I actually did some writing on a Friday!
This week has been so full of writing, it’s kind of ridiculous! I wrote a stupid amount last weekend. I think it was almost 5000 words before midnight, then another almost 5000 after midnight. I started Saturday about 13,000 words behind, and ended Sunday only about 5000 words behind. And as of Thursday, I ended the day with 43,399 words written; the target for the day was 43,333. And yesterday I was about 1000 words ahead of target. Seriously, check out these stats, it’s ridiculous!
So what did I write this last week? As I already mentioned, I finished the Grief Project draft. Then I went on to write a rough draft of a story for a friend. His dog, who was rather old, wasn’t doing so well and my friend thought he’d have to put him down. I don’t know if I’ll be able to give him this story, but it was written for him. Well, I definitely won’t be able to give it to him as it is because it’s a very rough draft. I set it in City of the Dead because that seemed appropriate.
After that, I really had to move away from stories about grief and pets. Another friend told me Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void was out. He started talking to me awkwardly about it, but didn’t want to spoil anything so I decided I had to go play it. With my head firmly in science fiction mode, I turned away from Faeriia and another untitled world (I’m calling it the Centaur World right now. It’s the world the screenplay I started for Script Frenzy takes place in) and started working on a science fiction setting instead. This was helped by me rewatching Firefly as well. I wrote down a random scene I’ve had in my head, which I have to admit, writing story makes the words go faster than working on world building stuff. From there I decided to write another story for Apocalypse Madness (it’s set on Faeriia and called “Scourge of the Seas“). And then I decided to write this blog post as part of the word count because I was just rambling otherwise.
I have to admit, writing 50,000 words of mostly world building is really, really hard to do. Around the point where I started writing more stories (so I’m talking “Scourge of the Seas” and the other scene), I felt like there was no more world building I could do. I know there are lots of holes in the settings that I’ll need to think through. But right now I’m sitting at the end of an 80+ page document that’s basically just a big blob of text. I tried to make notes and comments on the side of things that need doing. But I know the way that I work, and right now I need to print out this document and go through it, organizing all the world building bits into their own documents to actually see exactly what I have and what I’m missing. So here I am now, sitting with less than 3500 words to go to win, and I don’t honestly have anything in particular to write about (which is why I decided to write this blog post there, even though it sort of feels like cheating). The sheer amount of world building stuff I’ve done this NaNoWriMo is awesome – I’ve got one world up to the point where I can easily start writing stories in it, even if it’s missing things, and two more (well, one world and one “setting”) in the works. I’m super glad to be fixing some of the issues I had with my story ideas (namely the problem that almost all of them were stuck in world building). But it’s super hard to remember everything that I’ve done these last few weeks (especially when I’m typing like a maniac to get caught up and jumping from setting to setting as it strikes my fancy). I definitely think, if I ever decide to do NaNoWriMo again, I’m going to write a novel rather than another writing blob.
So apologies to everyone. I keep saying I’m going to get caught up with your blogs, but realistically that’s not going to happen until after NaNoWriMo is over in a few days. So wish me luck as I finish off the remaining 3000 or so words I have to write, and I’ll talk to you after the 1st!
An Acquaintance with Letters 