NaNoWriMo 2011: Calling It. Time of Death: 4:34 PM.

Well, November is basically done with. 4 days left to write, but I won’t be able to finish. It’s a blow to my pride, really, but school kept me away. Every amount of writing I’ve done has been educational and not recreational. Things will be better next year when I’m not working on 30 pages of researched nonsense.

What have I learned? You really should write every day. I didn’t, thus I failed my own advice :)
What’s next? Well, the story is next. I may not have hit 50k, but that doesn’t mean I’m stopping. I’m still adding on to it bit by bit until it’s finished. If anything, the pressure is off because I no longer worry about it being long enough. Now the story will just finish when it’s done.

Next up, December: Graduation and, hopefully, completion of the first story in my series.

Happy Birthday to Me

I turned 28 on Sunday. This has nothing to do with my writing, but I wanted to acknowledge it.

I’m ridiculously far behind on my NaNo count, though I’m writing a good chunk right now. I might even catch up by the weekend.

Well, that’s all for this post. Have a great week.

Edit: Huh. When I posted this, it said I should add tags to help people find it.

 

It suggested the tag: Chunk.

 

What?

NaNoWriMo 2011 – The Ball is Rolling (and I don’t know why)

I’ve surpassed my wordcount from last year. That’s not saying much, and seeing as it’s the 10th day, I should have double what I have now. But I’m continuing to learn new things as I go.

Characters have changed, people are more interesting, there’s an actual villain instead of a mysterious monster attacking people. So far, so good.

Trying to write Fantasy is interesting. You have to sometimes explain things instead of just diving in and going “Well, he used a Scrifflenob on that pack of Gorthinlags” and then have every character react accordingly. Sure, the characters may know what ‘Scrifflenobs’ and ‘Gorthinlags’ are, but readers don’t. I always feel this urge to explain things, but I don’t say you have to. Anyone who has read classic science-fiction has run into the whole “Well, the author isn’t going to explain what the hell this is so I’ll just have to pretend I know what’s happening.” Basically, you get to act like me when I have to hear my friends discuss fantasy football or baseball. I just chime in with “SPORTS” and “The rest of the world calls American Football ‘soccer.’”

Ahem.

So yeah. It’s not like writing modern fiction where you don’t have to go into detail about an airplane or explain the laws of aerodynamics. People already grasp a knowledge of things that exist. But when you make things up? Well, I don’t want to be that guy who says “oh, this happens because MAGIC!!!”

Tonight, I had to explain a type of magic spell. And then I had to explain why it didn’t work on one person. I think I accomplished it rather well, considering I did almost 0 world-building since all of my notes are character history and monster descriptions. But so far, my magic seems to not be a direct ripoff of anything specific. We’ll see when it gets there.

By the end of this, I hope to god I don’t realize that I just rewrote jedi into wizards.

Writing Playlist: November 06, 2011 – Ghosts I-IV

Hello, people. How are you?

Sorry. I’ve been absent. I swear I’m not avoiding you, and I feel bad about my tardiness right after starting this blog up. But that’s the way final semesters go. Heck, that’s the way final months of final semesters go.

Papers and research and desktop computer troubles plague me this weekend. Theoretically, I shouldn’t be writing this post right now since I still have a paper to work on and finish. But I need a break.

The computer problems are a nuisance. The motherboard died and I do not have the funds to replace it or upgrade to new parts, so I must begin saving. Oh well.

The NaNo is going slow as well. Not much time to work on it, but I’m pleased with the things I’ve done with the story so far. I’m very hopeful that I can finish this once I can spend more time on it. I’m only at 2007 words, which is peanuts, but I see it climbing during the week since I won’t be spending time on the gaming PC.

So, aside from that, I won’t leave y’all hanging. Here’s my Writing Playlist for the week of November 06, 2011. This is Daylight Savings Week, which means you can be late tomorrow and pretend you forgot about the time change or forgot to set your alarm.

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