Monday, November 10, 2014

Reassess and Retitle (NaNoWriMo November 10th)

Last year, my novel was a solid third of the way to the finish line by the time we hit my spouse's birthday, November 10th. (Happy Birthday, my love!)

This year, although the struggle seems less, the end product is smaller, too.

But a more disturbing trend has emerged as I explore the story with my characters. The original title and cover I had generated just doesn't fit what I'm learning about Indigo and my characters this year.

The fateful weather that commenced with a flood in Indigo for NaNoWriMo 2006, and was "the fire next time" for 2013, has segued to Fimbulvetr. My original visualization for the cover, a fire tornado, simply wasn't helping me drive the word-stream.

I had also began to doubt that Art Whiddick would manage to resolve Indigo's fateful weather issues. He's struggling with his own demons, including his beloved wife's terminal cancer. So "Indigo Resolution" was not only a weak title, as I knew it was November 1st, it was also turning out to be a misnomer.

Late last night, therefore, I sat down away from the computer with a sheet of paper and an ink pen and began brainstorming. The illustration here is as close as I can come to cobbling together the result in a digital image. In the final cover, the central figure will be cape-clad in reddish-orange, to echo the flames of the previous covers. 

She will have no little dog with her either - this is the nemesis of Indigo, striding through the storm she created.

That's enough visualization to drive my word-pumps!

And I'm off to write more chapters...

Total: 17802 words

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