NaNoWriMo has progressed a lot better than I had expected, to be frank. I'm halfway through the 50,000 words, sitting at 25,062. A whole day early even. Go me!
It's been a bit of a revelation. During prior attempts at writing stories, I would usually have a basic idea of the story I wanted to write, typically a beginning, a middle, and maybe an end. Not this time, baby. I have been completely reliant on the pantser side of my writing persona and I'm fully embracing it. It literally started with a single sentence: "One thing about the end of the world, Dave thought. It makes for a hell of a weight loss program" That was it. I started my story all based around that one sentence. To tell the truth, it's been a lot more fruitful (and a lot more fun), than I expected. It's both scary and freeing to not know where the hell I'm going. I currently have 7 different characters and I simply write a chapter from each of the points of view. I don't even think I'm writing them in order, and instead will be relying on the excellent Scrivener software to help the organization once my novel is more complete (I'm being positive here and inferring when and not if)
Here's some basic stats, courtesy of my NaNoWriMo Profile Page (have to be a registered member to see this):
25062 out of 50000 words
I've written 14 days in row (every single day!)
My least productive day was Nov 4th, with only 492 words
My most productive day was Nov 5th, with 3,271 words. Guessing I felt the need to make up from the day before.
My average word count is 1,790 words a day.
And I apparently have an average writing speed of 15 words per minute.
That last point seems odd, but I guess it is just an average after all. I do stop and take breaks, or look up synonyms on thesaurus.com, or try to plot out the next section. Even guilty of stopping writing to play a game on my phone. Gotta stop that.
I've also written more than 11,000 words than the last time I attempted NaNoWriMo.
There have been a couple of nights over the past two weeks where I haven't felt as energized to write. But I find if I go over the previous chapter of the character I'm going to write from, then it helps the flow start moving. And once I'm moving, it's easier to get up to speed. It's all about keeping my eye on the end goal for now.
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 Mastodon 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.
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.
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?
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.
Twitter: After reading about the latest indictments of Trump, it’s very hard to stop myself from jumping into the feeds of people I know who voted for him and say “How’s that working out for you?” (7/28)
Well, as far as rebrandings go, I think Twitter's X is about the bottom of the barrel in terms of innovation, design, messaging, etc. (7/24)
Instagram: Trying to get the photo off Instasgram and dropped here is annoying on my iPad, so I'll just leave a link.
When collecting the past posts from my previous blogs, I noticed a huge gap, between 2009 and 2016. It doesn't take a genius to realize that's when I started posting heavily on social media. It was mostly Facebook then, but there were a scattering of Twitter posts throughout those years as well. I joined both Facebook and Twitter in 2008, and the posting to the respective platforms ramped up from there. And now there's Instagram, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, etc.
To be frank, most of the posts are crap. A lot of the "Go Steelers!", or "Man, sure is nice outside today!" variety. But there are some important things in there I want to keep. When we found out my daughter had cancer. Some nice posts on anniversaries. Stuff like that.
To bring everything "in house" as it were, I'm going to start collecting those posts I've made on the various social media sites and posting them here on Sundays. I probably won't include replies, unless it's a thread I'll want to revisit later. I'll avoid duplicates as well, as I tend to copy things from Twitter to Mastodon in my attempt to move over to the latter more. I haven't decided if I'm going to post any media that might have been with the post either, outside of Instagram, obviously.
Overall it'll be mostly the (hopefully) poignant and (probably moreso) irrelavant thoughts I've had throughout the week.
So, to get started:
Twitter:
@USPS says my package will be here by 9. Also says it's still in Indiana. It's about a 9-hour drive from there to here. So... color me skeptical. (06/19)
Mastodon:
Wanted to check the demo of the Max Mega Menu plug-in for Wordpress. Clicking the demo link popped up a notification that the website wanted to open FaceTime. Nope. Guess which plug-in I won’t be using whatsoever. (06/17)
A pox on the people blowing off fireworks at midnight in the ‘hood. 4th was two weeks ago, you doorknobs. (06/16)
Facebook:
Currently deactivated
Instagram:
No posts
Threads:
Did I need yet another social media platform to stick my nose into? No. I'm here hoping it's less awful than the bird (06/09 - cheating a bit as this is outsde the 1 week roundup, but it is the very first post on Threads and if I start posting there more often, it'd be nice to have it recorded here)
I have an idea for a website I want to build, based around a community. Similar to Goodreads, which is built on top of Ruby on Rails. So I figured I'd build my website on RoR. But I don't actually know RoR, so I decide I'll learn it.
And after a month and a bit of progress, I realize that learning RoR is hard. I'm not grasping some concepts that I feel like should be obvious.
Well... I'm always talking about needing to learn Javascript. Two of the three projects I'm on are using some form of JS, Angular and React (third project is using Salesforce which can go die in a fire). Maybe I should consider really getting into the weeds with Angular and/or React. That would be the smart, responsible thing to do. After all, I'm still learning Javascript, and they're used by projects I'm actively working on.
So, having said that, I've been delving into Svelte and SvelteKit this past week. Because, I'm constantly sabotaging myself and why not?
As I'm only a week in, I'm not going to talk much about either right now. Hopefully in a month or so I'll feel more comfortable and I can relate some of my experiences.
But knowing me, I'll have decided Svelte/SvelteKit is just not right and have moved on to Django, or Laravel or something equally as preposterous.
This is definitely outside of my wheelhouse. RoR is a full-stack framework, designed to power the backend of your application. I have in mind a website, sort of a mashup between Scribophile, and Goodreads, geared towards electronic music. I thought about trying the BuddyBoss plugin within Wordpress, but I feel like to really build the site like I want it, I'd need a plethora of plugins, and possibly some custom PHP work as well.
I'm starting with Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails tutorial. I've also been following along with Deanin's Intro Ruby on Rails 7 For Beginners Tutorial Series on YouTube. I actually started with the Deanin videos, but then stepped back and decided to start "from scratch" as it were, instead of just copying and pasting what was in the videos (although, to be fair, that's probably how 90% of programmers I know learned).
I've given myself to have something viable by the end of the year. Currently, I have a somewhat working login system. I think if I can get that and a profile that a user can update themselves, I'll call it a win.