So it's November, and I've wanted to try a NaNoWriMo for quite some time now. Given my schedule, how much of it gets done each day will be highly variable, but this round I don't think I'm going to worry too much about word count, beyond keeping track of it. I'll be putting it here:
Tanaver
It will be science fiction, at least of a sort. The opening paragraph of the first chapter:
Katja Ilkaiomenen stared at the ceiling, her eyes jolted open by the dream again. It had been the same for the past week. First she was in a field, the scent of spring around her and the sound of a man's laughter in the air, then the field caught fire and and everything was drenched in flames. The fire died out as swiftly as it began, and she was then sitting next to a large, glassy pool. Mist curled above it, and beside it the trees with their branches seemed to droop in weeping. Then the whole world turned upside down and she was no longer beside the pool but under it, staring up at the sky and drowning, unable to breathe. A great metallic hand pierced the surface of the water, reaching down toward her, and she woke. Every night for the past week she had awakened in the same way, always a good quarter-hour before her alarm. She was getting tired of it.
We'll see how it goes, anyway. This, the first part of the first chapter, took forever to write and ends up at 1750 words or so.
(The name, by the way, is pronounced KA-tya Il-kai-o-MEN-en; in Sylven the primary stress is always on the penultimate syllable (so it's Syl-ven-I-a, Me-tsen-I-a, etc.). 'Tanaver' is something of an exception, because it is not a Sylven word. Also, plurals in Sylven are made by doubling internal vowels, which lengthens the sound: suuvo, Syylven, etc. This all should become clear as the story progresses, but I mention it here to avoid confusion from the fact that it's all dribbled out in bits and pieces of the first few chapters.)
