Tag: NaNoWriMo 2020

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Thirty

It’s done! I did it! Hit the big 50k word mark in thirty days! The T-shirt is on the way!

Here are all of the stories that I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2020:

  • “Lord of the Slaves” (about 9,200 words)
  • “The Real Hell” (about 3,700 words)
  • “The Scales of the Space Whale” (about 9,800 words)
  • “A Fatal Rebirth” (about 1,000 words)
  • “The Manchurian Paradox” (about 4,000 words)
  • “Schrödinger’s Diaper” (about 800 words)
  • “The End of Elysium” (about 9,000 words)
  • “The Final Turning” (about 1,800 words)

The difference was made up by six stream-of-consciousness character interview exercises that I did for the main viewpoint characters in my current WIP, Queen of the Falconstar. Final word count for NaNoWriMo 2020: 50,044.

My favorite story to write was probably “The Scales of the Space Whale,” an upbeat humorous space opera piece, but “The End of Elysium” was a close second. That one is a post-apocalyptic piece, very reminiscent of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and I wrote both stories with help from the Mythulu cards.

All of these stories are going to need some serious revision before I feel that they’re ready to submit. But at a rate of 1-2 stories per month, that shouldn’t be too hard to do.

This was a lot of fun! I definitely would like to do it again next year.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Twenty-Eight

  • Words written: 3,700
  • Total words written: 46,385
  • Stories written: 7
  • Character interviews written: 5
  • Total words behind: 282

Only 3,615 words to go! I won’t be writing tomorrow, since I don’t generally write on Sundays, but with how close I am to beating this challenge, you can bet that I’ll be pounding out those words on Monday!

The seventh story for the challenge wasn’t too bad. Needs a lot of cleanup, including naming some characters and making their dialogue a little less cliche and straw-mannish. But I’ll take care of that later. In the meantime, I’ve got one more character interview to do, and maybe a flash fiction piece if I can pull it off.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Twenty-Seven

  • Words written: 3,140
  • Total words written: 42,685
  • Stories written: 6
  • Character interviews written: 4
  • Total words behind: 2,315

Catching up in the home stretch! Here’s hoping I can pull through the next few days to the end!

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Twenty-Six

  • Words written: 2,682
  • Total words written: 39,545
  • Stories written: 6
  • Character interviews written: 4
  • Total words behind: 3,788

Catching up! Slowly, but surely. We’re in the home stretch now, and with just over 10k words to go, I think I may actually be able to pull this off. It’s gonna be close, but I may just be able to do it. Maybe if I also do author’s notes for the short singles I have yet to publish, hmm. That could pad things out.

Looking ahead, I’m going to revise and clean up all these stories before submitting them, probably at a rate of 1-2 per month. If I can use these nanowrimo stories to get into the habit of writing 1-2 short stories per month, that would be fantastic.

Thanksgiving went really well for us this year, but it’s late, and it seems that Mrs. Vasicek fell asleep while putting the baby down. Better sign off and go see to that.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Twenty-Five

  • Words written: 1,823
  • Total words written: 36,863
  • Stories written: 6
  • Total words behind: 4,804

We’re coming into the home stretch, and I’ve still got over 13,000 words left. It’s going to be a close one. At this point, if it weren’t for these character interviews, I would be able to keep up.

Today was a tough day, partly because our baby kept waking up all night, and partly because of family obligations that kept us busy and made it difficult to write. But family comes first, and we had a good time and made some positive memories.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, but I think I’ll still be able to make significant progress on my word count. Dinner is at 4pm, and we aren’t cooking it, so hopefully the baby sleeps well, Mrs. Vasicek and I sleep well, and Mrs. Vasicek and the baby have a pleasant, restful morning while I have a productive one. Here’s hoping for the best.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Twenty-Four

  • Words written: 2,414
  • Total words written: 35,041
  • Stories written: 6
  • Total words behind: 4,959

Today I brought the truck into the shop to get an oil change and renew the registration, and it took more time than I thought it would. Spent most of that time up at the BYU Library catching up on back issues of Locus Magazine. It was rather tedious, and I didn’t get to writing until after I was back and the baby was asleep. Still, the character interviews are turning out to be a good way to catch up on my word count. Tomorrow looks to be another busy day, so I’ll probably do another one after we get back from Christmas tree hunting.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Twenty-Three

  • Words written: 1,774
  • Total words written: 32,627
  • Stories written: 6
  • Total words behind: 5,706

Not a very productive day today, and it doesn’t look like tomorrow will be much better. If I were a Democrat, I would keep up my lackluster pace until November 30th and suddenly declare that I “found” another 15,000 totally legitimate words that aren’t suspicious or fraudulent in any way. If I were a Republican, on December 1st that I actually won nanowrimo in a landslide, but was cheated out of it by the word counting algorithm of my software. Since I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, I will just keep trudging along as best I can and make the best of a less-than-optimal situation.

I thought that my current story would be the last one I write for this challenge, but I think I’ll be able to finish it in the next couple of thousand words. After that, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Maybe pull out a trunked story idea and see if I can turn it into something good, or maybe try the Mythulu cards again. Or maybe I’ll try to play catch up early and do a few stream-of-consciousness interviews of the characters in my current WIP. Maybe that’s a good way to boost my word count for tomorrow.

Either way, without enough sleep, there’s no way I’m going to finish this thing. Goodnight.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Twenty-One

  • Words written: 1,763
  • Total words written: 30,853
  • Stories written: 6
  • Total words behind: 4,147

I’ve been hitting a lot of resistance whenever I try to write a story that’s inspired by drawing Mythulu cards. I suspect that’s because my subconscious mind hasn’t had that much time to work on the story, so the first creation is happening largely when I put words on the page. I used to consider myself a discovery writer, but now I think that my writing is a lot better when I take the time to prewrite—and yes, that includes outlining.

Still, I really like where this story is going. I think it’s going to be a good one.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Twenty

  • Words written: 334
  • Total words written: 29,090
  • Stories written: 6
  • Total words behind: 4,243

Not a good day today. I think I had a minor panic attack yesterday, due to an ongoing plumbing problem in the house, and the baby didn’t let us sleep much last night so I’ve basically been a zombie all day. Finished a flash fiction piece I started yesterday and started the new Mythulu story, and after struggling with the opening for about an hour, it’s starting to show some promise.

Regardless of whether I actually win nanowrimo this year (I still intend to push for that, though with how far I’m behind it’s looking rather iffy), I’m really happy with the fact that I’m producing a lot of new stories. They all probably need to be cleaned up substantially before I should submit them, but that’s not too hard, and I really need to build up my submissions queue again.

Even better, I’m developing a new method for generating these stories, and having a lot of fun doing it. One of my goals is to write at least one new short story every month, and these Mythulu cards are a great tool for both generating and refining my ideas.