1.30.2011

New Goal: 6k In A Day

So it's been a couple of days since my 4k marathon. I've had some time to rest and take care of homework, and my fingers no longer ache. So I think it's now time to kick it up a notch and beat the pants off of my previous goal. And if I could do 4k between 3:00 in the afternoon and 12:00 at night, I wonder what I can do in a whole day dedicated to writing? If my brain doesn't ooze out my ears first.

So I am going to attempt 6000 words. I call it my Six Kay In A Day challenge, mainly because you can chant it. Say it with me! Six Kay In A Day! Six Kay In A Day! I have picked tomorrow (read: today) as a likely candidate for doing this. It's a good day, for now I am in good standing homework-wise. Also if I want to do this I better do this now, Sunday, for FebNo starts on Tuesday and I've challenged myself to do 3k as a kickoff of Feb. 1st. It would be good to have a nice cushion to fall back on for The Amber Node. Which reminds me, I decided to use FebNo for my HP fanfic instead of The Amber Node, so I better get some planning done on Monday!

So I guess Sunday, today, is the day. Mostly. I guess it really depends on when I wake up in the morning, ha ha. :-D

I don't know if I'll succeed. I hope I do. Crossing my fingers.

1.27.2011

Whoooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrk.

Had to get that out of my system. That's the sound of my fingers slowly grinding to a halt after their prolonged marathon on the keyboard race against time. It is a fact that even after I stopped typing, they continued twitching because they hadn't caught on to the fact that they could chill yet. (All right, I just made that up completely, but it is true that it's taking them a while to relax. Even as I type this, they want to go a mile a minute!)

*Much knuckle cracking ensues*

--Attains an enforced slower pace--

Anyway, I just wanted to make a short post here and now, referencing my aforementioned goal. So what? So I did it, that's what. And what did I do?

  • Typed 4k words today, ~1500 at first sitting and ~2500 at second sitting. In total, that's about eight times what I count normal lazy daily output. 
  • Set my personal record for most words of prose fiction ever typed in one day. Previous was 3800. I can count on one hand the number of times I have written more than 3k words per day.
  • Got completely caught up with my daily word count goal, which means I am on track for this month! (I should mention that since it has now crossed over the midnight line, I now have to do today's 667 words...but now it's only 667, and there's no debt bucket!)
And this came completely out of the blue. When I woke up this morning, I never thought that by the time I went to sleep, I would have completely gotten out of word debt. But the hour struck, I stuck to my task, kicked laziness and tiredness in the behind, and did it. It's a wonderful feeling! 

Ahem. That is not to say that what I produced was the optimum quality, for most of it is drivel. But irrelevant? Not completely. I owe it to Write or Die, for being the electronic version of a red-hot cattle prod.  Most of the irrelevance is due to the fact that normally when I start explaining things, if the explanation gets too long, I curtail it, which affects my word count. But with Write or Die, the background starts turning into brighter and brighter shades of red if you stop writing. So I continued with the explanations. And though I will have to cut them out or move them to another character or scene, or split them up, they served their purpose. They come across as lecture, but I did figure out how one of my weapons works, and I sort of started to figure out what Ethan will be talking about in his big steampunk cutting edge of science presentation! This is good.

I am now cautiously optimistic about my ability to continue this. This is fun.

Aargh. This was supposed to be a short post. Sorry. But I really had to celebrate this momentous occasion by typing just a little bit more. But I'm out for now. 

Time to get back to reading No Plot? No Problem! :-D

1.26.2011

Chugga Chugga Chug Chug Things Chuggin' Like a Freight Trainnnn

Prior to beginning this post (which, considering that I'm writing this, I suppose I have already done), I should apologize for the complete homogeneity of topic themes. For this, I only have to say...tough. Nothing interesting happens in my life unless I make it up!

Here am I, shouting into the void where no eyes see but my own...again.

I am heinously (yes, heinously) proud of myself today, because I wrote 1500 words in 45 minutes. This is, for me, is an unprecedented feat of timed verbosity. Yes. Yes. I invite applause. *Gloat*

I am seeing a pattern here. It seems that my magic combination for generating a large number of words is to fire up Write or Die, and then write about a certain character that seriously came out of nowhere. I mean, all my characters come out of nowhere: one minute there's blankness and the next minute I have this full-fledged idea for a character. But this one really did erupt out of nothing, because one day, I intended to write about my MMC. Instead I found myself writing about this strange black raven who is mentally enslaved by aliens and who accidentally stumbles into a tribe of albino ravens who are a pack of religious zealots, but especially so in the case of using body-enhancing technology.

I don't know how I knew this. I just found things out as I wrote. And it went from there. It's like everyone in the book got the memo, and my Muse forgot to give it to me, the Author, until the very last minute. Muse: HEY YO CHANGE OF PLAN SORRY! JUST GO WITH IT!

Yeah. She does that. But you gotta love it.

But I swear, if I wasn't alone in this, I'd think that someone else's brain was secretly connected to mine, and pouring ideas into it, because that's the only explanation. How else did I just already know that the raven is a mute, born without vocal cords, and that for some mysterious reason no medical science has been able to give him a voice? (Possibly psychological reasons, I don't know.)

I just know that when I turn on Write or Die and start writing the scry-raven, things flow. And whatever the mechanics of it is, it works. Now if only I could extend this magic asshattery to everything else, I'd be golden.

So anyway, the upshot of this long ramble is that I am now only 2.5k behind, as opposed to 4k as I was this morning. Bodacious. Now for the rest of today, I shall endeavor to decrease that number to just 1k. In fact, if I could catch all the way up (slim chance, knowing myself), I would set a record at 4k for most words I have ever written in a day. Pretty awesome, considering that usually I struggle to meet 667. :-)

So now my head is buzzing. When I started out my monthly word count goals for 2011, I was going to count any and all prose written for entertainment. (Excluding blog posts, poetry, and forum posts). But The Amber Node was the only fiction I was working on, so it kind of took over. Now I would kind of feel it was 'cheating' if I started something else to fill up my numbers, because in addition to the 667 words a day, my unofficial aim is to work on this thing every day. I think I shall have to have a weight system, where I can't count anything extra I write each day unless I have written at least 500 words of The Amber Node every day.

All right. I think I've basically covered the basic basicness of what's going on with my life. The main purpose of this post was to shout to the internets about how I wrote 1500 words today and that it was awesome.

Peace, folks.

1.25.2011

A Voyage Into the Unknown

Off we go, into the wild--

...achromatic howling void that is the spaceless timeless void of hyperspace.

Here I go, shouting into the ether. A voyage into the unknown. How grand that sounds, doesn't it? I can prose on all I want about the awesome adventures I am starting inside my own head, but it means nothing since I am not exactly being great about writing them down. I must now write about 1400 words per day to make my monthly quota, which is not good, because that's about twice my original daily goal of 667. From the difference between these numbers it may be inferred that I have been doing a considerable amount of skipping days. But I'm fine when I actually start, so basically the problem would be solved if only I could whip myself into doing this every day, and not every other day. Basically the issue is that my productivity does not live up to my ambition.

But enough about that. My progress/plot bunnies so far:

The Amber Node: Signed up for FebNo, which begins in 6 days, during which I will do 20k, as I mentioned before. This month, I am...plugging along, kinda. Still 4k behind, because of course as soon as I write, the clock flips over to the next day, and the next day's quota is added to the whole total count. On the up side, I wrote exactly 1000 words yesterday, which is bodacious, considering that I started at 10:30 at night. I could catch up if only I could start earlier and if I didn't have assignments clogging the way.

The Spirit Turning Into A Human Thing: I don't know what it's gonna be called yet, but this is what I'm going to do for Script Frenzy in April. It's the one about the spirit who turns human to be with the woman he loves, except she cheats on him. Now he's stuck as a human, heartbroken and alone, and has to find a reason to live. This idea is still at the germ of a plot bunny stage. I better get my act together if I want to have this whole thing outlined by April.

Harry Potter Fanfiction: There, I Fixed It!: Started planning this out today. Basic plot, of course, is a given, since he has to defeat Voldemort. I am starting it off in the summer before sixth year, because a lot of the stuff that annoys me about HP happens in the 6th and 7th books. It's gonna be AU (um, Alternate Universe :-D) because I'm gonna change things. Ginny's gonna kick some more a** and Dudley and the Dursleys will get a chance not to be a wimp.

Paranormal Romance: I got the idea for this from this awesome website, which should appeal to anyone who loathes the hamster cage liner that is Twilight, or even those who secretly like it but admit that it could...use some work. I don't know if AnTwiNoWriMo is going to happen again this year, and I couldn't do it anyway because I'm doing FebNo (and the min is 50k anyway, which is too much too soon for me!). But I have said I could do better all along, and I thought, why not? I won't finish (or probably, even for that matter, start) in February, but it would be fun to try something which I would never in a million years do normally. And here's the kicker: I can't stand romance, because I hate the mush! I don't read any romance except Georgette Heyer, who only has very slight mush at the end.

So I'm gonna make it easier on myself by setting it in a fake Regency period, and have lots of action or something with enough mush to classify it as romance. At least...I hope it comes out as romance. Ugh. :-) Regency + Vampires...could be awesome. (I know, we don't have to use vampires...but I like vampires.)

So yeah, this is my mind splurge. Apologies to all of the two people who read this (probably. right? right? ...guys?) LOL!!! :-D /ditz

Man, I've written practically 700 words with this one post alone in only like an hour, and that's with frequent interruptions. I wish fiction was as easy.

/procrastination? I wish.

1.22.2011

Here's How It's Gonna Be, Peoples.

*Holds up hands*

Yes, yes, I've been lazy to write more blog entries. I know. I have no excuse. It wasn't for lack of ideas. But here's how it's gonna be: mainly reviews on things I read or watch, interspersed with updates on my new-found obsessive devotion to writing challenges. Because basically the only other things that happen in my life are work, school, and the basic activities inherent to the pursuit of periodically providing a sustainable energy source to maintain the optimum working state of this carbon-based lifeform.

So. It's been almost two months since NaNoWriMo was over, and I've had plenty of time to chill, and waste time procrastinating. But after a short break, and then an initial surge of productivity, my motivation to continue is starting to flag. And with plot bunnies streaming my out of brain and blinking up at me with big eyes (more on that later), and an unfinished The Amber Node on my hands, something must be done. I have my spreadsheet, complete with graphs and stuff, but it's just not quite cutting it. So I have decided to sprinkle a few extra month-long writing challenges into my life between now and next November, before NaNoWriMo 2011. Hopefully this will kick me into gear. I don't want to spend my entire life on one project!


PLN: //Nac Mac Feegle!

-FebNoWriMo: February Novel Writing Month. My Goal: Add another 20k to The Amber Node. Goal for first night: 3k words.
-Script Frenzy: Write 100 pages of a screenplay during the month of April. My Goal: Plan out my story (which I already have an idea for) before April begins.
-JulNoWriMo: July Novel Writing Month. My Goal: Complete a novel or write 50k words of it in July, whichever is more (meaning I will aim for completion first, even if it's >50k, and settle for 50k if it's complete before then.)


So I've got the first half of this year taken care of. :-) Now to dredge up the motivation to match the ambition. I must concentrate on how wonderful it will feel to have a finished product, or a met goal, in my hands, over the daily laziness I feel. I also think it would help if I didn't spend so much time on the forums. :-)

I don't feel like writing right now. Needless to say, I am ~3k behind on my personal goal for this month. Again.

All right. I'm out for now. Peace.