Tag: NaNoWriMo 2020

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Nineteen

  • Words written: 2,026
  • Total words written: 28,756
  • Stories written: 5
  • Total words behind: 2,911

It occurs to me that if I can win nanowrimo 2020, that will be a major accomplishment that few will be able to boast of, even those who win nanowrimo regularly. The whole year has been crazy, but this month especially… hoo boy. Things are escalating quickly. Then again, it could be that more people finish nanowrimo this year, just because it’s a good way to keep your head down and not pay attention to all the things you can’t control. Just keep swimming.

Finished another story today, and I think it’s actually pretty good. Working on a fun flash piece that I’ll probably knock off in half an hour tomorrow morning. I’m still running behind, but the gap is slowly narrowing.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Eighteen

  • Words written: 2,344
  • Total words written: 26,730
  • Stories written: 4
  • Total words behind: 3,270

My graph on the nanowrimo.org site looks like a wavy shadow following the line where I should be. Still in the game, just not where I should be. If it keeps going this way, maybe I’ll do a stream-of-consciousness interview with each of the major characters from Queen of the Falconstar to pad out my numbers at the end. Or would that be cheating? I guess I could use them as bonus content after the novel comes out.

Anyways, good progress today. Instead of working on that Mythulu story, I dusted off an old short story outline from the trunk and decided to run with that instead. It’s turning out pretty good, perhaps even pro material–if all of the professional professional short story markets in science fiction didn’t skew so damned hard to the Left. But even though this one is clearly political, I’m writing it in such a way that either side can pick it up and run with it. Hopefully. But I’m not going to take out that creepy slogan that keeps popping up everywhere, “build back better.” Because those Davos crowd creeps, with their Great Reset, are truly the enemy. Do you know how much good I could do for the world right now if I had a death note? Which would also make for a great, yet unsaleable story.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Seventeen

  • Words written: 971
  • Total words written: 24,386
  • Stories written: 4
  • Total words behind: 3,947

So that story that I mentioned yesterday turned out to be a flash fiction piece, much to my surprise, and it took far longer to write than I thought it would, so by the end of the day it was the only thing I’d written. I don’t feel too bad about it, considering that I’ve got a baby to help take care of, dinner to make, and a publishing business to run, but it’s frustrating to still be behind.

I drew the Mythulu cards again in preparation for the next story, and this is what came up:

  • Necro + Desert
  • Dream
  • Eroded
  • Peacekeeper
  • Beyonder
  • Fool
  • Fungus
  • Yin and Yang

I’ve got a pretty good story in mind for this one, but I won’t be starting it until tomorrow.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Sixteen

  • Words written: 3,498
  • Total words written: 23,415
  • Stories written: 3
  • Total words behind: 3,252

Good progress today. Finally finished that space whale story. Needs to be trimmed down quite a bit, but I think there’s a good story in there, even if it’s still in the rough.

So now that I know I can come up with a good story using the Mythulu cards, I think I’ll try it again. After playing around with it a bit over the last couple of days, here are the cards I’ll be using:

  • Clone
  • Physical Dependency
  • Caste
  • Fire
  • Addicted
  • Healer
  • Negligible Senescence

Should be fun!

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Fourteen

  • Words written: 2,709
  • Total words written: 19,917
  • Stories written: 2
  • Total words behind: 3,416

Well, the third nanowrimo story isn’t finished. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that I made some progress on winnowing down that gap between where I am and where I should be, and if things keep going at this rate (as frustrating as it may be), I can probably build a small word count buffer before Thanksgiving rolls around.

Also, my wife and I had an interesting idea for how to write more, even on a busy schedule. She was agonizing over her own nanowrimo, so I asked her how much she can write in half an hour, and she said she can write about a hundred words in five minutes, so I suggested that she set a timer to go off at the top of every hour, and when it goes off, sit down and write 100 words. Don’t feel obligated to do more, but just feel obligated to sit down and write. Because I’ll bet if she does that, she’ll end up writing much more.

Interesting ideas, but it’s late and I have other things I need to do. Night.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Thirteen

  • Words written: 1,520
  • Total words written: 17,208
  • Stories written: 2
  • Total words behind: 4,459

I am so totally lost. Every time I sit down to write this current story, it goes in a completely different direction. At this point, I’m just following it wherever it goes.

Didn’t get as much writing done as I would have liked. If I’d had a better idea where this story was going, I’d probably have written a lot more. Did read a lot, though, epecially while putting Princess Hiccup to bed. Took nearly an hour.

Tomorrow, I’m going to finish this damned story one way or another. Blegh.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Twelve

  • Words written: 862
  • Total words written: 15,688
  • Stories written: 2
  • Total words behind: 4,312

Another day of very little progress. It feels very weird to write a story that I haven’t spent much time planning or thinking about first. I suppose this is what Dean Wesley Smith would call “writing into the dark,” but personally, I don’t subscribe to his philosophy of creativity. Everything worth doing should be done twice: first in the planning, whether consciously or subconsciously, then in the execution. There is no such thing as “plotters” or “pantsers,” only different ways to prewrite a story.

But it wasn’t that I was blocked so much as that the day was just packed. Baby Hiccup required a fair amount of attention today, and we went to the library in the afternoon (as I chronicled on my book blog). Also had to send out my email newsletter, and while it was already written, updating all the lists took time. And then there’s all the household chores…

What am I saing? No excuses. Today was a low word count day, but the story is coming together, even if it feels like there’s the wrong end of a magnet on my butt. I’ll get it done.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Eleven

  • Words written: 626
  • Total words written: 14,826
  • Stories written: 2
  • Total words behind: 3,507

Today was just one of those days when Writer Joe just didn’t show up for work, so Publisher Joe went ahead and did a bunch of chop wood, carry water type stuff instead.

Got a lot of work done, including about 2,000 words in my 2021 business plan, but not a whole lot of writing. Fortunately, tomorrow’s email newsletter is ready to send out, which means I won’t have to spend much time on that tomorrow. I typically send out my newsletter on Thursdays, and it can sometimes take two or three hours to write it up and send it out to my subscribers.

Perhaps I’m just coming down with some cabin fever. Fortunately, we’re going to the library tomorrow, so that should fix that problem. And I am genuinely enjoying this story, so it’s not implausible that I could knock out 5k words and finish the thing in a single day.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Ten

  • Words written: 2,820
  • Total words written: 14,200
  • Stories written: 2
  • Total words behind: 2,467

I finished my second story today, and it’s pretty dang terrible. But that doesn’t matter, because it’s nanowrimo! On to the next one.

I was having a hard time coming up with a story idea that I actually wanted to write, so I decided to break out the Mythulu cards and give it a whirl. My wife got me the Mythulu starter deck for my birthday this year, and while I’ve played around with it a bit, I haven’t really used it yet to come up with a story.

So to start, I picked one card from each deck and came up with this:

  • Salt
  • Abandoned + Hive
  • Monk
  • Frenemy
  • Klepto
  • Scales

And at first, I thought “what the heck kind of story is that?” But then I started playing around with it a bit, and decided to throw some space whales into the mix, because I’ve been meaning to write a story about space whales for some time now. And it all started coming together, but I decided that I needed another character, so I drew a character card and a trait card, and came up with “wandering peacekeeper.” I also needed another card to modify “salt,” so I drew a texture card and got “rust.” And believe it or not, that’s exactly what I needed to come up with a pretty dang awesome story.

At least, I hope it turns out to be awesome. I’m about 500 words in, and I’m liking it so far. Will probably finish it tomorrow. But whether or not it does, I’m definitely going to try out this story generating method again, because it’s a lot of fun!

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Nine

  • Words written: 2,130
  • Total words written: 11,380
  • Stories written: 1
  • Total words behind: 3,620

Still running behind, unfortunately. It’s going to take some effort to catch up, let alone build a buffer for the Thanksgiving holiday.

I expect I’ll finish my second story tomorrow. It’s a decent one, though it probably needs to be reworked a bit. Not sure whether I’m going for a humorous touch, or a more serious approach. But the clash between the two may work to the story’s benefit.

What I’d really like to do is knock out some flash fiction pieces, but I need some good story ideas for that. Thankfully, the more I write, the more ideas I seem to have.