Sunday, November 29, 2015

Finished again!
Made it to 50,000 words again my second year doing the contest. One of my short stories is not finished yet, so tomorrow I will try to finish it. Then it will sit for a month while I take a break from it. This weak, I may try to list the story topics to let you have a taste of what was created.

New possible title
My original title for the book may be changed to a more collection type title.

New experiences
With writing over for this NaNoWriMo 2015, I did learn a tremendous amount of experience this time doing a collection of short stories. 1) they are my first complete short stories. 2) Most of the stories only had a one sentence description written up. I also had a complete book structure skeleton, not based on any story, rather on unifying themes. The process was very unlike my detailed plan last year, where I had most every scene planned out in advance. 3) It was my first time trying to expand story information written in last year's Song and Fire and in the game started over the late Spring. 4) Music became more a motivator this year. YouTube epic and fantasy soundtracks played key in keeping me in the mood producing content. 5) I even threw in one fairy tale-like story which I made up on the fly.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

First few days of NaNoWriMo

This year, I ended creating an outline with many holes.

That is unlike last year, where much of the story was planned and developed. However last year's story was something was several years in the making. Many ideas, thoughts, and creative juices went into that story.

This years story was undeveloped until a month before the contest.

In the last month, I had written about 5000 words of conceptual structures, character archetypes, drama interactions, and thematic discussions. But at the core of my planning, the story arc content was largely defined by just a dozen or so single sentences. This story would be more wide open and built more spontaneously.

1st day of NNWM was difficult. I largely took my 5000 word outline, some references from the last book, and only wrote 1000 words or so of new writing. That day was very difficult.

The 2nd day went very productive. Suddenly the main character and the antagonistic character seemed to be filled with life. I wrote 2000 words easily.

The 3rd day began agonizing. My head was sore and I didn't feel like writing. Later after noon, ending the day with well over 1700 words. Suddenly I am writing another new and fresh character which came from nowhere yet fits in perfectly.

Today is the 4rth day. It sucks. I have only written 753 words, mostly transitioning from the beginning of the story, the opening scenes, to an entirely new setting. This however makes myself disoriented - unsure of that new unfamiliar setting, different than the setting that had spent in the last few days. So much so, that I feel more comfortable writing this post, and writing something else earlier today.

I really hope that I can at least get more than 1000 before the night's end.

This writing year is an attempt to put into practice both the concepts that I had learned last year, and new ones that I developed in October, from three different books.

As of now I am a fifth way done, though my momentum is suffering.

Keep pushing on!

Ken