I keep having these really wicked dreams. In one of them, I was a Gary-Stu version of Dallas Winston, only I lived on a very pretty island in the Southern US (I only know this because there was a shitload of wisteria and big-ass willow trees - the place doesn't exist in real life). I lived there with my many brothers and sisters and slightly absent father and crazy mother (not actually mine).

Then one day, nuclear war broke out, only there were pirate ships because, as an island, we were the first line of the US naval defense. My mother (well, Dallas' mother, not mine) went crazy on one of the ships and killed herself with a bazooka. Then we had to bury her, which took a heckuva lot of angsting and effort and lots of rain.

But for some reason, the cops were after "me" for something to do with the war (maybe they were wondering who shot off the rogue bazooka, who knows). I had to run away, hiding in a couple hotels, not doing very well at the whole escaping thing obviously, because they found me trying to hide out in a mascot costume that looked a lot like Sailor V's unicorn sidekick. They tried to interrogate me by putting me in the stocks and shocking me, but that only kind of tickled, and then I kind of floated away, and left Dallas, just as he told the cops that he would tell them the truth anyway, because he was a decent person.

I don't know.

My best guess is:

The Outsiders + As I Lay Dying + Native Son + Sailor Moon + Pirates of the Caribbean + the awful stuff happening in the Middle East.

But that's not the point of this entry, anyway. I had another dream very recently, and this is where the breakthrough comes in: after not writing for awhile, and not thinking about them very much, two of my NaNo characters, my main guy and my main girl, were making out in the fine foods supermarket where he worked, and they were both acting exactly as they should have!!! He was freaking out, and she was making fun of him.

Success!

This never happens in the book, but nonetheless, they were there doing stuff and being them! And I was interested!

Granted, this was framed by a whole doomsday scenario in which the whole world had been forced to live underground surrounded by these pulsating, glowing blue roots, and working at the supermarket was a stellar gig, and my main character had stupidly built his home on land that his wizarding mentor had abandoned and had been taken over by an evil witch who wanted to steal him away either to marry him or destroy him (it wasn't clear), and my main girl inexplicably had some sort of magical powers herself BUT at least there were no bazookas.

I think this means they are growing on me. :D :D

So, I've finished chapter 5 in my preliminary edit, which is around 20,000 words. I'm expanding massively and then re-reading and cutting half of it out again lol. Assuming I have a regular sized novel at the end of this of about 80,000 (I think that might even be short, but it's a lot for me) that means I'm 25% done. Whoohoo! Although could be sad too, depending on how much you like editing.

And honestly, editing is kind of fun right now. I'm putting a whole lot of stuff in -  I just added an entire new character lol - because it was so bare bones for the first draft, since I was rushing because of NaNo.

Hopefully I'm going to get through two or three chapters tonight. The beginning was stretched out a lot during the first part of NaNo, so it's decent, and more usable than the ending and dreaded middle. But I'm not sure if I've just written the inciting incident, because the quest has just started. Maybe that entire 20,000 words was just filler! OH NOES!

Bah, it's a first novel. I'll know what's wrong with it when I write my second. Or when I post it and you kind people tell me. :P