#florian fleet

Finally, good news! I have finished writing the additional scenes I needed to develop the opening of “Curls of Smoke”! Only 12,509 added in (I meant to cap it at 10,000, but I’m sure I can trim some fat from other parts of the story, now that the opening’s fleshed out properly), but plenty of development and set-up done!

Opening stories is something I struggle with quite a lot, but I’m getting better at it (I hope) all the time, and I’m really excited to attach this new opening section to the main story I have drafted already.

Excerpt from today’s work (2,000 words between 10am and 1pm) below the cut!

I’ve written exactly 3,000 words today, and Curls of Smoke is now over 112,000 words long. Celebratory excerpt (but, oh dear, I’ve made myself really sad right before a lecture)...

I just hit 25,000 words for NaNoWriMo! My current total (for the whole book) is 82,000 words, and I’ve written 3,100 of those today. I’m very happy, but I’m going to bed now, because I have an early start tomorrow.

Celebratory excerpt!

But soon enough, Florian was on the roof, and could curl up on his side, staring across the tarmac to the woods beyond the school grounds. The roof was like an infinity pool, but so much more solid: a stable place for him to lie gazing at the place where the roof dropped away to nothing but fresh air and crisp, stark trees, and loops of mistletoe twining themselves around the boughs.

It was more or less silent up there, now that most of the birds were hibernating. All Florian could hear was the distant, muffled buzz of Mr Brown's voice drifting up from the classroom a storey beneath. The sound was next to inaudible, with the windows closed for winter.

It was just enough to soothe the shaking in Florian's hands, just enough to quiet the painful pounding in his chest, and slowly he began to breathe again. It was just a panic attack. It was just a panic attack, and, like all panic attacks, he told himself, it would pass. Panic attacks always passed.

God, but he'd thought he was over this. The nightmares had stopped, aside from that one horrific moment in the hospital, when he'd seen… when he'd seen… But that had been the morphine wrapping itself around his brain. Maybe it had just been his mind's way of processing the pain in his hop. Did it matter? He hadn't really seen her. Hadn't really seen…

Florian sat up, stretched out his legs, and got to his feet, wandering around the rooftop until he stopped trembling entirely. A sense of soft calm settled over his shoulders, and he breathed, and he breathed…

And the air was sweet and cool and clear, and there was barely a breeze, and the whole world felt like water. Florian closed his eyes, feeling the gentle wind wash over him like the soft waves of a lapping tide. Home. He could always come back home, come back to Oxworth, just like the tide could always return to the shoreline.

But some things weren't meant to wash back up.

I’ve surpassed 65,000 words! And I’ve written 8,024 of those since 1st November, so I’m on track for NaNoWriMo, and I’ve filled in some of the gaps in Chapter Five, and I’m well into Chapter Ten.

Current total wordcount: 65,354 Achieved today: 1,715

Celebratory excerpt!

The winter air was bitter and the light was dim in the early evening, but his Mama’s smile was warm and bright. “Come in, come in,” she said, “I have hot chocolate waiting for you, and dinner, too, very soon. Slow-cooker beef!”

“¡Ay, que deliciosa!” Florian’s eyes shone, and he went into the kitchen to help his mother finish readying supper. “Where’s Dad?” he asked, looking through the cupboard for the butter-cooler. “Still at work?”

I’ve just hit 60,000 words! So far, I’m over 1,000 words today, and 2,953 for NaNoWriMo (November) so far. So here’s a celebratory excerpt, featuring some brutal foreshadowing that I only noticed as I was writing it, horrifying even myself. Yikes, pals, strap yourselves in:

She put her contact lenses back in, and smiled. "But, you know, also… brown eyes are really pretty, and I get to look like my Mum if I have my contacts in, so." She smiled. "I guess I feel a little more like her daughter if I wear them, the better to make her proud."

"I'm sorry," said Florian.

"What for?" Rhiann squinted, smiling bemusedly.

"For your loss," Florian said, "Are you doing OK?"

Rhiann's eyes popped. "Oh, my God, no, no, that's not what I meant!" she exclaimed, "She's fine! She's fine, she's just in Wales." She stifled a giggle with her hand. "Oh, my God, you thought-" She barked a laugh. "Holy… no! She's fine. So's my Dad, before you ask."

"But you don't want to make him proud?"

I... I have written... 4,439 words today... and I don’t know how I feel about that. I’ve been writing all day, and every time I reach a nice, significant number, I find myself wanting ...just to meet that next milestone... and the next one... and the next one... and the next one. And, somehow, fighting to reach my daily 1,667-word target earlier this afternoon has turned into fighting to make myself close my laptop and go to sleep! It’s been a day of, “oh, I’m so close to x thousand, five hundred words... oh, now I’m so close to the next thousand”, and I can’t seem to make myself stop writing! Even this! I cannot stop!

But it’s getting late here, so I’m going to stop myself here, with a celebratory excerpt, and the jolly news that my current total is 41,119 words, and 38,429 words since 1st October - a daily average of 1958 words.

Against one shadowy, ivy-covered wall, there was a rickety cast-iron ladder, that Florian guessed was a fire-escape. It glistened in the dim moonlight, and Florian watched Storm feel for it, before they climbed up. He followed them to the top, trying not to think about the way the rungs were slightly slimy, or the way some parts of the metal were overgrown with ivy.

The ladder took the two of them up three storeys of the building, until Storm crawled off the top and onto a flat expanse of black tarmac. "Here we are," they said, settling onto their back, staring at the stars.

Florian reached the roof a few moments later, quite a lot quicker a climber than Storm, who’d had to pause and catch their breath every few minutes. It wasn’t that Florian had become impatient, waiting for them to start climbing again each time, but it did worry him, thinking about how heavily Storm must have to smoke, to have to get puffed-out, climbing a ladder they probably climbed most nights.

But at last they were both up there, and Florian crawled over to sit next Storm, where they lay still, squinting at the endless heavens.

I’m still alive, I promise! I might actually have managed to work out a schedule for my writing and my university work that... that works! I finally have time to do all the things I need to do while still making time for my walks, and a little bit of Netflix here and there.

Just this last week or so, I’ve watched The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix (based on the story by Shirley Jackson). It’s extremely exciting, and super spooky (apparently people have been fainting and losing sleep over it!), but I actually seem to be OK, watching horror (I don’t read all that much of it, but I’m about to start reading Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, so maybe I’ll get into it as a genre). I only had to send one message to the group-chat I have with my housemates, apologising for shrieking at a jump-scene, and it hasn’t given me any trouble sleeping.

I think we’re safe to say it’s affected my writing, though. What do you think?

Behind her, harsh light spilled in from the corridor, cutting a deep shadow across the floor. Scarlet hair spilled from her head like a river of blood. A glow Florian whose source couldn't find lit her face, illuminating her brow and her cheeks and her nose and her jaw, but leaving her eyes dark, like the empty, staring sockets of a skull. 

Myra moved soundlessly towards him, white hands stretching out like the obscene skinless bones of a skeleton's. Then her mouth fell open, and a deafening hiss tore its way out, filling the room until Florian was drowning in it. She grabbed him. Her fingers dug into his arms, tore at his skin, drew blood...

This is just a scene where a character has a nightmare, but I’m starting to wonder if I might like to try writing more horror. I’m a big fan of the work of @n-o-ramos (That’s my recommendation, right there! Go and check out her blog; she’s brilliant!), and I like horror films and shows, so I might give it a go, to see if it’s a good fit for me as a writer.

Curls of Smoke is coming along very nicely. My current wordcount is 37,231 (33,990 since 1st October), so I’m still on track to reach my 50,000-word target on 30th October - just in time for Hallowe’en! Maybe I’ll take that day off writing Curls of Smoke, and challenge myself to write a short horror piece before I pick my novel back up for NaNoWriMo.