miko2

By today I'm supposed to have 40,000 words written.

I have, according to Open Office, 39,000 words written.

I could probably stay up and write another 1,000 words to try and catch up, but right now I'm in kind of a weird spot in the story. I finished off chapter 21, and that takes me through the end of Sunday. I'm now past the point of all of my initial short-term "first week" plots. I want to skip ahead a week or two, but I have a few unresolved plot threads that I probably should try and clean up first. I'm not sure exactly how to tie those in to the other things I want to write to set up the next big plot, the "Genma kidnaps Ranma" plot. In short, I'm not sure exactly where I want to take this part of the story, so it's a bit harder to write.

But still, I'm pretty excited. I was having trouble at several other points too and I worked my way through them. If I get through this part, I can tie eveything I've written in the past to all of my "future" chapters that I wrote last year, and then everything I've written or plotted for Girl's School will be one complete story. One in need of editing, I'll admit, but still, you'll be able to read from beginning to end. That's cool. And it will be some 150,000 to 200,000 words long, making it the largest story of my life. Even Muyami Academy wasn't that long.

Ah, well. I should get to bed for now.

Bleah.

I played City of Heroes last night. I slept in late today. I played more City of Heroes. I went shopping. I read three volumes of manga (aside: one of the mangas that skyoxford recently lent me was La Corda d'Oro, about a girl with a magic violin. I liked it, but not quite enough to go out and buy more volumes... until last night when I was at Half Price Books and found volumes 2, 3, and 4 for 4.50 each. So... I read all of them today. Waste of my day!)

Anyway I'm supposed to have... eh, about 36,600 words written by today. This weekend is my weekend to finally get caught up too, or else I may run out of time. But as of tonight I'm at about 32,000 words, according to Open Office. I don't really trust it's word counter and it's an annoying program but I decided to stop using Word Perfect because I only have Open Office at work (or Word, which I refuse to use) and the constant switching between two programs was causing bigger problems than Open Office creates on its own. It still likes to add formatting to every new line and keeps switching me to 10 point type when I'm not looking (I'm trying to use only 12 point Times New Roman type, I can't for the life of me figure out how to stop it from changing to 10 point type seemingly at random).

I'm working my way through chapter 20, in which Ranma fights a demonic serpent in Harajuku while dressed as a gothic lolita girl, Nabiki moves across town to Ukyo's new restuarant, and Akane takes a motorbike ride with Akela and Rin to Hakone, a resort town two hours South of Tokyo, where they get into a fight.

I might not be able to fit all of that into a single chapter, we'll see.

I should have 31,600 or so words done today. After wrestling with formatting problems all day (have I posted enough about that yet? :D ) I finally managed to wrap up my big fight scene and close out chapter 19. It really is a big fight scene, too... Chapter 19 is a very long chapter.

I've written about 25,000 words. That's... oh, I don'tk know. Only about 1,500 words for today. Unless i calculate using Open Office, in which case I suddenly gain another 3,000 words. :D I'm going to try and write a bit more before going to sleep, but... while i didn't get as much written today as I would have liked, I'm in a position now to write fast and furious as I introduce some new plotlines.

I'm excited! Ever since I started working on this story in earnest, i've been planning to write my way through the first week of school, and that included, from the very beginning, having a big fight at the end of the week. Now I'm past that point! Woo! Onwards and upwards!

For Sunday I have 3 or 4 new plots going. Ranma goes on a "girl's day out" with Sayuri. Miyuki tags along, and I think there's going to be a random demon fight at some point. Akane goes on a long motorbike ride with Rin and Akela and I get to develop those two characters some more. Nabiki moves out of the Tendo house and in with Ukyo. And Genma sets in motion his big plan to win Ranma back and marry him to Akane once and for all. :D :D :D I have no idea what hapens after that... two loose plot ideas I have floating around involve some of the new characters visiting Ranma and Akane at home, and Akane discovering something about her past that she'd completely forgotten, and maybe the second big challenge from Nabiki, although I could leave that off until later. Then the Genma plot! If I'm lucky I can get through that one by the end of NaNoWriMo, but I don't know.

Chapter 16: about 16 pages.
Chapter 17: about 17 pages.
Chapter 18: about 16 pages.
Chapter 19: about 26 pages.
Chapter 20: In progress as we speak! :D

Day 17. I'm supposed to have about 28,300 words done.

I managed to get to 20,000 words today. That's about 3,500 words on the day, so that's not bad. Mostly that's just catching up from slacking off on Saturday, though. Still, I'm about 8,000 words behind, and if I can whittle that down another 1,000 or 2,000 words by tomorrow night, I'll be feeling a lot better about my chances of getting to 50,000 by Nov 30th.

It's funny, because the fact that I'm not starting a new story and I'm actually trying to write good scenes makes me a NaNoWriMo rebel. I've posted once on the "NaNoWriMo Rebels" section of the forums. Then I went to the regular section and read a thread where people described all of the things they do to try and pad out their writing in order to get to 50,000 words. Like, have long-winded characters, using 10 words to describe something when 2 will do, etc. All really bad writing techniques. That made me feel a lot better about being a "rebel". I may not be working on a brand new novel, but I'm making an attempt to write decent scenes. They'll still need editing, but I'm not purposely putting in stuff that I KNOW I'll need to remove later.

I've also run into another problem. I hate writing fight scenes. I had trouble writing chapter 16 because it starts with a fight scene. That was why I hadn't written much on my fan fiction story in the last month. Anyway, it's Ranma 1/2, there have to be fight scenes, so I got through it and rolled through the next several chapters. Now I'm in chapter 19 and it's the big fight on Saturday between Ranma and Kodachi... and again, I'm having trouble writing it.

If I get past this, I have a bunch of stuff that happens Sunday... and then things are a little more open. Hopefully I'll even get to the whole "Genma's Revenge" plot, which would be cool because after that I can fit in my "Magical Girl" chapters.

Another productive day. By Friday 11/14/08 I should have 23,000 words written. My actual count is about 13,500. That means I've written about 2,500 words today. I should write even more, but I'm a little weary and thinking of taking a break..

It's Wednesday evening, the 12th. If I were doing this thing right I'd have about 20,000 words written by today.

Eh. I'm at a bit over 7,000 words. That's about 2,400 words today, which is a good pace but I still don't feel as if I'm catching up very quickly (because I'm not). Still, I have a good chunk of chapter 17 done now, in rough form at least.

Someone left a review of my fic tonight, even though it's been a month since my last chapter. He said "While there are many editorial problems with the overall text" and I immediately want to know what he's talking about specifically. Because, you know, I don't let anyone else preread my chapters and I tend to publish them soon after finishing them so yeah, I know there are some mistakes... but surely not that many mistakes, right? I use the spell checker and I go over my chapters a couple of times to make certain that they pass my own level of scrutiny, at least. Anyway what does he mean by "editorial problems with the overall text"? I want to know if there really are a lot of problems, or if he's just not happy with some of the things I do that fall under personal choice and creative license or whatever....

And then I notice that he's spelled the word "delusional" as "dillusional" and suddenly I feel all superior again. Why am I worried about a critique from someone who can't spell delusional? :D What does he know? Not how to spell, certainly!

(Never mind that my spelling can be pretty spotty as well. :P )

Anyway, Chapter 17 takes us through Thursday... I have to get through the whole Konatsu introductory story arc too but since I don't want to just rehash a story from the manga I'm thinking of doing it mostly off-camera and filling in the details afterwards... kinda thing. Then I can rush into another short chapter 18 that covers Friday, and then the big fight on Saturday, which might take more than one chapter, who knows? And I have story plans through Sunday too... Ranma off having fun with one character, Akane being talked into a bike ride with Rin and Akela....

After that I don't have specific day-by-day plans. I have a plot about Akane's past friendship with one character that I'm not sure where I can work it in, and maybe a few other loose threads like that. And then, beyond that, I have plans for a longer story arc in which Genma tries one more time to force a marriage between Ranma and Akane. I'm not sure exactly when I want that to happen, though. It could happen in a week or two after the first week of school, or I could wait until after I've done my whole "Magical Girl" story arc, which I wrote during NaNoWriMo 2007 (and which I want to publish, but which is also not complete).

Those are pretty much my plans for the series... finish the first week, write the Genma marriage plot, and finish and publish the Magical Girl plot. I haven't thought past that point, because it could easily take me another year to get all of that accomplished first... and then I might want to pause to work on one of my other stories, such as A Magical Girl in Oz, Seven Fiancees, or something else... maybe even finish my big demon arc from Muyami Academy. Or, you know, actually finish some of my Tai-Pan stories, that would be nice I guess. :D

So far my participation in NaNoWriMo this year has been full of fail.

In order to write 50,000 words in a month, you need to average about 1,600 words a day. I didn't write anything the first couple of days, then wrote a few hundred words. By Friday I had not written much more, but I thought that, with a big push Friday night and on the weekend, I could catch up.

I wrote nothing Friday. I wrote nothing Saturday. I wrote nothing for much of Sunday, then late in the evening I sat down and finished a few more scenes.

I've now written a bit over 2,000 words total. I have about 6 or 8 scenes finished for the next chapter of Girls School (chapter 16 I think?) so that's good, but I really need to work a bit harder at it. I'm also not convinced that the quality is high enough for publication, but having scenes written is better than not having scenes written.

Meh. Writing is easy, but sitting down to write is difficult.

I suppose on the plus side, I avoided playing City of Heroes much. I got my walk in on Sunday, I did 3 loads of laundry, I cleaned up the kitchen a bit and made an enchilada casserole thingy that will provide me with lunches for four days this week (I went out for lunch all five days last week -- bleah).

Over the weekend I read Fables: Arabian Nights and Fables: Wolves. Next is The Good Prince I think, which I've read before but I don't own and I'm in the mood to read again. I think I'm going to go buy it tonight.

Friday I wandered around the Southcenter Mall (basically my "walk" for that day -- I walked around the mall). I bought some Raspberry Black loose tea from Teavana and tea bags, which I brought to work today. After I made my purchase I tried some of the sample tea they had -- a Chai Roobis tea blend that was very tasty. I think I need to go back and get some of that, and while I'm at it hit the bookstore and buy the next volume of Fables or so.

My goal for the Month of December is 31,000 words on whatever projects I'm working on, but mostly my novel and the fan fiction story it's based on. I want to write 1,000 words a day.

I wrote nothing on Saturday or Sunday. But wait! Actually I wrote two articles on Sunday for the Tai-Pan. One was a 970 word article on my participation in NaNoWriMo, and one was a 1404 word article on "The Fine Art of Procrastination".

Tonight I worked on Girl's School. One of my goals is to get Chapter 12 finished and posted to Fanfiction.net as soon as possible, and maybe pust chapter 13 before the end of the month. Towards that end, I completed three partially-written scenes. I have two more to complete, and Chapter 12 will be ready to upload. My file was at 67,066 words when I started (this is a seperate file from my novel side story too -- so that's over 100,000 words written on this one story total, even though the bulk of that has yet to be published.) I was at 65,565 words when I finished, so that's about 500 words. Not what I want, but not bad over all. I'm close to my 1,000 word a day goal for the first three days of the month, so it's not a bad start.

I need to rework Gene's graphic or something though.

NaNoWriMo: 46,838.

I think I'm going to finish a day early. ^_^ Getting to 50,000 by tomorrow night might be stretching it, but by Thursday for sure!

NaNoWriMo: 37,175.

I'm in the middle of the big fight scene. This is near the very end of the first adventure, so in one sense I'm almost done -- at least with this particular plot.

I might write a bit more, but I'm feeling much better. I'm supposed to be at 40,000 words by Saturday night, and that doesn't seem very difficult to reach now.

*edit* (later)

NaNoWriMo: 38,135.

The fight is over. The witch is defeated. The first big adventure is at an end, but the story isn't over yet.

I'm very much back on track, with less than 2,000 words to write tomorrow to be fully caught up. It would be nice, in fact, if I could start getting ahead, so that I get to 50,000 before next Friday. Getting ahead would mean getting to maybe 45,000 by Sunday evening.