Much better this week: the plan was 1,000 words a day minimum and I did 8,000 (jumping my total from 3,100 to 11,100), including one day of a 4,000-word blitz.
The particular day I wrote 3,000 words more than I ‘had’ to: well, firstly, it was simply a good day. Simon, one of my main POV characters, is a lot of fun to write – he swears, he resorts to violence, he generally views everyone else with a healthy dose of contempt and tells them about it, he has a lot of power and knows it – and his sergeant, Hal, has come into play as more of a character than I expected, giving me an opportunity to build on their relationship. Lily, the other POV character, is not nearly as much fun but she’s not had too many scenes yet.
Secondly, though, I managed a good approach to the day. I got the minimum out the way as soon as I got in the chair, then throughout the day while I worked away at my technical writing day-job, new scenes and snatches of dialogue would occur to me and I could quickly get those down too. I wasn’t able to start like that any other day (the 1,000 words relegated to last thing in the afternoon) and surprise, surprise, I wasn’t able to beat my minimum either.
Here’s this week’s excerpt. Simon has captured Augusta (she is a Mosaic, a human who has been transformed by a virus into something beautiful and strange, and more importantly, collectable). He’s trying to march out with his men, and a carriage has just pulled up and blocked his path across the bridge:
Simon doubted the man was with the Liberationists. You could tell, by the way a man looked at a Mosaic, which way they swung: mute humans to be saved from slavery or soulless animals to be traded at any opportunity.
The old man was shaking his head. ‘By the One, she was a fat, plain thing and look what she turned into.’
Simon leaned forward. ‘Mate, I can see you’re a little too decrepit to walk down for gawking with the rest of the [bad word] but you are blocking king’s men. Get your carriage the [bad word] out of my way, or I will chop it up for firewood and take the horses for meat.’
‘How dare you speak to m–’
Simon raised his voice. ‘I don’t care what tinpot town you think you’re lord of. You have five seconds to get that carriage moving. One.’
‘Present muskets,’ Hal said. ‘Take the two servants at the back first, boys.’
‘Two.’
The two liveried men sitting at the back of the carriage exchanged looks and hunkered down as much as they could.
‘Three.’
Simon was just about to be impressed that he was going to have to go to four when the driver cracked his whip and set the carriage lurching about in a tight circle.
