Confessions of a Steampunk Sequel — Part 2

It’s Day #14 of NaNoWriMo. As of last night, most should be around 22k to stay on track word count wise. Anyone hit 30k yet? 40k?

If you need some inspiration the Happily Ever After Blog over at USA Today is checking in weekly with romance writers doing NaNo.

Amazing news on the book front.  Innocent Darkness popped up for pre-order on Amazon. If you have a moment, could you please go tag it with “steampunk”? Pretty, pretty please with cupcakes on top? Also, if you want to read it on Kindle, make your you press the little button to tell my publisher that there’s interest.

I’ve also crossed over to the darkside and gotten a Facebook author page.  Like it for book news and such, if you wish. 

The NaNo Cheater Challenge is still going on my personal blog and it’s not too late to join in the fun.

So how is everyone doing on their goals? Here’s my wordcount so far as I chip away at book #2 in my Aether Chronicles series (sequel to Innocent Darkness).

Day 7     2467      

Day 8     1662      

Day 9     1195      

Day 10   2200      

Day 11   4750      

Day 12   1324      

Day 13   5152      

Grand Total so Far: 36305

Some days are good, some days aren’t. There were a few days I was just too tired to write at night, so I only had my lunch time counts. I just do what I can each day and try to make up for it on the weekends.

I’ve hit a huge road block in this WIP. I’ve written myself a character who would actually know and care how an airship works. Right now, she’s on an airship, which means *I* need to know how my airship works right down to the repairs she’s making on the engine. This has been quite the challenge for me (and I’ve spent a lot of time complaining about it on Twitter.) I just don’t know enough about airships — and yes, it’s steampunk, I can and will make things up, but at the same time, I like to know what the rules are so I can break them — and there is *so* much to learn I’m getting overwhelmed. I need to decide how much fantasy I will have in my world (versus something very realistic), and even then I want it to be somewhat plausible (maybe) — or at least fit within what I’ve built in book 1.

I’ve been using a lot of [insert proper name here] and the like, but at the same time, that only works for some details, the big things, like what the ship looks like, what runs the engines, where they’re located in the ship, the ship’s layout, what keeps the ship afloat–those things I need to know so I can actually write the story. When you don’t have much writing time, this research can slow you down. Because in this point of the story these things are so important I’ve had to look up a lot of things, and ask a lot of questions, and ponder a lot of things. So I’ve just had to suck it up and do what I can, though I know I’m going to have to do a lot of fact-checking and detail adding in re-writes. The reason why I’m having to take so much care in all this is because it’s in character with my MC. Noli likes to fix things, so her not knowing these things, asking about these things, or caring about these things, would be very much out of character for her, not to mention, some things are plot points. If she didn’t care about these things, I wouldn’t need to care about them so much either. (Why did I write myself an MC who likes to fix things, again?)

Thanks to everyone online so far who’s explained things to me, sent me links, etc. I’m still looking for more links and *really easy to understand* explanations. All of this is a little out of my comfort level, and I am getting overwhelmed and bogged down, which I can’t do, since this is NaNo. Must. Get. Wordcount.

Even with all my progress, I think December is going to be “Novel FInishing Month” and January is going to be “Novel Editing Month.” Anyone game?

So that’s where I am in my NaNo progress.

How are you doing? What have been your trails and triumphs this week?

Also, we have our winner of DARKER STILL by Leanna Hieber:

What The Cat Read

Please contact me to claim your prize. 

Until next week, write on!

Suzanne Lazear writes steampunk tales for teens.  Her debut novel, INNOCENT DARKNESS, book one of The Aether Chronicles, releases August 2012 from Flux. Visit her personal blog for more adventures.