Well, it's Nov. 30. My final wordcounts are:
Amulet II - 55,042 words
Taint/Amulet I - 20,569 words
Total: 75,611 words
I wrote about 4k words toward Taint tonight, to finish off my month. Taint actually could continue taking off and expanding onwards in a big mush of melodrama. I've figured out part of the problem with that one. I've been working on writing the climax scenes. But the climax needs to take place in the *middle* of the novel, after a whole lot of buildup so that the average reader will actually care enough about the characters that it *won't* look like melodrama by the time they get to reading the climax scenes. This means I need to write the beginning ... what's going into the beginning? I have some fuzzy ideas forming, but nothing solid enough to write yet. This is going to take some thinking.
Meanwhile, Amulet II is nowhere near done. Unfortunately, I need to reread what I have so far and write up a good cliffs notes version to myself, make a coherent outline, and probably list all the characters and their motivations. Otherwise I really don't have a clue how it's supposed to end. And there are dozens of tiny plotholes developing everywhere, too. I need to address all of those.
As for Amulet I, it seems to be on hold indefinitely, until I get my act together on Taint and Amulet II. It's way too fuzzy right now to pin down in actual writing. One of the two MCs turns out not to have a very plausible personality. Normally when I start writing a character for the first time, breath life into them, they take over almost immediately. Not so for poor Edward Duchene. He seems to be stillborn. So I need to rethink a few things.
All three of these novels have overlapping scenes with each other. I'm not quite sure how exactly it'll all break down into different novels at this point. A whole lot of Taint might actually work well as part of Amulet II, and the rest of it in Amulet I, and therefore I don't need a whole separate novel. But I don't know that for sure yet, as it's a fairly hefty set of plotlines with the two MCs involved for Taint, that aren't really *that* integral to the other main plotlines.
Meanwhile I'm already itching to begin getting the groundwork set up for Triangle, Fall of Myan, and Birthright ...
But the top of the priority list for things to finish must be Stranger on a Bus. The Labor Day Novel that I never did get around to finishing off. There's still the same 3 chapters left that I had before. I wrote the first half of chapter 10 at the end of September, and then never got back to it after that.
To help prod me along on all of these things, I signed up for NaNoFiMo at http://www.nanofimo.org . It's being run by pookel off of Nanowrimo. The basic idea is to use December as National Novel Finishing Month. Write 30k new words toward a novel-in-progress, though starting a brand new one from scratch is also allowed. The rules didn't specify whether I could spread those 30k words around to several different novels, but that's what I'd end up doing.
Meanwhile, I'm badly overcommitted with online roleplaying again. Which is bizarre, considering that I took all of November off from roleplaying. But somehow I managed to get sucked into still more new projects (and one recycled one that suddenly came back to life out of nowhere). Running my own Dark Ages game is at the top of the priority list there, of course, followed by the game where I do lots of wordcrafting. Followed by the game that I'm helping some other people run. Then there's 6-8 other games that I play in, or am considering playing in. I guess I'm going to be rotating which ones I pay attention to on a weekly basis. Then I also volunteered to help out the website as a whole with its portrait gallery. I really need to stop making friends. :p
2005/11/30
2005/11/27
Nanowrimo: Done-ish!
Wordcounts now are:
52,514 words on Amulet II
16,644 words on ... umm, the other one ...
68,722 total words
I'm thinking I'll probably manage to get to 75k words by the end of November. It will probably all be on Amulet II, as the story is nowhere near done. I wrote what I had originally figured as the end climax scenes, and they turned out to be middle scenes instead, that caused more plot development. The end is still nowhere in sight.
If I somehow miraculously get to 100k words by writing Amulet II, I think I'll go validate it on Nerwen anyway. That's unlikely, though. Realistic aim is 75-80k.
Congrats to Ellsea and Veronnika for their purple bars! :) Hoping to see more of them start lighting up that way as we get down to the final stretch. Emiko is pretty close, Robert will get there with one more good writing day, and I'm rooting for Poetmage to get a second wind too! :) And for Sheba to make it to 10k! :) Gogogo team!
In other news ... my internet has been excessively glitchy for most of the week. The whole city seems to be having issues, though, so it's not a problem on my end. It just means that everything is extremely slow and laggy, and sometimes it cuts out entirely for hours at a time. I called and complained a bunch, and they said they would credit my next bill for the downed days.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who is in the U.S. too. ;) I didn't celebrate that, though I did enjoy the long weekend. Sleep, write, sleep, write, occasional meal here and there ... I'm out of junk food. :( And I'm really not ready to go back to work tomorrow, either.
52,514 words on Amulet II
16,644 words on ... umm, the other one ...
68,722 total words
I'm thinking I'll probably manage to get to 75k words by the end of November. It will probably all be on Amulet II, as the story is nowhere near done. I wrote what I had originally figured as the end climax scenes, and they turned out to be middle scenes instead, that caused more plot development. The end is still nowhere in sight.
If I somehow miraculously get to 100k words by writing Amulet II, I think I'll go validate it on Nerwen anyway. That's unlikely, though. Realistic aim is 75-80k.
Congrats to Ellsea and Veronnika for their purple bars! :) Hoping to see more of them start lighting up that way as we get down to the final stretch. Emiko is pretty close, Robert will get there with one more good writing day, and I'm rooting for Poetmage to get a second wind too! :) And for Sheba to make it to 10k! :) Gogogo team!
In other news ... my internet has been excessively glitchy for most of the week. The whole city seems to be having issues, though, so it's not a problem on my end. It just means that everything is extremely slow and laggy, and sometimes it cuts out entirely for hours at a time. I called and complained a bunch, and they said they would credit my next bill for the downed days.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who is in the U.S. too. ;) I didn't celebrate that, though I did enjoy the long weekend. Sleep, write, sleep, write, occasional meal here and there ... I'm out of junk food. :( And I'm really not ready to go back to work tomorrow, either.
2005/11/23
Nanowrimo: One week left!
Current wordcounts:
Amulet I - 16,644 words
Amulet II - 40,952 words
Total: 57,596 words
Amulet I has been renamed to "Mostly Taint" by now, as that's a much more accurate description of what I'm actually writing.
On the other hand, what I'm actually writing is not exactly how I envisioned Taint to go, either. The best scenes so far have introduced characters I didn't even know existed, never mind are (apparently) going to be key. I think there's a whole separate plot going on in the story that I'm still almost completely unaware of. But what can one do but keep writing to find out, eh? ;) If it doesn't turn out to be Taint (either; it's certainly not Amulet I), I'll just rename it to something else when I'm done.
Meanwhile, Amulet II is still on track. There's been various stalls and full stops here and there. The fact that the plot is almost entirely political intrigue, and I suck at political intrigue, makes for quite a few pauses to figure out what the heck I'm doing. Overall though, I should be able to crank out the remaining 9k words to pass 50k with it by the end of the month. The story won't be done by then, but that's another issue...
And for the past few days while trying to figure out setting for Amulet II, I've been assaulted by serious plot bunnies for the remaining three novels in the series. They all want to be worked on Right Now. Let's see if I can hold them off for another couple weeks ... then I'll figure out where I am and which one(s) I attempt for Nano next year.
And speaking of next year... my average daily wordcount this year hovers around 2500. Last year it was 2300. 100k was definitely too ambitious. So next year I'm thinking I ought to aim for writing a total of 80k words toward a single novel. Which one that will be is still up in the air. There's Triangle, Fall of Myan, and Birthright. The first two are related to each other, as the start and endpoints of my most epic plotline in the whole series. Birthright is either a standalone novel, or a sequel to Temple (last year's nano), depending on your point of view.
My other thought is to see if I can work extra throughout next year and save up a bunch of comp time so I can take all of next November off. That might up the wordcount better and allow me to try for 100k again. ;)
All of that is Big Picture stuff that I need to ignore for a little while longer, though. It's "fine brushstrokes" time, not Big Picture time. I'll figure it out in December.
Amulet I - 16,644 words
Amulet II - 40,952 words
Total: 57,596 words
Amulet I has been renamed to "Mostly Taint" by now, as that's a much more accurate description of what I'm actually writing.
On the other hand, what I'm actually writing is not exactly how I envisioned Taint to go, either. The best scenes so far have introduced characters I didn't even know existed, never mind are (apparently) going to be key. I think there's a whole separate plot going on in the story that I'm still almost completely unaware of. But what can one do but keep writing to find out, eh? ;) If it doesn't turn out to be Taint (either; it's certainly not Amulet I), I'll just rename it to something else when I'm done.
Meanwhile, Amulet II is still on track. There's been various stalls and full stops here and there. The fact that the plot is almost entirely political intrigue, and I suck at political intrigue, makes for quite a few pauses to figure out what the heck I'm doing. Overall though, I should be able to crank out the remaining 9k words to pass 50k with it by the end of the month. The story won't be done by then, but that's another issue...
And for the past few days while trying to figure out setting for Amulet II, I've been assaulted by serious plot bunnies for the remaining three novels in the series. They all want to be worked on Right Now. Let's see if I can hold them off for another couple weeks ... then I'll figure out where I am and which one(s) I attempt for Nano next year.
And speaking of next year... my average daily wordcount this year hovers around 2500. Last year it was 2300. 100k was definitely too ambitious. So next year I'm thinking I ought to aim for writing a total of 80k words toward a single novel. Which one that will be is still up in the air. There's Triangle, Fall of Myan, and Birthright. The first two are related to each other, as the start and endpoints of my most epic plotline in the whole series. Birthright is either a standalone novel, or a sequel to Temple (last year's nano), depending on your point of view.
My other thought is to see if I can work extra throughout next year and save up a bunch of comp time so I can take all of next November off. That might up the wordcount better and allow me to try for 100k again. ;)
All of that is Big Picture stuff that I need to ignore for a little while longer, though. It's "fine brushstrokes" time, not Big Picture time. I'll figure it out in December.
2005/11/15
Nanowrimo: Halfway
Wordcounts at the moment are:
25,462 on Amulet II
11,295 on Amulet I (which is mostly material for Taint at this point)
36,757 total words
Amulet II is right on schedule, both in terms of how many words it's supposed to have by now, and in terms of the outline. I knew I was going to run out of outline at around halfway, when the main antagonist of the largest plot gets introduced. That's exactly what has happened. I have a bunch of vague notes after that point, but nothing solid enough that I can say "these scenes are going to be required, in this order." Instead I'm leaving myself to flounder.
However, the plan was that, by the time I finished setting stuff up in the first 25k words, the characters themselves will have enough material to work with that they will figure out how to finish the rest of the story FOR me. That's sort of how it's looking like it'll still work, though I haven't actually started yet. Last night I wrote in some additional setup material, and the next thing I need to write is where it starts getting nebulous as hell.
Four characters are going to meet and talk about the things going on. I know who they are, what their motivations are, and why they are talking in terms of what the various people are hoping to do with the conversation. I have no clue what will actually happen, how it will play out, and what it will make them do after that scene except in very vague, general terms. We'll see how that goes I guess. This is kind of scary but I'm looking forward to it. ;)
Amulet I, meanwhile, is tanked out. It's not ready to be written yet, and I've noticed that Taint really does need to be written first. At least, the half that's relevant to Amulet I. So that's what I'm doing. I haven't officially changed over the title but I probably will at some point. I can't really call it Taint either, though, because Taint includes a lot of other stuff that isn't relevant to Amulet I - and in fact there are a few scenes in Amulet II that probably belong in Taint. There's also a whole other big chunk that doesn't belong in either Amulet I or II, and so I don't think I'm going to be writing that part of it this November. Unless I run out of words by the time I'm done writing up the pieces of Taint, of course, and still need more.
So at the moment, the scene is focused on my MC for Taint as he discovers what Tainting is all about. He's not really very happy to be dead. I'm thinking that the next thing that needs to go in is one of the sire's minions stopping in for some conversation, partially explaining more of why Edward did this to him. He's too mad at Edward right now for Edward to explain it.
I have no idea if this is going to reach 50k by the end of November. It might not. Amulet II stands a really good chance, though, so I'll be happy with one "win" even if I don't get both.
Incidentally, I've noticed that a vast majority of my sentences have regressed into massive run-ons of infinite comma-separated clauses. I used to write like that all the time. Apparently I'm going back to that under the stress of high-speed writing. ;)
I was enjoying the flash version of the profile when it was a "see also" thing. Not so much now that it's the default. But the latest breaking news says we'll be able to turn that back off again soon.
25,462 on Amulet II
11,295 on Amulet I (which is mostly material for Taint at this point)
36,757 total words
Amulet II is right on schedule, both in terms of how many words it's supposed to have by now, and in terms of the outline. I knew I was going to run out of outline at around halfway, when the main antagonist of the largest plot gets introduced. That's exactly what has happened. I have a bunch of vague notes after that point, but nothing solid enough that I can say "these scenes are going to be required, in this order." Instead I'm leaving myself to flounder.
However, the plan was that, by the time I finished setting stuff up in the first 25k words, the characters themselves will have enough material to work with that they will figure out how to finish the rest of the story FOR me. That's sort of how it's looking like it'll still work, though I haven't actually started yet. Last night I wrote in some additional setup material, and the next thing I need to write is where it starts getting nebulous as hell.
Four characters are going to meet and talk about the things going on. I know who they are, what their motivations are, and why they are talking in terms of what the various people are hoping to do with the conversation. I have no clue what will actually happen, how it will play out, and what it will make them do after that scene except in very vague, general terms. We'll see how that goes I guess. This is kind of scary but I'm looking forward to it. ;)
Amulet I, meanwhile, is tanked out. It's not ready to be written yet, and I've noticed that Taint really does need to be written first. At least, the half that's relevant to Amulet I. So that's what I'm doing. I haven't officially changed over the title but I probably will at some point. I can't really call it Taint either, though, because Taint includes a lot of other stuff that isn't relevant to Amulet I - and in fact there are a few scenes in Amulet II that probably belong in Taint. There's also a whole other big chunk that doesn't belong in either Amulet I or II, and so I don't think I'm going to be writing that part of it this November. Unless I run out of words by the time I'm done writing up the pieces of Taint, of course, and still need more.
So at the moment, the scene is focused on my MC for Taint as he discovers what Tainting is all about. He's not really very happy to be dead. I'm thinking that the next thing that needs to go in is one of the sire's minions stopping in for some conversation, partially explaining more of why Edward did this to him. He's too mad at Edward right now for Edward to explain it.
I have no idea if this is going to reach 50k by the end of November. It might not. Amulet II stands a really good chance, though, so I'll be happy with one "win" even if I don't get both.
Incidentally, I've noticed that a vast majority of my sentences have regressed into massive run-ons of infinite comma-separated clauses. I used to write like that all the time. Apparently I'm going back to that under the stress of high-speed writing. ;)
I was enjoying the flash version of the profile when it was a "see also" thing. Not so much now that it's the default. But the latest breaking news says we'll be able to turn that back off again soon.
2005/11/07
Nanowrimo: Beginning of Week Two
Well, I have a total of 17,297 words. 14,032 on Amulet II, and 3265 on Amulet I.
Amulet I is definitely not ready to be written yet, based on the amount of pointless blathering I do in it. I'm pretty sure that Chapter 1 is not really the beginning of the book, and although the main events planned for Chapter 2 do indeed come after Chapter 1, a lot of the setup material in the first half of it needs to be somewhere earlier. Also, at the moment it's completely stalled out because I need to stop and invent a magic system. Talk about a total lack of proper preparation back in October...
Amulet II is going a lot better. It's more or less following along to my outline, except that the secondary subplot seems to be a lot more expanded up than I had expected it to be. Also, there's a number of scenes revolving around one of the minor characters that probably belong in a different novel (Taint). Other than that, though, it's got its share of fits and starts, but otherwise I'm pretty pleased with my overall progress. I seem to be writing it in the order that the final book will be, which is completely different from how the structure played out for Temple last year. With Temple, I could write it in just about any order I wanted. With Amulet II I really can't.
Meanwhile, I'm really enjoying the Flash version of the author profile pages. It's a bit annoying that only the first 8 friends on the list will show up on the Flash page (and since it's in the order of signup to the site, it's the 8 people who signed up earliest). I've also noticed that you can only have 15 friends displayed on the old version of the page. You can add more, but only the first 15 will appear (in the order they were added to your list).
I'm managing to work around that a little bit by having two profiles with slightly different friend lists, though. The two combined give me everyone I want to see. ;)
And being able to see everyone, a big woot! to Poetmage, Ellsea, and Emiko! :) Sheba and Veronnika need to enter their wordcounts *poke poke poke*! ;)
I've been hanging out a lot in the SFFMuse IRC chatroom. There's 4 or 5 people in there most evenings, all working on our stories and sharing snippets. More of the people here ought to drop by. :) Or maybe we ought to make a Hobgoblin chatroom. Where's Jeanene been these days?
Amulet I is definitely not ready to be written yet, based on the amount of pointless blathering I do in it. I'm pretty sure that Chapter 1 is not really the beginning of the book, and although the main events planned for Chapter 2 do indeed come after Chapter 1, a lot of the setup material in the first half of it needs to be somewhere earlier. Also, at the moment it's completely stalled out because I need to stop and invent a magic system. Talk about a total lack of proper preparation back in October...
Amulet II is going a lot better. It's more or less following along to my outline, except that the secondary subplot seems to be a lot more expanded up than I had expected it to be. Also, there's a number of scenes revolving around one of the minor characters that probably belong in a different novel (Taint). Other than that, though, it's got its share of fits and starts, but otherwise I'm pretty pleased with my overall progress. I seem to be writing it in the order that the final book will be, which is completely different from how the structure played out for Temple last year. With Temple, I could write it in just about any order I wanted. With Amulet II I really can't.
Meanwhile, I'm really enjoying the Flash version of the author profile pages. It's a bit annoying that only the first 8 friends on the list will show up on the Flash page (and since it's in the order of signup to the site, it's the 8 people who signed up earliest). I've also noticed that you can only have 15 friends displayed on the old version of the page. You can add more, but only the first 15 will appear (in the order they were added to your list).
I'm managing to work around that a little bit by having two profiles with slightly different friend lists, though. The two combined give me everyone I want to see. ;)
And being able to see everyone, a big woot! to Poetmage, Ellsea, and Emiko! :) Sheba and Veronnika need to enter their wordcounts *poke poke poke*! ;)
I've been hanging out a lot in the SFFMuse IRC chatroom. There's 4 or 5 people in there most evenings, all working on our stories and sharing snippets. More of the people here ought to drop by. :) Or maybe we ought to make a Hobgoblin chatroom. Where's Jeanene been these days?
2005/11/03
Nanowrimo: mid-day 3
Well, I have 5997 total words thus far. 621 of those are mind-bogglingly bad, and they're all on Amulet I. The other 5376 words are decent enough. Not great, most of them. The first chapter was good enough to stick in my excerpt but I can't say the same for the second and third chapters ...
By the end of Day 3, if I still want to be on target, I need to have 7500 words. This means I'm technically behind by around 1500 words. I have no clue where I'm going to find the time to do it, as I've already skipped out on work early two days in a row now, and if I keep doing that someone is bound to notice ...
Also I'm a bit stumped for what to write as Chapter 4 in Amulet II. Back to Amulet I for the next thing I write! ... and see if I can at all salvage anything after the opener to the scene that I'm working on. *head, desk*
I would've done that tonight, except that I spent a huge chunk of time stalled out due to a software crash. (!) About a thousand words into a GREAT roll, I'm typing along, when suddenly in midsentence - POOF! All gone! I was so pissed that I couldn't write a thing for two hours afterward. And I couldn't go on until after I had reconstructed it from memory, and put it reasonably back together in a way that's not even close to how good it was originally. (*sob*) It took me twice as long to rewrite it as it did to write it the first time, and got fewer words out of it the second time because I was just too tired to wax as poetic about things again. Now I obsessively hit the save button after every paragraph. :p
Grrrr. Arrrrghhh. Software should not be allowed to crash! Ever!
By the end of Day 3, if I still want to be on target, I need to have 7500 words. This means I'm technically behind by around 1500 words. I have no clue where I'm going to find the time to do it, as I've already skipped out on work early two days in a row now, and if I keep doing that someone is bound to notice ...
Also I'm a bit stumped for what to write as Chapter 4 in Amulet II. Back to Amulet I for the next thing I write! ... and see if I can at all salvage anything after the opener to the scene that I'm working on. *head, desk*
I would've done that tonight, except that I spent a huge chunk of time stalled out due to a software crash. (!) About a thousand words into a GREAT roll, I'm typing along, when suddenly in midsentence - POOF! All gone! I was so pissed that I couldn't write a thing for two hours afterward. And I couldn't go on until after I had reconstructed it from memory, and put it reasonably back together in a way that's not even close to how good it was originally. (*sob*) It took me twice as long to rewrite it as it did to write it the first time, and got fewer words out of it the second time because I was just too tired to wax as poetic about things again. Now I obsessively hit the save button after every paragraph. :p
Grrrr. Arrrrghhh. Software should not be allowed to crash! Ever!
2005/11/01
Nanowrimo 2005: Day 1
Well, so far I have 1902 words according to the official wordcount verifier, all of it in the first chapter of Amulet II. It took me 5 hours to do that. I need to have at least 2500 by the time midnight comes around - at which point I have to start all over again. And I have to do such things as sleep, work, and grocery shop tomorrow, so I'm not sure how I'm going to come up with another 600 words.
This does not bode well for my attempt at 100k. Must ... write ... faster ...
I'm thinking maybe the other 600 words should go toward Amulet I or Taint, whichever I find myself writing as my second novel. I'm doing Amulet II on Jer's Novel Writer - which is a really nifty bit of software for Macs. It's in beta and I ought to download the latest version at some point. I really like it so far. However, I won't always want to write at my computer - so maybe the second novel will be written during all the times when I'm not. The alphasmart is all set up to go too, after all.
Guess we'll see if I can scrape together enough time to eke out 600 words during the regular workday. :)
This does not bode well for my attempt at 100k. Must ... write ... faster ...
I'm thinking maybe the other 600 words should go toward Amulet I or Taint, whichever I find myself writing as my second novel. I'm doing Amulet II on Jer's Novel Writer - which is a really nifty bit of software for Macs. It's in beta and I ought to download the latest version at some point. I really like it so far. However, I won't always want to write at my computer - so maybe the second novel will be written during all the times when I'm not. The alphasmart is all set up to go too, after all.
Guess we'll see if I can scrape together enough time to eke out 600 words during the regular workday. :)
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