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veryroundbird) wrote2017-12-03 07:26 pm
veryroundbird) wrote2017-12-03 07:26 pm
Entry tags:
NaNoWriMo Postmortem + Nov. Accomplishments for Posterity
I keep feeling like I'm not doing enough stuff in my life and then realizing that I'm doing actually way more than most humans think is reasonable, so, uh
NaNoWriMo: completed for the first time in three years! I cranked out about a 2k average, almost hit 60k, and managed to squeeze in at least some time to write every day while still fitting in a lot of social engagements. The story needs a lot of revisions, but I have a lot of ideas about those and have started re-writing the outline based on some stuff that became clearer in the process of writing it. More below!
Professional: sent in 3 conference talk proposals, fingers crossed; have apparently been cool and leaderly enough at work to get commendations from my misc. superiors, got invited to show my portfolio at a design/UX/frontend event about building portfolios for digital work. also signed on for a freelance writing project and a freelance web dev project that'll net me a little extra cash in December.
Wedding: bought a wedding dress????
Language Learning: slacked off a little on the chinese practice this month due to NaNo, but filled out a few sheets of writing practice at least
There's a lot of hobby stuff I want to do more of (go back to choir, do more ukulele, knit/crochet/etc.), but, hey! that's not a short list up there.
my hobby: extremely shitposty world of warcraft fanfic ideas taken 100% seriously
Synopsis
Not long ago, Arielle didn't have a care in the world beyond her two lovable but unruly children, her overbearing mother, and the fact that she still couldn't wrest control of the Neighborhood Association away from her rival, Helene. But now Suramar City has become host to demons, and the nobles become inextricably intertwined with infernal interests to keep their way of life. Arielle must come to terms with the fact that her life will change whether she likes it or not—and decide what she will discard and what she will risk her life to protect.
Productivity Stuff
So first and foremost what I was hoping to get out of NaNo was clearing a bit of longform writing anxiety I'd built up; I'd had a difficult time with NaNo the last couple years and then hadn't been able to block off much time for writing and had gotten out of the habit. I picked an idea that was mostly-formed with room for flexibility that was kind of shitposty and therefore one I wasn't too precious about, and went for it. Seemed to work!
I did pretty well getting words in every day despite mostly cramming in my writing after work and using the weekends to get a little ahead. In past years I've found success with adding little bits throughout the day, but I'm now busy enough at my job that it doesn't work out so well to do that. I wrote largely in 750words.com both for Extra Badge-Based Motivation and the nice statistics, and then pasted everything into Scrivener.
My writing was largely in-order except for on, like, the very last day, I think because for once the events toward the end of the story were some of the more nebulous ones in my head, so it was only once I passed the 50k mark that I wasn't 100% sure what to do with myself. Even when I wasn't entirely happy with how a scene was coming out, I pushed through anyway rather than starting to skip around, since having to skip around is generally a bad sign for me.
Also, after I crossed the 50k boundary, I made a point to keep doing some writing every day; I wanted to make sure I was primed to keep writing for the next eleven months rather than only writing for one month a year, ha ha.
Plot Stuff
Due to my memory being questionable and probably also a little bit the canon being an only sometimes internally consistent box of rule-of-cool, I realized while researching timeline stuff that there's a lot of things I have to fix there in terms of when events happen relative to each other. There were also a couple characterization things for what few characters that are canonical that I want to work in/emphasize more.
Toward the end of NaNoWriMo I also combed through a list of Real Housewives of [X] episodes for ideas on how to mix up the kinds of Rich People activities that the characters end up doing—I realized there was an overwhelming percentage of fancy meals, and that I could stand to diversify a little bit.
Character Stuff
A big thing is that now I have a much better idea of who the characters are as people apart from the main character, who I had largely figured out beforehand. As I'm reworking stuff, though, I'm intending to make it more ensemble-like, with the POV shifting around. There's still a "main character" insofar as the overarching plot settles around Arielle being the focal point, but having the other character POVs makes it a little bit easier to fill in corners of the story that Arielle just doesn't ever get to see. The characters also filled out enough that they can mostly support being POV characters.
It turned out I didn't actually know what to do with some of the characters I'd planned out a little in advance, though. For example, the main character's older child has a friend who ends up in trouble that they need to get help for, but as I was writing I found that plotline hard to work in, and started realizing it didn't make as much sense written-out as I'd hoped. I'm going back to the drawing board on that and seeing what else I can come up with. Part of that was to give Arielle a serious, concrete reason to want to work with the secret resistance movement, but she also... has a lot of reasons already, honestly. I like some of what I wrote in that plot arc, but it might need to get reworked substantially.
What's next:
Taking a month-ish off to work on a paid writing project while I casually re-outline in the fancy new Scrivener, and then getting back into editing come the new year.
NaNoWriMo: completed for the first time in three years! I cranked out about a 2k average, almost hit 60k, and managed to squeeze in at least some time to write every day while still fitting in a lot of social engagements. The story needs a lot of revisions, but I have a lot of ideas about those and have started re-writing the outline based on some stuff that became clearer in the process of writing it. More below!
Professional: sent in 3 conference talk proposals, fingers crossed; have apparently been cool and leaderly enough at work to get commendations from my misc. superiors, got invited to show my portfolio at a design/UX/frontend event about building portfolios for digital work. also signed on for a freelance writing project and a freelance web dev project that'll net me a little extra cash in December.
Wedding: bought a wedding dress????
Language Learning: slacked off a little on the chinese practice this month due to NaNo, but filled out a few sheets of writing practice at least
There's a lot of hobby stuff I want to do more of (go back to choir, do more ukulele, knit/crochet/etc.), but, hey! that's not a short list up there.
NaNoWriMo Post-Mortem
my hobby: extremely shitposty world of warcraft fanfic ideas taken 100% seriously
Synopsis
Not long ago, Arielle didn't have a care in the world beyond her two lovable but unruly children, her overbearing mother, and the fact that she still couldn't wrest control of the Neighborhood Association away from her rival, Helene. But now Suramar City has become host to demons, and the nobles become inextricably intertwined with infernal interests to keep their way of life. Arielle must come to terms with the fact that her life will change whether she likes it or not—and decide what she will discard and what she will risk her life to protect.
Productivity Stuff
So first and foremost what I was hoping to get out of NaNo was clearing a bit of longform writing anxiety I'd built up; I'd had a difficult time with NaNo the last couple years and then hadn't been able to block off much time for writing and had gotten out of the habit. I picked an idea that was mostly-formed with room for flexibility that was kind of shitposty and therefore one I wasn't too precious about, and went for it. Seemed to work!
I did pretty well getting words in every day despite mostly cramming in my writing after work and using the weekends to get a little ahead. In past years I've found success with adding little bits throughout the day, but I'm now busy enough at my job that it doesn't work out so well to do that. I wrote largely in 750words.com both for Extra Badge-Based Motivation and the nice statistics, and then pasted everything into Scrivener.
My writing was largely in-order except for on, like, the very last day, I think because for once the events toward the end of the story were some of the more nebulous ones in my head, so it was only once I passed the 50k mark that I wasn't 100% sure what to do with myself. Even when I wasn't entirely happy with how a scene was coming out, I pushed through anyway rather than starting to skip around, since having to skip around is generally a bad sign for me.
Also, after I crossed the 50k boundary, I made a point to keep doing some writing every day; I wanted to make sure I was primed to keep writing for the next eleven months rather than only writing for one month a year, ha ha.
Plot Stuff
Due to my memory being questionable and probably also a little bit the canon being an only sometimes internally consistent box of rule-of-cool, I realized while researching timeline stuff that there's a lot of things I have to fix there in terms of when events happen relative to each other. There were also a couple characterization things for what few characters that are canonical that I want to work in/emphasize more.
Toward the end of NaNoWriMo I also combed through a list of Real Housewives of [X] episodes for ideas on how to mix up the kinds of Rich People activities that the characters end up doing—I realized there was an overwhelming percentage of fancy meals, and that I could stand to diversify a little bit.
Character Stuff
A big thing is that now I have a much better idea of who the characters are as people apart from the main character, who I had largely figured out beforehand. As I'm reworking stuff, though, I'm intending to make it more ensemble-like, with the POV shifting around. There's still a "main character" insofar as the overarching plot settles around Arielle being the focal point, but having the other character POVs makes it a little bit easier to fill in corners of the story that Arielle just doesn't ever get to see. The characters also filled out enough that they can mostly support being POV characters.
It turned out I didn't actually know what to do with some of the characters I'd planned out a little in advance, though. For example, the main character's older child has a friend who ends up in trouble that they need to get help for, but as I was writing I found that plotline hard to work in, and started realizing it didn't make as much sense written-out as I'd hoped. I'm going back to the drawing board on that and seeing what else I can come up with. Part of that was to give Arielle a serious, concrete reason to want to work with the secret resistance movement, but she also... has a lot of reasons already, honestly. I like some of what I wrote in that plot arc, but it might need to get reworked substantially.
What's next:
Taking a month-ish off to work on a paid writing project while I casually re-outline in the fancy new Scrivener, and then getting back into editing come the new year.
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