One thousand, nine hundred and fifty one words tonight. It's more real if I type it completely out.

I was worried about not having a completely planned out story. I had a couple of characters and a couple of plot points. But nothing like a linear story line. And then I realized I don't necessarily need a complete story right now. I can write each chapter from a character's point of view, and then shuffle them around later. As an example, last night I wrote what I think will be the prelude or first chapter. Tonight I wrote what would likely be the fourth or fifth chapter. But that's OK. Thanks to Scrivener, I can shuffle things around with ease once I have a better idea of how the story is going to progress. I've never written this way before and it's strangely liberating. I'm just going to write these chapters out as the ideas come. I'll puzzle them all together later.

On a related note, I'm not going to update again until the middle of November at the earliest. I want to focus on the story for NaNoWriMo, and honestly who wants to read a simple "XXXX words today!" update everyday? I can use BlueSky or Mastedon for that.

1,707 words for my first day. Not the rocket launch I'd hoped, but not the failure to launch either. Rather than go with the previous story I had in place, I opted for something completely new to me. No outline, only the basic idea of a structure, pretty bare bones overall. It will be quite the effort to come up with 50,000 words by the end of the month based on what I have in my head so far.

But hey, if it was easy, everyone would do it. Not that I've done it.

Yet.

Having decided to go all-in on NaNoWriMo this year, I hopped onto the website to setup an account to help keep track of my progress, find some support in the community, and maybe even attended a local writing session.

When I signed up with my email, I was a bit surprised to find that my email had already been used. Apparently I've already signed up. Once I recovered my password, I started the process of setting up a new project to keep track of. And wouldn't you know it, the novel I think I'm going to work on is one I setup when I first registered for NaNoWriMo, back in 2016. And it seems that after 13,699 words, I petered out.

I'm hoping my (apparently) second attempt at creating a novel out of this short story -- a story I wrote for a creative writing class waaay back in the early aughts -- makes it further along. Unlike most of the stories I've written, I have an ending in mind for this one, which is tentatively called "Split". There are parts of the original story I'm thinking of keeping, and many many parts that need filling in.

I tend to be more of a "Pantser vs. Plotter" type of writer, but this time around I'm going to setup an outline and see if I can't solidify some of the more important parts of the story and fit them into the timeline. Last year, when I started thinking about doing NaNoWriMo for 2022, I purchased the "NaNoWriMo Writing Bundle"(discontinued), from Humble Bundle. This included quite a few "How-to" books, including "Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success" by K.M. Weiland. I've read about half of the book, and plan on finishing it by this weekend. There were several other books included which give tips on structure and character development as well, which I hope to skim.

While outlining can be accomplished using anything from pen and paper to MS Word/Google Docs, I've opted to use Plottr. As I've stated before, I tend to get myself tangled up in the tools used instead of just creating with what I have. More than a year ago, I purchased Plottr (they were having a wicked sale), and since, have used it sparingly. Less than sparingly actually. So rather than start looking around at other options, I'm forcing myself to use what I have. I have a very capable suite of tools at my disposal (will probably talk about those more in-depth in a later post), so there's no reason to go looking for alternatives. It's just a sublte way of procrastinating. Honestly, I was even looking at acquiring a new Macbook Air to take with me to a coffee shop to write with. The writer in my mind is camped in a cozy corner, drinking something yummy, while banging out his novel on hardware spec'd way above what's needed. I need to focus on the outlining and the writing, not the idealistic version of myself in that coffee shop.

The stupid thing is, I already have a laptop.

Looking over the past few entires, it seems I’m in the habit of starting things, and then not following through. My “Social Media Roundup Sundays” fizzled out almost as soon as it started. Shortly after that first post, I decided social media does me more harm than good right now (I get so worked up over anything political), so I opted to just step away. Unfortunately I had to reactivate my Facebook account as one of the pieces of software I purchased only uses Facebook for support. Twitter/X is just a shit-show on fire, so staying away from that mess just makes sense.

But I digress. Looking back over the past year, it would seem the only consistent posting I’ve done is when I did the 12 Days of Creativity Challenge. It was a creative challenge to create a more-or-less complete track. I stuck with it (mostly), documented my progress, and had a track to submit at the end of the challenge.

I’ve decided to do similar, so I’m going to start gearing up and taking a stab at NaNoWriMo. During the month of October I’m going to work on outlining a story idea. I have a few bobbing around in the wetware so I’m going to see if I can settle on one to flesh out a bit more. Then, come November, I’m going to attempt the goal of a story of 50,000 words within the month.

A daunting task to be sure, but hey... it’s time to set myself another creative challenge. Why not scratch that itch with something, well, challenging?

Wish me luck!

For most of my adult years, I've leaned towards Sci-Fi and Fantasy for my genre of choice when it comes to books. I love the imaginative worlds brought forth to light, the science and the magic of it all. And I'm all for being creative when it comes to naming characters, but I always scowl a bit when an author tries to get a bit too clever when coming up with a name.

I'm currently reading A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon. My Kindle says I'm 61% of the way through the book and I'm thouroughly enjoying it. And while Ms. Shannon has given names to most of her characters that are acceptable and easy to grasp the sound of, there's one here that basically has me stumped: Jrhanyam.

I looked at that and read it as "Junior Han Yam" and now it's stuck in my head that way. I like unique names, but I like unique, pronounceable names, please and thank you.