Sunday, November 30, 2014

End of November

Today marks the 30th of November. I'm back home after a few days away with family and a very dead, but very tasty, turkey. How did November treat you? For me, on personal projects at least, November was productive. I made it across the 50k line for NaNoWriMo, and while I still have a lot of story to write I'm also a huge chunk through it. I have similar project on my other story where I believe I'm somewhere in the 60ks and going from there.

Video game wise November was a month for finishing things. I managed to wrap up Alien Isolation, Shadow of Mordor, and Assassin's Creed: Rogue over the last couple of weeks - all while maintaining my League/World of Tanks habit and beginning a Dragon Age: Inquisition problem. I'm excited for this though. When I'm in the mood to finish things it tends to hit everything around me, and the fact that I'm going out of my way to fight my inclination to drift to new shinies for things as trivial as games bodes well for more serious projects (writing!)

Beyond that, December is here now. A month of panic and charging through the stores to grab Christmas gifts for the family and close friends. Thankfully, as real life ramps up work tends to ramp down so that's nice. If things go well for me I should be finishing both first drafts I currently have going in December. Maybe I'll even get the other rough draft I have sitting in the 70ks finished as well. That'd be a hell of an end to the year, wouldn't it?

But that's it. I hope November was as good to you as it was to me at the very least!

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

NaNoWriMo - Update 2 - The Slushy Middle

I've lost some traction on my story. Yesterday was the first day I didn't write at least the 1.666k that NaNo requires. I'm not sure how it happened. I was off from work the whole day, but somewhere between being a bit sick, minecrafting with my housemate, and trying out Assassin's Creed Rogue the whole day was lost. Beyond that though, my progress has slowed.

On day 3 I was over double the word count that was required for that point, sitting pretty at 10k+ words. Today, November 12th, I'm sitting just shy of 30k. I am still way ahead of where I should be, but it has slowed.

So what happened? Part of it has been doing other stuff. Days of hard writing made my brain want other things. Other things are enticing. But what actually happened is I hit the middle of the story. Even for a 90k work, 30k is in the middle of the story. Even worse it can be where things hit the hardest. Stuff starts happening slower. Things stop beginning, but it's not yet time for them to end. It's the mucky middle that happens after the shine of new story wears off and you're left alone with a word count, a pile of words you don't want to abandon, and the self loathing you can only experience during creation.

Now I'm not giving up. I have a plan, and going forward it should work. I know what needs to happen, new characters are about to be introduced, new aspects of the story (it's almost like my plan accounted for hitting the muck right here) and the police are getting closer to finding out my MC is responsible for not one but two dead bodies.

I just need to get home and write it.

How is your story going?

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

NaNoWriMo Update #1 - A Hopeful Start

As of this writing it is the beginning of the day on November 5th and my NaNo word count - after 4 days of writing - sits at just over 15,000 words. This has me well on track for a 100k NaNo, which isn't the plan but awesome none the less.