So I'm currently about 16000 words behind on NaNoWriMo. I'm writing this on the train back home, but basically what this means is that I'm going to have to write maybe 3500 - 4000 words a day in order to finish on time; considering that my mother and honors professor have made the joint decision to schedule ALL OF THE THINGS during break, this is not particularly feasible. I'm still going to write every day if I can, but right now I'm just going to write. I'm not going to work on word count, I'm just going to go.
Hopefully I'll still be able to get through with a lot of words.
Farewell for now.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Day 23: I haven't posted all week because reasons
Current Page: 112
Target Page: Let's just not
Place in story: shit, shit, more shit, and then a giant ball of poop.
Yeah. That's basically what Spencer has gotten herself into now. Every idea she has, the Empire foils it (SHUT UP ABOUT THE CLICHE NAME FOR THE EVIL PEOPLE). Anyway, this has been a really slow week in terms of writing, so right now I'm just trying to write. Not necessarily, like, the 10 daily necessary pages, but words. I just hit 30,000 today - I'm at about 30,250 right now. I'm probably not going to hit 50,000, but I'm going to work on it. I'm going to at least try to get close.
Anyway, in other news, this week has been rather stressful. On Monday, my roommate and I got called in to Res Life because we apparently had bedbugs. On Tuesday, we got treated for bedbugs; this treatment not only messed up our personal organizational systems (the bedbug guys had to move stuff to treat everything - including the inside of my trunk, apparently, where I keep the Confidential Things of Confidentiality), but it resulted in a few things going missing - most irritatingly, one of the dolls (in a set of two) that my host mom in Turkey gave me on my last night staying with them.
I missed classes yesterday to go to the Ring Ceremony/ Ball at my boyfriend's school (he goes to military school, so yes, my dress was super fancy; it was required for it to be floor-length and white). That was a lot of fun (except for the heels and the half-tripping over my dress for most of the night), because the band was actually really good and played decent music.
We woke up at around 7 this morning in order to head out by 8:00 or so; I needed to get back by 12 to attend a choir concert (this counts as the final, basically; College policy is that if you miss the final, you fail the course, so it's better to show up and get a 0 than to not show up at all). My parents came to that, which was really nice. When we went out to coffee afterwards, we saw one of the alumni of my fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega. (that's another thing that's been on my plate this week: This is The Week That Shall Not Be Spoken Of But Which Involves Lots Of Gifts That Everyone Makes.) I didn't know him terribly well, but that was not an excuse not to get excited and hug.
Right, I have to do some more service now - candlelight vigil from midnight to 3 AM. Farewell!
Target Page: Let's just not
Place in story: shit, shit, more shit, and then a giant ball of poop.
Yeah. That's basically what Spencer has gotten herself into now. Every idea she has, the Empire foils it (SHUT UP ABOUT THE CLICHE NAME FOR THE EVIL PEOPLE). Anyway, this has been a really slow week in terms of writing, so right now I'm just trying to write. Not necessarily, like, the 10 daily necessary pages, but words. I just hit 30,000 today - I'm at about 30,250 right now. I'm probably not going to hit 50,000, but I'm going to work on it. I'm going to at least try to get close.
Anyway, in other news, this week has been rather stressful. On Monday, my roommate and I got called in to Res Life because we apparently had bedbugs. On Tuesday, we got treated for bedbugs; this treatment not only messed up our personal organizational systems (the bedbug guys had to move stuff to treat everything - including the inside of my trunk, apparently, where I keep the Confidential Things of Confidentiality), but it resulted in a few things going missing - most irritatingly, one of the dolls (in a set of two) that my host mom in Turkey gave me on my last night staying with them.
I missed classes yesterday to go to the Ring Ceremony/ Ball at my boyfriend's school (he goes to military school, so yes, my dress was super fancy; it was required for it to be floor-length and white). That was a lot of fun (except for the heels and the half-tripping over my dress for most of the night), because the band was actually really good and played decent music.
We woke up at around 7 this morning in order to head out by 8:00 or so; I needed to get back by 12 to attend a choir concert (this counts as the final, basically; College policy is that if you miss the final, you fail the course, so it's better to show up and get a 0 than to not show up at all). My parents came to that, which was really nice. When we went out to coffee afterwards, we saw one of the alumni of my fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega. (that's another thing that's been on my plate this week: This is The Week That Shall Not Be Spoken Of But Which Involves Lots Of Gifts That Everyone Makes.) I didn't know him terribly well, but that was not an excuse not to get excited and hug.
Right, I have to do some more service now - candlelight vigil from midnight to 3 AM. Farewell!
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Day 16: when in doubt, switch universes
Current Page: 84
Target Page: GAH!
Place in Story: Well, while I try and buy myself some time to figure out how to get Spencer out of the craphole I've dug her into, I'm revisiting Myrtle for the first time in a while. I spent a week ignoring her, but I'm pretty sure she's actually useful now in padding my word count. So, Myrtle is at a sorority party now (one she got dragged along to because she hadn't been out of the house in weeks because NOVELING!); she just got sat on by a drunk freshman who thinks that Myrtle is trans* because the freshman sat on Myrtle's pen while Myrtle was sneakily trying to write.
With regards to Spencer, I'm sure you're wondering what craphole she's gotten into. Well, her navigation and communications systems are both down (she had an idea that didn't work; instead of successfully leading the enemy ship away from the base planet of the rebellion, the King's Stiletto was brought onto the enemy flagship and sabotaged); also, the base planet of the rebellion - the only definitively friendly planet in the only definitively friendly system within a range where navigation is simple - has been overtaken by beings of a malicious nature. She found this out when getting the coordinates to the base planet (she was calling the commander of the rebellion on their backup communicator, which is kind old), and then the bad guy took over.
I have no idea what to do about this. Suggestions?
On that note, I'm going to continue to write this awkward encounter in Myrtle's world, to the sounds of drunken frolicking outside. (Since today was the game against our rivals, there's even more drunken frolicking than normal, even though we lost).
Target Page: GAH!
Place in Story: Well, while I try and buy myself some time to figure out how to get Spencer out of the craphole I've dug her into, I'm revisiting Myrtle for the first time in a while. I spent a week ignoring her, but I'm pretty sure she's actually useful now in padding my word count. So, Myrtle is at a sorority party now (one she got dragged along to because she hadn't been out of the house in weeks because NOVELING!); she just got sat on by a drunk freshman who thinks that Myrtle is trans* because the freshman sat on Myrtle's pen while Myrtle was sneakily trying to write.
With regards to Spencer, I'm sure you're wondering what craphole she's gotten into. Well, her navigation and communications systems are both down (she had an idea that didn't work; instead of successfully leading the enemy ship away from the base planet of the rebellion, the King's Stiletto was brought onto the enemy flagship and sabotaged); also, the base planet of the rebellion - the only definitively friendly planet in the only definitively friendly system within a range where navigation is simple - has been overtaken by beings of a malicious nature. She found this out when getting the coordinates to the base planet (she was calling the commander of the rebellion on their backup communicator, which is kind old), and then the bad guy took over.
I have no idea what to do about this. Suggestions?
On that note, I'm going to continue to write this awkward encounter in Myrtle's world, to the sounds of drunken frolicking outside. (Since today was the game against our rivals, there's even more drunken frolicking than normal, even though we lost).
Friday, November 15, 2013
Day 15: halfway!
Current Page: 83
Pages written today: 7.5
Target Page: please, no.
Location in story: PLOT TWIST! You thought the Mentor's death was the low point? THINK AGAIN!! EVERYTHING THAT SPENCER KNOWS AND LOVES IS ABOUT TO GO KAPUT, THANKS TO THAT CREEPY CALL THAT SHE JUST MADE! Doesn't help that her navigation and her communicators are busted, so she can't really go anywhere accurately and she has to call on her backup communications. Also, she has ten unconscious guards in her cargo hold.
Yes, that's where I am right now. I've gotten a lot done today, but I still need to keep up this pace if I want to make sure I can get my word count.
Pages written today: 7.5
Target Page: please, no.
Location in story: PLOT TWIST! You thought the Mentor's death was the low point? THINK AGAIN!! EVERYTHING THAT SPENCER KNOWS AND LOVES IS ABOUT TO GO KAPUT, THANKS TO THAT CREEPY CALL THAT SHE JUST MADE! Doesn't help that her navigation and her communicators are busted, so she can't really go anywhere accurately and she has to call on her backup communications. Also, she has ten unconscious guards in her cargo hold.
Yes, that's where I am right now. I've gotten a lot done today, but I still need to keep up this pace if I want to make sure I can get my word count.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Day 14: tired, behind, and should be studying for Greek...
Current Page: 75
Target (at this point): 77 (two more pages... maybe? yes?)
Location in story: well...
I spent a lot of lunch texting my boyfriend about the best thing to sabotage about a ship (would it be more detrimental to the sabotagee to take out the navigation or the communications? Life support would have been a good option to hurt the crew and passenger of the King's Stiletto if it wasn't possible for them to land on a friendly planet in about two minutes - aka before the oxygen ran out). It turns out that I've planned out the backups for the ship better than I thought I did. Either that, or theatre experience has trained me well for improv, because I may have been making it up.
Anyway, where I am right now in the story is trying to figure out where to send people now that the King's Stiletto has... barely been compromised.
I've also realized today just how much I've written about revolutions. The only year that didn't involve a revolution was the first one, and that was almost preventing something that was... what's the opposite of revolution? Not necessarily peace and harmony, but... since I based it on a video game, I'll just put it in those terms: BOWSER had captured the equivalent of PEACH and if the equivalent of MARIO wasn't out to save the royal family, there would have been anarchy that MARIO, LUIGI, and FRIENDS could not have controlled.
So... that's that. I have to do homework now.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Day 13: when in doubt, go meta
Current Page: top of 71
Target Page: um...
Place in Story: um...
So the title of today's post is derived from the fact that I do, technically, have three planes of existence in one novel: Myrtle's level, Jess's level, and Spencer's level. I have barely touched Myrtle's level in the last week or so, but Jess and Spencer have been sharing the stage fairly regularly.
Anyway, in order to shamelessly pad my word count, I wrote a scene with Myrtle, Jenna (her flatmate), and Elijah (her good friend), as well as a brief reference to Myrtle's and Jenna's cats (Samwise and Quark). The scene lasted only around a page, but it mostly involved Myrtle saying how she had writer's block, and Jenna and Elijah giving her ideas.
There are so many levels of this that I could write the sequel to Inception.
In other, related news, I have recently discovered that requiems are really good writing music. My two right now are Mozart's in D minor and John Rutter's. GO LISTEN. NOW.
Target Page: um...
Place in Story: um...
So the title of today's post is derived from the fact that I do, technically, have three planes of existence in one novel: Myrtle's level, Jess's level, and Spencer's level. I have barely touched Myrtle's level in the last week or so, but Jess and Spencer have been sharing the stage fairly regularly.
Anyway, in order to shamelessly pad my word count, I wrote a scene with Myrtle, Jenna (her flatmate), and Elijah (her good friend), as well as a brief reference to Myrtle's and Jenna's cats (Samwise and Quark). The scene lasted only around a page, but it mostly involved Myrtle saying how she had writer's block, and Jenna and Elijah giving her ideas.
There are so many levels of this that I could write the sequel to Inception.
In other, related news, I have recently discovered that requiems are really good writing music. My two right now are Mozart's in D minor and John Rutter's. GO LISTEN. NOW.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Day 12: stress?
Current Page: 67
Target Page: beyond that
Written today: nothing
What's going on: a lot of things.
Right now, the internet on my computer is being really dumb - for some reason, it won't connect to the server, so I can only access a few academic sites as well as Facebook and Twitter and, occasionally, the NaNoWriMo site. (This is the reason that I haven't posted for the last two days. My apologies for that.)
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to write too much over the last few days. I've been involved in a lot of things with my fraternity, and I have an essay due tonight at midnight (I'm mostly done with it, which is nice). Additionally, homework is starting to get to me, because all my professors have realized that there are about three weeks before finals (if you count the rest of this week and the two days before Thanksgiving as one whole week), and so they've all decided that now is the time to give out ALL OF THE ASSIGNMENTS. So I had an econ test yesterday, an honors essay tonight, a Greek test on Friday (as well as a bunch of translations), and a bunch of math quizzes before finals begin. Needless to say, there's been a lot going on.
Hopefully I'll find the time to write today and tomorrow and catch up - I'm now running behind, even on NaNo terms, so that needs to get fixed.
Finals. Gah.
Grades. Gah.
Target Page: beyond that
Written today: nothing
What's going on: a lot of things.
Right now, the internet on my computer is being really dumb - for some reason, it won't connect to the server, so I can only access a few academic sites as well as Facebook and Twitter and, occasionally, the NaNoWriMo site. (This is the reason that I haven't posted for the last two days. My apologies for that.)
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to write too much over the last few days. I've been involved in a lot of things with my fraternity, and I have an essay due tonight at midnight (I'm mostly done with it, which is nice). Additionally, homework is starting to get to me, because all my professors have realized that there are about three weeks before finals (if you count the rest of this week and the two days before Thanksgiving as one whole week), and so they've all decided that now is the time to give out ALL OF THE ASSIGNMENTS. So I had an econ test yesterday, an honors essay tonight, a Greek test on Friday (as well as a bunch of translations), and a bunch of math quizzes before finals begin. Needless to say, there's been a lot going on.
Hopefully I'll find the time to write today and tomorrow and catch up - I'm now running behind, even on NaNo terms, so that needs to get fixed.
Finals. Gah.
Grades. Gah.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Day 9: Second Saturday and unnecessary romance scenes
Current Page: 57
Target Page: close enough (ish)
What's happened: bad things. Very bad things. Like plot-twisting things for Spencer and Crew. To pad my word count, I wrote a romance scene between Jess and Leo in the Player Realm. Will this affect anything? Yes. It will affect my word count.
And, with the Dungeons and Dragons quest completed for the night, I'm going to bed. Goodnight.
Target Page: close enough (ish)
What's happened: bad things. Very bad things. Like plot-twisting things for Spencer and Crew. To pad my word count, I wrote a romance scene between Jess and Leo in the Player Realm. Will this affect anything? Yes. It will affect my word count.
And, with the Dungeons and Dragons quest completed for the night, I'm going to bed. Goodnight.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Day 8: spaceship chases and strange coincidences
Current Page: 50
Target: 51 (current goal: not necessarily to do 2,000 words a day, but just to stay ahead of the curve, at least a bit)
Current Place in Story: Spencer is being a hooligan by trying to distract the Emperor's ship from the base of the rebellion. Will it work? No idea; I haven't written that bit yet. (Spoiler alert: probably not).
In other news, I organized a bit of a writing session for four of us in my group of friends who are doing NaNo (there's at least one more, but he works at Starbucks, so he doesn't want to hang out at his workplace, because that's kind of weird). Anyway, we somehow got distracted in conversation for a little bit, when we learned that both my roommate and my cousin have the same initials - BNM. The weirdest thing is that the first two initials stand for the exact same name.
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!
My roommate is dating the guy she had a crush on in middle school. My cousin is marrying her middle school crush in March.
Okay, the similarities end there, but I still think it's really weird how that worked out.
Target: 51 (current goal: not necessarily to do 2,000 words a day, but just to stay ahead of the curve, at least a bit)
Current Place in Story: Spencer is being a hooligan by trying to distract the Emperor's ship from the base of the rebellion. Will it work? No idea; I haven't written that bit yet. (Spoiler alert: probably not).
In other news, I organized a bit of a writing session for four of us in my group of friends who are doing NaNo (there's at least one more, but he works at Starbucks, so he doesn't want to hang out at his workplace, because that's kind of weird). Anyway, we somehow got distracted in conversation for a little bit, when we learned that both my roommate and my cousin have the same initials - BNM. The weirdest thing is that the first two initials stand for the exact same name.
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!
My roommate is dating the guy she had a crush on in middle school. My cousin is marrying her middle school crush in March.
Okay, the similarities end there, but I still think it's really weird how that worked out.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Day 7: Plot switch?
Current Page: 43
Target Page: shut up
Place in Novel: LOOKING FOR HELP! (the characters, I mean. Okay, and me too, kind of)
So many of you may realize that, before NaNo started this year, I had a pretty cool concept. The issue is, as you may have noticed, that I didn't really have a plot to go with this cool world I had come up with. Thinking back on it, what I did have was way to isolated in one story - I could have followed Jess through all her tales, or something like that.
So my plot this year is in a weird spot. I'm keeping in the Players, to make sure I can use all the words possible, but I'm pretty much separated from what I initially planned. Instead, I'm ripping a bit off of Star Wars and making the novel-ception (because that's technically what it is, strictly speaking... I'll go back and fix it later) the main plot of the story. From here on out, you'll hear fewer updates on Jess, Marcus, Leo, Tobias, Fabian, and Chelsea, and more updates on Spencer, Keegan, Arthur, Matthias, the Emperor, and Electra. Just to let you know.
Target Page: shut up
Place in Novel: LOOKING FOR HELP! (the characters, I mean. Okay, and me too, kind of)
So many of you may realize that, before NaNo started this year, I had a pretty cool concept. The issue is, as you may have noticed, that I didn't really have a plot to go with this cool world I had come up with. Thinking back on it, what I did have was way to isolated in one story - I could have followed Jess through all her tales, or something like that.
So my plot this year is in a weird spot. I'm keeping in the Players, to make sure I can use all the words possible, but I'm pretty much separated from what I initially planned. Instead, I'm ripping a bit off of Star Wars and making the novel-ception (because that's technically what it is, strictly speaking... I'll go back and fix it later) the main plot of the story. From here on out, you'll hear fewer updates on Jess, Marcus, Leo, Tobias, Fabian, and Chelsea, and more updates on Spencer, Keegan, Arthur, Matthias, the Emperor, and Electra. Just to let you know.
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