Word count

I was looking at various word counts, and somebody got 13,000 words. By Day 2! Ouch. I was planning to do that all week! Oh, dear. I have a lot to catch up. Fortunately, I have had some hours free on Thursday night, I did catch up some. Will post once I'm done proof-reading them.

Edit: Hey, what's up with these 50K word counts? It's only 3rd day, people! Oh, well. There goes my motivation out the window!

Edit: Is that 130K I see?!

Drew of the Stars

Chapter 1 and 2

CHAPTER ONE: THE CREW OF HAILMARY

<blockquote>

Twinkle, twinkle little star,

How I wonder what you are!

When the blazing sun is gone,

when he nothing shines upon

Then you show your little light,

Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Twinkle, twinkle little star,

How I wonder what you are!

</blockquote>

DREW BARRYMORE, our space faring girl, was staring at the window or viewport of the library of the spaceship HAILMARY. She was on break, and although it was customary for the crew to take their break at mess hall, being the only woman in a ship full of rowdy, uneducated, brash, and dare I say it?, primeval men made it uncomfortable for her to spend her time in the mess hall. The captain ROY SCHNEIDER being the sole exception, and he spent his time mostly seated in his command chair or in his cabin.

A whooshing sound was made as the door to the library opened. It interrupted her reverie. ADAM SANDLER walked in. Short hair, funny head, thin for the strength he actually possessed. One of the more amiable crew who was not raging with hormone and exhibited behavior bordering illegal toward opposite sex. He was one of the few crew members the captain had allowed to interact with DREW.

"Yes?" she inquired.

"The plumbing is clogged again," he said.

Sighing, she reluctantly left the viewport, opened a low slung cabinet drawer and extracted the electromagnetic suction plunger. "It's been happening every day. Do you think you can tell the guys to take it easy with the toilet? It's an old ship, after all," she implored.

"Sure, I can tell the guys that."

"Thank you. I really appreciate it."

"Not that there's a snowball chance in hell they'll listen."

Drew gave him an exasperated look, took a deep breath, and went on her way. She passed by the captain in the hallway. "Captain, please tell me again why I'm doing this?" He was showering her with praise, promising all sorts of rewards and career advancements and promotions when he was recruiting her from the academy back home.

"Because you're he most valuable engineer in the whole ship," he told her in his easy mannerism.

"That doesn't mean I should play janitor everyday!"

"A Life Support System _Engineer_," he corrected her. "Responsible for the maintenance of the ship's life support system, from air scrubbing to the water reclamation system in which we grow our food and sustenance." He was reciting the job description. "I can't think a more important and valuable job than that," he added as an afterthought.

"I'm scrubbing toilets!"

"Still an engineer."

"Can't you assign somebody else?!"

"Listen. I know it's a lot of work for one little girl," although he didn't say it different, Drew had a distinct notion that 'little' was emphasized, "to be in charge of the whole ship's system. But we're talking about the life support system here. If the mechanism broke, we will asphiate. If the water unfiltered, we will get sick. If the plumbing system gets destroyed, everybody in the ship will die, including yourself. Do you understand the enormous gravity of the task that you're doing?"

"Yes, but..."

"Now, tell me. Knowing the rest of the crew as well as I do, who do you think is trustworthy enough to do the job right, and not screw up?"

Her thoughts went to the personnel files the captain had graciously let her see. "Other than you? Nobody."

"Exactly. That is why you got the job." He smiled his pleasant fatherly smile, trying to comfort her, yet like a well disciplined father, would insists that she does her assigned duty.

"Maybe I can train somebody?" she was hopeful to be alleviated from the unpleasant task of cleaning the whole crews' bodily waste, a distasteful experience even with Personal Protective Equipment.

"You just tell me who would listen to a sweet little girl like you, and I'll promote you to _Senior_ Life Support System Engineer!" He assured her.

There's nothing else left to talk about. She was stuck with the job, and was stuck with it for the remainder of the journey. None of the crew would even look at her as human. Some would treat her like a dog, and those are the better ones.

"Maybe I should think like the guys." She mused. "Maybe I should approach them like a guy would. Maybe then they will soften up and accept me. Maybe I should be doing what they're doing and develop some camaderie."

Voices can be heard as she walks past the Mess Hall where the guys are gathering. Some rather excited voices can be heard. "...stuck a straw to my nose. And then, I drank the whole glass of milk through my nose!" Laughter and hollering and sounds of approving action followed. "Then again, maybe not," she concluded.

Meanwhile, back in his command chair, the captain pondered the situation. His looming destination had so far failed to respond to his hails. And now that they were close enough, the sensor indicated troublesome lifeform readings at the colony. He frowned, unhappy with the readings shown on screen.

CHAPTER 2: A MISSION! PLANETFALL FOR THE GUYS

Everybody gathered in the Mess Hall. The captain has called for a meeting regarding the action to be taken when landing on the planet. The spaceship is currently in orbit for the planet.

"Listen guys, we need to secure some weapons and ammo, and head down to the planet," the captain said.

"Yee haa! Action! What creatures are we hunting, captain?" The crews were getting excited.

"We're not on a hunting mission, and I don't know what creatures are down there, but there are some disturbing readings right at the colony. What we're going to do is a scouting and surveillance mission, and perhaps some rescue mission."

"Do we shoot at anything that moves?"

"There are colonists down there. Do not shoot the colonists. Please identify your target before you shoot. Safety protocols are to be followed at all times."

"I feel very safe with grenades, captain."

"No grenades." The crews moaned. "Flamethrower is fine." the captain said. "Any questions?"

"Nope. Let's go kick some alien butts!" The crew laughed.

"These are not aliens. These are indigenous creatures. We must be respectful toward all God's creatures."

"Sure thing, captain. When I kill them, I'll be sure to kill them _humanely_."

The captain rolled his eyes. "Get you gear and prep up. We'll meet at the shuttle for final instructions." Everybody moved about. "Where are _you_ going?" he asked Drew.

"I'm getting my gears, captain. Weapons and armor." she answered.

"No, you're not." The captain was firm.

"But you said..."

"I need somebody to stay on the ship. Who knows what we'll encounter? I need the ship to be in top condition when we get back. You're the only one I have who can make that happen."

"But the colony..."

"We don't know what's going on down there. It can be dangerous. That's why we're going down with weapons. You could get hurt. And then I'd have nobody who can be trusted to regularly service the air scrubbers. We'll be stuck on that planet if you get hurt. Do you want that to happen?"

"Well, no."

"Good. Then it's settled! You'll stay with the ship." Drew frowned at the idea, but the captain made sense. "Don't worry," he added, "you'll be going down there eventually, once the planet is safe. We still need you to find an intern to help you with your duties." At this she brightened. The captain had not forgotten about her.

"Yes sir!"

The landing went without a hitch. The captain was very professional about it, inspecting the crew and gear for proper fittings, and administrating discipline when it was needed. Drew was impressed by the expediency of the captain. Once the shuttle departed, she listened to the radio. Each crew was fitted with a communication device, but bandwidth restriction limited it to audio only. There will be time later for video recording review when all the guys are back at the ship.

At first, things were fine. Things went wrong almost immediately after they went past the front door. The captain noted some creatures that weren't supposed to be there, and mused about the possibility that everybody is dead. Then he ordered some buildings to be cleared. Lots of cursing and gun shots erupted. "Danny! Quit pissing in your pants! Adam, spread your fire! Quincy! Don't shoot your teammates!" The captain was barking orders, but it is obvious that whatever it is down there, it was big, and it was overwhelming the team in short order. The captain ordered withdrawal. The guys responded by running away wildly, screaming their heads off. And then suddenly, Drew realized that she no longer heard the captain speaking. A sinking feeling fell to her stomach. It took only minutes after that for the transmission from the radio to cease altogether, and she came to realize that she was alone in that whole solar system.

CHAPTER 3: DREW TO THE RESCUE!

Words: 1513

Time: 45 minutes.

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Deep space is a cold and foreboding place. To many people, that is an understatement of the greatest degree. Yet to the colonists intending to populate planets other than our own, it represents the greatest opportunity yet available to mankind. The fact that until Faster-Than-Light is available to space faring people makes little difference. The previous generations without Faster-Than-Light travel accepted the fact that they will not survive the journey, that in most likelihood it is a one-way travel, and that the actual colonists claiming another dust ball in space would be 20 generations removed, assuming their spacecraft would hold for a millennia, which is something they cannot assume when they first started.

Yet, colonizing the planets they do. In more than half the case, this involves terraforming the planet and atmosphere to suit our physiology. They will happily introduce oxygen on a dominantly nitrogen atmospheric based planet just so they can breathe easy, never mind the fact that the planet's dinosaur equivalent would die coughing and wheezing their way to extinction. Such is the heritage of our culture, whether it's humans, or animals, or plants, or even cell-based organism. The intruders will most likely replace indigenous life forms.
In more than one case, old pioneers are surprised to see another ship bearing their great-grandchildren passing them by. Such was the progress of technology. Such incidents have been in decline, though, as rocket engines have been replaced by space warp or hyperspace jump engine. This results in a lot more planets being colonized. As space travel becomes cheap, populations have been known to be relocated to different planets, just as interstate road has done to America. Human beings have now been accustomed to space travel as routine. The dangers of outer space travel remains, though. And after a few incidents involving a few drunks opening the airlock just to walk around "outside", the structural integrity of space ships have been fortified, and now routinely stayed aloft in orbit while a special shuttle or two ferries passengers on and off the mothership.

All is well and planets are being colonized at an incredible rate. This has the interesting effect of tangling with the native more than once, but since as yet none of the encountered planets harbor so-called "intelligent" life, defined euphemistically as life form capable of destroying the planet they are on without even trying, the colonists' life is relatively pleasant. More and more planets are becoming specialized to a culture. Of course, everybody would have farming and mining and industrial on the planet. But culture-wise, there are people who like cats who gathered on a planet. Dog people would gather on another.

One such planet was 1058-M34, known by the mother planet as "Low IQ Planet" due to their liberal educational policies. Unfortunately, when people can opt out Mathematics as required learning, most people would opt out. The few that did bothered to learn it, eventually went off planet, driven by insanity of math-less world. The rest are planet-bound, not having opportunity to go to any other planets. No one will take them.

This is not to say that they are primitive. They have the technology coming in from time to time. It's just that people aren't keen to learn mathematics when the computer does all the counting for them. Need to count sheep? Have a smartphone app scan and count them. Want to know how much to pay taxes? There's an app for that. Most people can count to twelve, and well, that's it.

So it is with this story. Spaceship HAILMARY was enroute to planet 1058-M34, carrying people who have elected not to participate in free educational systems elsewhere. It is hoped that by gathering them in like-minded population, they will thrive in their new environment. I suppose the term "space-faring hicks" would be an insult to them. It would be accurate, but it would be an insult as they do not consider themselves as such. "Fiercely independent with fair assessments of realities" would be more to their liking, although as far as accuracy goes, it ranked to landing at the wrong side of the moon.

Unknown to them, the little colony they're heading to was overrun with indigenous creatures. Having never bothered to do anything other than build a fence, manned with auto firing guns, the administration somehow forget to check the ammo supply as per maintenance schedule specification. Hence, when migrating creatures crossed the fortification, they simply walked right in. The resulting massacre went about unnoticed due to the irregular nature of their interplanetary communications.

But the spaceship HAILMARY has a good captain. He's a level headed, experienced captain who is at ease both in command, and in action. It is hoped that his visit would galvanized the population, who by this time has been decimated, and increase their productivity a little bit more. And thus begin our story.

Time 22 minutes
Word count: 819

Author's Note

NANOWRIMO 2012
AUTHOR’S NOTE

Day 1:
Ok. I'm going to do this. I don't know if I will ever make it, but that's not the point of this, is it? The point is to make a concentrated effort for one month and see where I end up.
To write this whole thing in 1 month, that is 50,000 words novel in one month will take some gumption. Even if I defer editing in December, I will have to do some heavy duty typing. I figure 2000 words per day would be just fine. At 1000 words per hour, that means 2 hours of concentrated work per day. That will be tough. However, with the right keyboard and device, I managed to trim it down to 1000 words per half hour. Of course, that's not counting spell checking or anything like that. That's okay, though. I'm fine with doing 1 hour per day, with catch up on weekend.

The original founder of Nanowrimo mentioned that they did it to get dates with chicks, who presumably are more willing to date novelist. Hmmm. I wonder if that's still true? I should join in to a few write in sessions. Meet new novelist chicks!

Ok, let's calculate this real quick. 50 wpm typing speed means 500 words per 10 minutes or 3000 words per hour. I should be able to type 2000 words per hour, right? That means 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at night. And we'll see about catching up on the weekend. I think it'll be fine. Something about 4 hours on the weekend should be fine.
I do wish I have Dragon Naturally Speaking. Version 12 is rumored to be excellent with accent. I really should try it out. In the meantime, though, I can type almost as fast as I speak, and no mistyping either! So, I am definitely happy about it. Furthermore, the set up I have right now with Bluetooth wireless keyboard and Kindle Fire HD is really sweet. I can actually type while relaxing on the bed.

I am still experimenting on the set up. I did run into some problems, which I solved by turning off Kindle Fire HD and the keyboard. It goes get annoying that I have to do that. How about making the software that I don't have to turn off the hardware just to reset the device, hmmm?

I also put out a blog. Right now it's semi private blog, which means that anybody can read it, but there's no way a search engine can search it. Well, maybe not. I did put out a link in my Nanowrimo profile. Yes, this time I properly registered so it's for the world to see! How about making things so that the risk of failure is greater, eh? I guess this is the way for me to guarantee success. The more people know that I'm participating, the more likely it is that I will complete the story.

I do have an outline and character sheet ready. I think that's enough. I have been running the story over and over in my head. I do worry about missing some clever banter since typing and speaking at the same time is really difficult for me. And yet, my typing speed is about the same as my speaking speed. Oh, I am sooo happy!

Of course, I will have to put my own story, character, and setting. It will not be a fan fiction. I'm thinking that "Twinkle, twinkle little star" story would be good. I don't know if it will come across written pages well, since it is designed for script/movies starring Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler. But it will have to do for now.

This story is basically a re-interpretation of Doom, and other first person perspective video game that is currently being in vogue. Or make that the current vogue is to do first person perspective shooter, but showing the avatar. I really wonder why the game designer would put 3rd character viewpoint without the option of going into first perspective viewpoint. Do they think that we like to see the avatar's bum at all times?
The word count on this setting is about 500 words per page, so in order to get 2000 words, I will need about 4 pages of typewritten text. Is that right? 80 characters per line means 10 words per line. 50 lines means 500 words. Yup. About right. Of course, I'm typing this is a word processor, so without any page guideline, it doesn't matter much. It's not like it's on the old PalmPilot where 4K is the limit of Notepad, so that I know the number of pages no problem.

I guess some people may say that maybe I shouldn't count this text, but I'm counting it anyway! You know, there is a note in there that says although you can copy and paste text from somewhere else, in the end, you are cheating yourself because THE TEXT IS THE PRIZE. I agree. It is not that you get certificate at the end. It is the experience of putting in the time , day after day, trying to put in 1 hour per day, 7 days per week for a whole month. It is the discipline that is gained after long suffering hours at the desk, typing the text. The effort is the reward. You become a better person capable of managing time and tight schedule.

So, how about some outline? First, there's Author's Note, which is this one. Then there's Prologue, which explains the setting a bit. Then, Chapter 1, which is the first time we see our heroine. Then there is the last chapter, which mimics Chapter 1, but with he difference that our characters have grown, and that life affirming choices were made. This enables us, and hopefully the reader, to look at 1 thing and see 10 different things.
I'm not into symbolism much. The way I write things is by putting it items that hopefully conveys the situation, instead of telling the reader how things are. I have been reading the text of some fiction, and somehow, my text is devoid of all of these explanatory texts. Oh, well. We'll see how it goes.
Word Count: 1045.
Time: 27 minutes.

Nanowrimo: 50,000 words. 30 days.

Today is the start of Nanowrimo. Today is when we begin the incredible journey of 50,000 words in 30 days.

I think we can all agree that NOW IS THE TIME TO PANIC!!!