supposed to retrieve might be still around.”
She turned to the man in the brown robe. “Okay, Mr. Whispers. Are you willing to tell your story? What exactly were you doing in Ardalothian’s hideaway, and what do you know of the wizard and his plans?”
“My story?” the man wheezed. “My story is simple. Yes, I was there; I was there to do Ardalothian’s bidding, and prepare the way for his return. And I was… I was attacked, and injured, and caught, and brought here before you. And then I escaped through a portal and you never saw me again.”
“Wait a minute,” Tiressa said, “that didn’t happen.”
But even as she spoke, the man reached into his robe and threw something he retrieved from there, and a colorful portal sprang open in front of him. The man jumped through the portal before any of them could stop him. Uda moved to go after him, but the captain grabbed her arm.
“Hold it, Uda. We don’t know where that leads, and there’s a good chance it’s a trap. Let him go.”
Uda looked frustrated, but didn’t try to escape the captain’s grip, and the portal closed.
And then Tiressa’s eyes glowed red, and she laughed again in Ardalothian’s voice.