Quests, Insomnia and Diary-Novels.

Me and Rambo have a new system. I've been setting him quests to do housework, that turn in for shitloads of gold on warcraft.

My house isn't looking even slightly clean yet, but the laundry pile is slowly going down and I've not felt guilty for not doing things in days. In fact, I've spent the time he's been doing things making gold on WoW, and feeling like I'm actually doing something useful and productive as that gold will buy me more housework.

I'm also very nearly NOT acutely ill again, so things are looking up I guess. Yay.

Also, whilst lying in bed being all insomniac-y last night, I was thinking about my NaNo-novel and the horrible pacing problems I was having with it. May have a solution. The problem was I was trying to put an entire condensed lifespan into one novel, and the rush of years going by and then slowing down for a day or two for specific events was making the whole thing crazy and nonsensical. It sort of worked for the narrative voice, but the close third person when it slowed down just seemed like too much of a jumpy transition.

Possible solution: Diary.

Pros:

-The choppy nature of my pacing makes perfect sense with a diary. SO many people write in them for a few days then forget for a few months, or just make a habit of writing in them once a month. Easy simple solution for the passage of time.
-I get to be all comfort-zoney first person. Woo!
-I can go on for hours and hours about feelings without feeling like* I'm dragging the whole thing down and having to find a way to transition back to action. Big win for literary fiction!

Cons:

-No narrative voice. This sucks in early stages when main character is five years old and doesn't really understand what's going on. If she doesn't understand it I can't write it. I can just heavily imply.
-Again, for early stages, having to write from a child's perspective means figuring out what kind of a vocabulary and writing style a child would have at any given age. Then adjusting for extra intelligence and bookworminess.
-It's a fucking diary. How cliché and teenage-girly is that?

Pros and cons seem to be about even at this stage, but I honestly can't see another way around my pacing problem. Although I'm sure I've read books in the same vein that HAVE handled this problem. Well enough for me to not notice it was a problem, and therefore not remember how they handled it. I maybe need to dig up these books and re-read.




*Did it again. Not sorry.