NaNo Rebel '22, Day 30: Big Finish!

        (Also, a phone-submitted blog post.  'Cause lazy.)

         So, I really wanted to pull out all the stops today!

         I had hoped to rewrite a full 20k of The Martial Maenads today, but alas, I only got through a bit over 15k of it.  Still, that put me at 33,599 words rewritten in three days, so I think that's a pretty strong finish!  (The draft I'm rewriting is a bit over 100k, so I'm almost a third of the way through the draft!)

         I also came up with yet another MDZS AU fanfic idea, which it took me another 1,769 words to describe, so that's a few more words for the NotNaNo pile!  😆  (And this time it's truly something I can't write yet, 'cause it crosses over with both of MXTX's other novels, so until I've read the rest of Heaven Official's Blessing, I really won't be able to write it.  There's probably whole characters who haven't even been introduced yet where I am now...)

          Anyway!  Final NotNaNo totals:

          Today's word count:  17,392!

           And....drumroll please....

                     🥁🥁🥁🥁

            Final word count for November...

                           99,068!!!

       .....dang.

       Maybe I should go back and write another 932 words to get that to an even 100k.  (Or 933 to get it to the perfect palindrome 100,001...)

        Hmm.

        That next scene in the book was about 775 words...

       .....HMMMMMMM.......

-------------------------------------------------------

          Yup.

           I went back in to do a little more.

           Added 933 words, so now my word count for the month is a perfect 100,001!  😆

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 29: Big Day, Late Post

     Today turned out to be a surprisingly huge writing day!

    Admittedly, the writing on The Martial Maenads is rewriting in a third draft, so there's large chunks that I'm just retyping rather than properly rewriting, but most paragraphs get at least a tweak, if not major changes, so...hopefully it counts?  ("Counts" I say, as if there was anyone who even could make rules for what "counts" in my totally unofficial personal NaNoWriMo that doesn't use their new, ugly site.)

    Got 11,518 words rewritten of The Martial Maenads today!  That may well be a personal best!  (Even for rewriting, I mean.  I'm pretty sure it far tops my best day for actual writing...though there was one day in an official NaNo where I got about 10k words written, so it doesn't win by very much.  That was probably the year that I broke 200k...)

    I also wrote down another MDZS AU fanfic plot after my bath, for an additional 1,251 words.

    Thus, my total for the day is a whopping 12,769!

    That brings my total for this November up to 81,676!

    I'm hoping that I can dedicate all day tomorrow to writing, so I can really beef up my numbers.  XD  (The fact that tomorrow is going to be totally freezing (after today was so warm I didn't even need a jacket) may help me stay in and just write write write write...)

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 28: Glass Onion

     I did all my writing this morning--redid the prologue of The Martial Maenads, to the tune of 6,458 words--because this afternoon we all went out to see Glass Onion, the sequel (sort of?) to Knives Out.

    OMG, so good!  (Which, really, is only to be expected, given how awesome Knives Out was.)

    I don't want to say too much about the movie, because it's definitely best not to have a lot of spoilers going in, but I can safely say that everything was just top-notch:  script, direction, acting, set design, costumes (omg, some of the costumes!!), everything.  Part of me wants to mention some of the cameos, but those, too, probably are best experienced as a surprise, so I won't.  Since it's made apparent so early in the film, though, I'll go ahead and mention that the movie also gets an A+ in "perfect release timing," because Edward Norton's character is essentially a parody of Elon Musk.  (Not 1-to-1, mind you, but close enough that the influence is obvious.)

    Thankfully, I don't write mysteries, so I don't have to feel pitiful by comparison.  ;)  (Now that I think about it, though, this makes both the last two movies I've seen in theaters murder mysteries:  the previous movie I went to see was See How They Run, which was in most respects just as good, but just didn't quite click with me for whatever reason.)

    Anyway, my NotNaNo totals:

    Today's word count, 6,458

    Words written in November to date:  68,907

    (Though I look at how I phrased that and feel like I ought to log into the NaNo site and get all my past November word counts, and all my word counts from my past NotNaNo Novembers, and add them all to this year's total and look at how many words I've written in the month of November over the last 11 years...)

NaNo Rebel '22, Days 26 & 27: One more task done(ish)

     So, yesterday I was sorta wiped, mentally, and didn't feel like booting up my internet computer (my novels are on my beloved 15+ year old laptop that has never once touched the internet), so I didn't post anything, but I did get my writing in!  Yesterday I added another 1,303 words to my total, exclusively working on the new content for The Golden God of Aiolia, most of which was in one big 940-word chunk!  (I handled making that battle interactive in a different way than I had in any of the previous ones, where each menu gives you two choices, and one of them leads straight to the end of the fight, but the other keeps leading to more choices until you finally get to one that either leads to a game over or to an altered version of the end of the fight; I've already forgotten which it was...😅)

    Then today I actually finished up the new content for The Golden God of Aiolia, another 713 words...plus I came up with a really good idea for how to develop the relationship in one of the MDZS AU fanfic ideas I'd had before, and wrote another 1123 words describing the idea. 😅

    I'm not sure where my word count will come from for the remaining three days of November, though, since my next task ought to be getting the new material for The Golden God of Aiolia coded into its Ren'py version, which isn't an adding words kind of thing.  (I mean, there will be some words of code, but it's not the same thing at all, plus there wouldn't be very many of them.)

    I suppose rather than diving right into the coding, I could start work on the next draft of book three, The Martial Maenads, but...honestly, I still have some questions about how to handle one of the new characters, and I don't know if I can get advice in time to start work already by tomorrow. 😰  I should probably also reread the current draft before I start on the next one.

    Technically, I spotted enough errors in The Golden God of Aiolia that I probably ought to read it over again to fix things, but if I do that, shouldn't I also go back and fix up book one while I'm at it?  It's sort of endless...

    ...so maybe I shouldn't try to do anything more than adding the interactivity and the new slight sub-plot (it's more just a background story thread than a proper sub-plot) right now and wait until I've gotten the entire series released and then do a proper fixing up on them all.

    Hmm.

    I'll have to think about that.

    Anyway!

    Word counts!

    November 26:

    Words written:  1,303

    Month to date:  60,613

    November 27:

    Words written: 1,836

    Month to date:  62,449

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 25: Finally moving on

     Today, I really did finally start working on the upgrade to The Golden God of Aiolia.  I redid the first Deidameia scene to imply that she's actually only into women and thus only liked Achilles because he was dressed as a girl, and I completed the first interactive bit.  Well, completed writing the new text for it.  It's not coded, and certainly not put into Ren'py yet, but...that's much faster than figuring out how the heck I wanted to go about adding interactivity to an already completed fight scene.  (Even worse, a fight scene between three young people and a twice-life-size stone statue with limited intellect.  Much reduced options for things to happen there, esp. when one of the people in question can't really take part in the fight.)

    The next scene on the schedule for reworking is the second spot to add some interactivity, a big battle scene...which I somehow managed to completely avoid adding an actual battle to the first time around.  😅  So, it kinda actually needed an upgrade there anyway.  But I suck at writing fight scenes in any way, so I rather choked on that and ended up stopping after the first section of new text.  (I'd had enough trouble adding to the first one!  Trying to write two combat scenes in one day was just too much for my poor brain!)

    Trying to count my words for all that was kinda crazy, though:  I had to just sort of highlight the new bits and get the word count for each individual new bit and then add them together.  (One of them was literally only one word!)

    Anyway, the word count I ended up with for today was 1,423, which would be bad if I hadn't hit 50k yet, but since I have, I think it's acceptable.  :)

    Total words written in November to date:   59,310

    BTW, I wanted to share something really stupid I did yesterday.  A brief quote:

"What is wrong with you?!" Wei Ying shouted!

    I have no idea why I put an exclamation point after "shouted," but it's so funny I couldn't bear to delete it yet.  😂  (I'll get rid of it when I edit the fic before posting it, though...) 

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 24: Why do I make plans?

     So, yesterday I stupidly made plans that involved doing things on a holiday.

    Yeap.  Stupid.

    Naturally, by the time I got home after Thanksgiving at my parents' place (which of course involved watching like two hours of TV, because what else would anyone do at their parents' place?), I was in no state to start in on something complicated and draining like reworking several segments of an already released novel.

    On the other hand, during lulls in the day I'd managed to use Google Docs on my phone to finish up that fanfic, so...yay?

    I'd also written some more on it last night after posting, another 533 words.

    Then today, in and around everything else, I added the final 1,674 words.  (Admittedly, I will probably have to pad out that ending whenever I update that piece before posting it, but that's a future me problem.)

    So, my total words written to date this November are 57,887!

    And tomorrow I really will start working on adding that lesbian sub-plot to The Golden God of Aiolia.  Also to writing up a few interactive bits.

    I got nothing else to write, so this time I really am gonna do it!

    Honest!

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 23: Main Project Completed! XD

     🎉🎊The VN script that was my main project for this year's super-duper-unofficial NaNo is now completed!!!!🎊🎉

    Well, my part of it is completed, anyhow.

    I had to leave the romantic, poetic and combatic (lol) parts to my collaborator, but my portion was the larger portion, clocking in at just over 35k words.  (Though that includes notes, speaker names, and other stuff that would not appear on screen in the finished game.)

    There's still a lot of work left to do before the game is ready for release, but thankfully that's not my department!

    (Uh, unless I end up having to do the 3D work to create a number of the backgrounds.  We sort of dropped our discussion of that.  There's someone on itch.io who's selling 3D models of buildings and furniture from the right period, but there's some question marks about how to use them, and we didn't actually decide which of us would be the one attempting it, so...🤷)

    Anyway, I still haven't finished that one fanfic I was working on, but that's irrelevant.

    Starting tomorrow I will finally be going back to the second book in the Atalanta and Ariadne series to add in that lesbian sub-plot!  And then I get to work on the next draft of the third book!  Yaaaaaay!!!! 😆

    Today's word count: 4,095

    Total words written this month to date:  55,680

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 22: 50K accomplished!

     Technically, I actually hit 50,000 words yesterday, as I added another 517 words to that one fanfic after posting.

    Then today I almost finished the VN script.  Only then I realized I forgot to add the ghost's backstory to the final confrontation, and when I realized that I had to go back and shove it in there somewhere I just lost all my forward momentum.  😭  I should be able to finish the script tomorrow, though, so that's something!

    Anyway, today's word counts!

    Today's words written:  1,439

    Words written this November to date:  51,585!  XD

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 21: What a day!

     This has been the weirdest day.

    First, I slept late.  Like really, really late.  Like, I got up about an hour before lunch.  😰  That totally threw my entire day off track.

    Okay, actually, I wasn't asleep that whole time.  In fact, I ended up writing a lot on my phone. 😅  Unfortunately, it was all for that fanfic which I shouldn't have even started yet because it sort of depends on knowing how things went down in the book as opposed to how they went down on the show, but...I guess I'll just fix it in the second draft, 'cause by the time I stopped writing today, I'd almost completely gotten past the whole part where they're talking about the past.  (And OMG, did I cry a lot while writing some of that stuff!  There are two characters in The Untamed who really stir my maternal instinct, characters who I just want to fold up in a big hug and protect them from everyone who might want to hurt them.  I had to kill both of them off in what I wrote today.  That was brutal.  I am a monster.)

    Unfortunately, I didn't get as much done on the VN script as I would have liked.  Though I did at least finish the outline point I was on yesterday, so I'm that much closer to finishing it, I guess?  At this rate, I'm not entirely sure I'll manage to finish the script within November, but I'll be very close to finishing it if I don't actually finish it.

    Today's word count total:  4,368 (sadly only 486 of it was my main project)

    Total words written this November to date:  49,629

    Soooooo close!

    Part of me is sitting here going "oh, I should just write a little more on that fanfic and cross the 50k line tonight..." and the rest of me is like "no, turn on the Switch and buy that game you've been wanting that's already on the Black Friday sale..."

    I think the second part's gonna win.  😂

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 20: Progress?

     Actually did a pretty good job today, maybe?

    I added a full 1,671 words to the VN script today, so I got the NaNo-prescribed word total exclusively in my main project.  (Also yesterday I added 220 more words to the fanfic plot description after posting my word count total, so...)

    Words written to date this November:  40,565

    I'd say I'm in pretty darn good shape to hit 50k at this rate.  XD

    More importantly, I'm in good shape to finish up this script by the end of the month, too.  The outline has 17 larger points on it, and I'm almost done with point 14, so there are only three points left after that, two of which have chunks I'll have to skip over due to combat, poetry and romance stuff, which my co-writer and I agreed were all things I would just leave for them to write, since I can't handle that stuff.  So, a few more days as productive as this one, and I should have this thing finally finished up!

    Then I can get to adding the lesbian side-plot to The Golden God of Aiolia!  😁  (Well, no, actually, does it count as a lesbian side-plot if what I'm doing is establishing that a girl fell in love with a boy disguised as a girl because she believed he really was a girl, instead of the usual thing of only falling for him after learning that he wasn't?  I mean, I guess it does, since the side-plot is "oh, actually, she's a lesbian" rather than "here's the stereotypical mourning widow version of Deidameia that you'll see any old where.")  I'm stoked about this side-plot, even if I'm a) depressed that I only thought of it after releasing the original version and b) that it's taken me this long to deal with the VN script I agreed to write for someone else before I could get to that side-plot.  (Honestly, if I'd had any idea this would take so long to write, I'd have written the changes to The Golden God of Aiolia first.  This VN has totally thrown off the release schedule for the Atalanta and Ariadne books.  Not that they had a schedule, as such, but I had hoped to at least release one a year, if not get them out faster than that!  (With five more to go after The Golden God of Aiolia, that's awfully bleeding slow, especially considering I've already written the first drafts of all of them!)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    EDIT - Yeaaaaaahhhh, stuff happened.

    Like, lots of stuff.

    Specifically, lots of stuff involving me going back to that one fanfic I shouldn't have even started and just really getting wrapped up in writing it.  To the tune of a huge number of words.  (Which I'm actually still writing, only it's midnight now, so...update the post goes!)

    Ended up turning on the Elton John farewell concert while I was writing, because...because?  But when it started, after the first numbers, in between songs he spoke into the microphone and mentioned the Disney+ livestream of the concert, right?  At the time, I was just like "omg, they made him call attention to it?  that's so tacky!"  And just now, about half an hour in, I suddenly realized "wait a minute, that's just like how in Velvet Goldmine when we see part of a Tommy Stone broadcast as Arthur is entering the subway, he thanks the sponsors of his concert and talks about his live satellite feed for the concert," and that just led to a real "whoaaaaa" moment.  (I mean, really, that presumably just means that such things are standard practice, which I didn't know because I've never actually been to a rock concert because I'm just that kind of loser, but...yeah.  Just felt like saying that.)

    Anyhoo, new daily total is: 6,367

    Making the new total to date in November: 45,261

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 19: How is it Day 19 already?

     Mostly, I'm just keeping on keeping on, I guess.

    I did write a little more yesterday after I posted, though it was only 246 more words added to the newest fanfic plot, but...two hundred words are two hundred words, right?

    Today's been sorta neither here nor there, I guess?

    I only wrote a little over a thousand words on the VN script--but I did finish up the scene I was working on, so the first draft is that much closer to completion!--but I also wrote about the same amount more on the fanfic that I said I totally couldn't go any further on without being able to finish reading the book 😅 plus adding almost four hundred more words to that fanfic plot I added to yesterday, so...

    Today's total words written: 2,463

    Words written in November to date:  38,674

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 18: Um...slightly better?

     So, I didn't quite make it up to the NaNo-recommended daily word count of 1,667 today, but I at least came close:  I reached 1,627 words today.  And all on my main project!  So that's something, anyway.  (And, as on a lot of other days when I had trouble writing, I did have to deal with the whole I left my house to do stuff issue:  I had to go to the grocery store and stock up because everyplace that sells food will be a madhouse between now and next Friday.)

    Anyway, that puts my total for the month so far up to 35,965 words.  So, a bit scuffed, but still not too shabby, I guess?  (Except when you consider that back in the day, I typically hit 50k before day 10.)

    BTW, I forgot to mention this yesterday, but I wanted to share something kinda funny from the latest fanfic story idea I jotted down in my now-lengthy file of plotlines for potential future fanfiction.  I ended the description of the sci-fi AU with "Probably the station comes under attack and they escape the carnage together and then...uh...a plot happens?"  Because, like so many of my ideas, it was mostly just the situation/set-up and not the actual plot. 😅  This is why I have so many unused ideas, because I can never come up with a plot to go with the set-up.

    Still, I thought it was pretty funny to just cap it off with "and then a plot happens."

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 17: Argh!

     Two days in a row.

    Two days in a row I have basically been unable to write on the VN script.

    Combined, the last two days I only managed to write 626 words on the script.  (I did at least add 327 words to it after writing my previous post, but...said previous post was way more words than I've written in the last three days on anything that I'm actually counting towards NaNoWriMo.)

    Admittedly, today was nuts and I wasn't even able to turn on my computer until 9:00 at night; what little I was able to write on the VN script was written on the phone.  (Ditto with the fanfic plot stuff that was the rest of the words I wrote today.)

    So...yeah.  Not been my day.  Days.  Not been my days.

    Ugh.

    Yesterday's words written:  562

    Today's words written:  1,106

    Total words written in November to date:  34,338

    (And, just for reference, the on-par for 50k suggested word count by today is 28,339, so at least I'm still slightly ahead?)

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 15: SVSSS

    Well, it's been a couple of days.

    Yesterday I couldn't concentrate on the script at all, accomplishing only a mere 347 words on the script.  Which I thought would end up being the day's total word total, only then right before bed I ended up continuing the fanfic I accidentally started earlier, adding another 1,787 words and getting the fic up to the point where I can't continue it much further because it depends on knowledge I don't have yet, since I'm pretty sure the events I need to reference went differently in the book than in the TV show.  (Not in terms of the final outcome, but in terms of the specific chain of events, and possibly the location of a lot of characters dying.)

    Then today I was slightly better off on the script, adding another 649 words, but I probably can't get much further than that because I hit the TBD portion of the outline. 😅  At least that's an excuse to suddenly have no more words to write.  (Especially since this script is being written for someone else, so I'm not the one deciding the story.)

    It's theoretically possible I'll get a few more words written today, but...I sorta doubt it, hence why I'm writing this post before lunch when I'd normally write it closer to dinner time.

    Yesterday's word count:  2,134

    Today's word count:  649

    Words written in November to date:  32,343

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 13: Off the rails

     Ugh.  On the one hand, I got more writing done today...unfortunately, 840 words of it were more plot descriptions for future fanfiction, so...that's no good.

    More importantly, I got to a big scene that's been part of the plot outline for a long time, where the main character gets drunk and starts gushing all over his love interest.  This was already a problem for me on the basic "I feel like at every turn my collaborator wants to introduce a new story element which was already a feature in MDZS (which my collaborator has neither watched nor read), so isn't it going to look like we're just copying?" level, not to mention on the perhaps even more important level of "I don't drink so how in the world am I going to write about a drunk character?"

    The scene was supposed to be cutely romantic, as the character was supposed to realize his feelings while getting drunk, and then go and act like a "silly ass" around his love interest, who is touched and amused because he's starting to feel the same way.

    What I ended up writing was the main character bitching to the waiter in the teahouse (there's no bartenders in that era, AFAIK) about what a tyrant his father is, then flying off (literally) to go gripe to his love interest in the same subject, with the added assertion that maybe he'd be happier staying with the love interest than going home to his tyrannical father.  (Which is a strange thing for the love interest to hear, since the main character claimed earlier to be an orphan.)

    The vibe is totally different from what it was supposed to be, and who knows if it's realistic for drunken behavior (though I'm pretty sure I've seen people behave that way in movies when they're drunk), and it just feels like practically everything I wrote today (in the VN script) is completely wrong and garbage that will have to be deleted.  😭

    So...yeah.  That's my day.

    Today's word count:   2,058

    Word count in November to date:  25,582

    (As predicted yesterday, broke 25k, a few days ahead of schedule.  More importantly, I'm about 2/3 of the way through the outline for the VN, so there's still hope I can finish the draft this month.)

EDIT:

    Well, craziness happens.

    I ended up starting another fanfic. 😅  Thankfully (?) I can't proceed any further on it until I've read the rest of the book, and I can't do that...well, technically I could do that at any time by way of WebNovel, but I'm determined not to turn to that until I've at least read the physical edition of Volume 4 next month.  (At that time I'm probably gonna go ahead and read the rest of MDZS via WebNovel...and after Volume 5 of Heaven Official's Blessing comes out, also next month, I'll probably read the rest of it that way, too, in order to avoid any more spoilers, 'cause damn.)

    Aaaaaanyway, I was really rocking that fanfic opening.  Added 3,978 words to my total!

    So, my new numbers are:

    Today's word count: 6,036

    Word count in November to date: 29,560

    (Great for reaching 50k.  Not so great for finishing the VN script.)

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 12: Why must I leave the house?

     "Why must I leave the house?" is a question because every single time I leave the house I can't get correctly into my writing groove!

    Sometimes I can manage to swing it somehow after returning, but then other times you get a day like today.

    I mean, I did have a half-way decent showing on the VN script today:  precisely 1,000 words.

    Also wrote 194 words of additional plot summary for a potential fanfic, but...uh...yeah.  That's pretty far short of goal.

    Also, how weird is it that I happened to peter out at exactly 1,000 words?

    Anyway, today's total was, as I said, 1,194 words, making my total words written to date in November 23,524.

    Given my typical writing speed, if I can manage not to leave the house tomorrow, I should break 25k tomorrow, which would put me at halfway done a tiny bit before halfway through the month, which is...good?  Sorta?  It's like...back in the day, I would be at least up to 75k by now.  Though that was pantsing my way through a novel that no one other than me was ever going to read, whereas this is (mostly) following an outline for a script for someone else which they intend to rewrite and publish as a commercial visual novel, so it's sorta a very different animal.  (Also I have to keep stopping and worrying about if I'm introducing too many locations and thus making the demands for background art skyrocket. 😅)

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 11: Onward?

     Gah, what a day.

    Bad, good, I don't even know.

    Like, there's been minor bad--there's a lump on my arm where I got the COVID booster shot yesterday and it hurts like crazy when I touch it--and much more serious bad news--the passing of the most iconic Batman of all time--and if I actually looked at any news outlets (rather than relying on what people are posting in VN-dev-related Discord channels) I'm sure there's lots of absolutely ghastly bad news out there.

    On the good but irrelevant side, I finished the fanfic I'd been working on, so that's one less distraction from finishing the VN script.  (But also one less source of words for NaNo, so...🤷)  I did advance the plot a bit in the VN script, moving ever onwards towards completion, but...it's still a bit of a slog.  Also part of how I advanced the plot was to admit that I had no idea what needed to be in the scene I had started, and just leave it for the other writer to handle. 😥  (In my defense, it was pre-arranged that they would handle the romantic/flirty stuff, and that was what the scene needed to be mostly about, so...)  I also ended up making a crazy impulse purchase from Big Bad Toy Store, for two things I totally don't need but which are epic.  (I mean, the Zuko statuette is pretty defensible, really, but what excuse do I have for buying a translucent blue T-Rex other than the fact that it was half-off and a translucent blue T-Rex?)

    And on the "I don't even know" side, there's the fact that today the weather decided to be winter, even though for the last three days it's been more like "sure, it's November, but it's early November, so it's totally still summer!"  And, of course, I'm watching with morbid fascination from Discord as people post things about the rapid self-destruction of Twitter, which definitely has this "can't look away from a trainwreck" vibe, but only if the trainwreck is just close enough that it might spin away from the tracks and end up hitting you, considering that some of what's going on might end up seriously damaging the stock market, or maybe doing something even worse. 😰  (Gotta say, though, one of the things they posted in DevTalk was about how someone had faked a "verified" Lockheed Martin account in order to announce an end to weapon sales to certain governments...and they did that yesterday instead of today?  I mean, come on!  If whoever is behind that fake account was really hoping to better the world by trying to force Lockheed to back off weapon sales in order to save face, they would have done better to do so today, since 11/11 is Armistice Day.  Someone clearly failed their 20th century history classes.  As someone with a History MA, this bothers me. 😡 )

    Also, I am feeling very frustrated that the next volume of The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation is a whole month away.  😭  I don't want to wait that long!  (And yet with NaNo going, no way I can justify turning to WebNovel to read the rest of the novel now.  Though I may end up doing that after this next volume, and then reread the whole novel in one go when the final physical volume comes out in early April.  Depending on where things stand at the end of the next volume.)  Also frustrating is that next week is the release of the first volume of a non-MXTX danmei novel from Seven Seas, only right now they don't have any listing of how many volumes there are going to be or how long it will take them to publish them all, so it's like...I'm hesitant to make that leap without knowing how long it'll take to get the rest of the story?  I don't know if that makes much sense.  It wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't that I guarantee online translations are already out there, so if I start reading it in the physical form, I'll end up accidentally running into all kinds of spoilers.  (Like the at least three different spoilers for Heaven Official's Blessing that I've already run into...one of which seemed to be specifically about the very ending...)

    ...anyway, this is all sort of radically off topic.

    I'll just get to my word counts for the day and go make my dinner instead of going on further.

    Today's word count:  1,872

    Words written in November to date:  22,330

    (Today's "on schedule" goal according to NaNoWriMo:  18,337)

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 10: Surprisingly Strong

     Surprising because it looked earlier like I was gonna get in maybe ~300 words for the day.

    See, first thing this afternoon, I had an appointment to get a COVID booster shot, and then I had to go grocery shopping, only to be able to carry the groceries into the house, I had to sweep like two feet of leaves off my front walk (seriously, the guy who mows my lawn actually put more leaves on the walk and the steps onto the porch than there were to begin with, and there were already a bunch of them, on account of I have a massive tree in my front yard that dropped all its leaves in about three days), plus it was crazy hot today (for November, anyway), so I was exhausted and gross with sweat and so by the time I was done recovering and then bathing it was already dinner time, and the only writing I'd done was the little bit I plugged into Google Docs on my phone while I was waiting to get my booster shot.

    But I've often discovered that for some reason bathing and showering really turbocharge my creativity (one time I had such a great story idea in the shower that I hurried out to write it down and didn't realize until the next day that I'd only shaved one leg 😂), so I ended up writing 1,440 words of plot summary for a sci-fi MDZS AU.  (Yeah, I know, it'd be better if it was something original that I came up with...but I dunno, isn't it pretty original to move something from ancient China to a Cowboy Bebop-like sci-fi setting?)

    Even managed to get a bit over 800 words on the VN, too.  So, I'm managing to make up a little for that under-par day a few days back.

    Today's total:  2,314

    Total words in November to date: 20,458

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 9: Back on Track(ish)

     So, yesterday I reported completing the day's writing with a miserable 872 words.

    I'm glad to say that that wasn't strictly accurate.  Right before I went to bed last night, I had an idea and added another 349 words to the VN script, which brought yesterday's total up to 1,221 words, and the total for the month up to 16,289.   Not quite hitting par for yesterday's word count even with that addition, but at least closer to it.

    As to today...ugh, it started out badly.  Like, really really badly.

    Didn't really start writing until after lunch, and I kept flipping over to other browser tabs to look at other things.  (Also ended up making an Etsy purchase because a bit of fan art someone I follow posted looked like it was going to sell out within the day (having been posted less than a day earlier!) and I didn't want to miss it because it was epic.)

    In the end, though, I basically pulled through.

    I wrote a total of 1,855 words today, of which 1,503 were on the VN script, and the remaining 352 were on that fanfic...which I realized I could have stopped two scenes ago, so most of what I've written this month on it (possibly all of it? where was I when I started?) was actually pretty much just wasted time/wordage, but...well, at this point, I'm determined to finish out the scene I'm slowly plodding through, and if I end up deleting it I'll end up deleting it, but better to do that from a position of "it's written and unnecessary" than from a position of "maybe it would be pointless or maybe it would have been good but it doesn't exist so."

    Today's words brought up the total for the month to 18,144.

    Still a long way to go to reach 50k, unfortunately.  But I'm still a bit ahead of the curve, I think, so I should be fine.  XD

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 8: Ack

     So, today was a cluster&#$% of nothing.

    Largely because I had to leave the house. 😰

    I think there's something I'm allergic to out there, 'cause I start going light-headed after I've been outside for a while.

    Hopefully, I'll be back to normal(?) tomorrow.

    Today's total was a miserable 872 words, giving me a total in the month to date of 15,940.

    Thankfully, due to my earlier position of being ahead, I've not yet fallen behind.  But it's still disheartening.

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 7: Still forging ahead...

     Not much to report about today's writing, really.  (Is there ever?)  I didn't accomplish anything particularly big, just kept going ahead with the plan I worked up earlier about how to fill in the gap between the planned scenes.  (The gap that's only there because of the material I added to a previous planned scene... 😅 )

    I did also check in with the project lead about some of the new material I've added to the VN, and they had no complaints, so that's good, at least!  😆

    (Since starting to use Discord, I find I have become increasingly addicted to using emojis when I write informally like this. 😰  It's kind of alarming... 😱)

    Anyway!  Today's word count numbers!

    Total written today was a modest 2,307 (of which only 920 was for the VN script, with 408 on the fanfic that's almost done, and the remaining 979 adding material to the plot summary for a different fanfic I want to write)

    That makes my total so far in November a decent 15,068.

    This number is disappointing for two reasons.

    First, it would be cooler if I had written one more word.  😋

    Second, back in the day, I'd have already been at 50k by now, or at least a lot closer to it.  (I think my in-NaNo speed record was Day 5, while my out-of-NaNo record was like Day 4.)

    On the other hand, the NaNoWriMo officially suggested word goal for today to be on target to reach 50k by the end of November is 11,669, so I'm well ahead of the game and shouldn't be complaining.  😂

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 6: OMG, day 6 already?!

     Ack.  Almost the entire first week of November is already gone, and what do I have to show for it?!

    <copious weeping>

    I'm not so much worried about my progress through the script/my 50,000 word NaNoWriMo goal as I am that I have a deadline to finish some real-world stuff by the 9th and there's still a disquieting amount of it that I haven't done yet. 😅

    Anyway, today I had to go off-book (as it were) to add some new material to the visual novel script because my pantser nature had changed the tone of the preceding scene to the point where more was needed before the next scene that's actually in the outline.  😅  I'll still be "off-book" tomorrow and probably for several days after that, too, but whatcha gonna do?  I can't just leap from one scene to the next in a way that makes no logical sense, leaving out a bunch of very important plot development!  (FYI, I am laughing my ass off over here about that phrasing, because the next scene in the outline literally involves frogs.)

    It took me a while to drum up a possible scene to fill in that gap, and there's still gaps in my plans for the scene for tomorrow, but...I'll think of something...?

    Anyway!  Word count time!

    Today (counting some additions to the outline and a bit more on the plot summary for an MDZS AU fanfic) I wrote 1,904 words.

    This brings the total for November up to 12,761.

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 5: Last Minute

     Well, not "last minute" as such, but I didn't even start writing until dinner time, sooooo....pretty close to it. 😅  (When you consider that I typically like to start writing in the morning...)

    Today was just kind of not my day for writing.  Or anything else, actually.  In part because I had a really bad night last night, and in part because I ended up having to spend most of the afternoon with my family.  Which sounds very awful when I say it that way.  (It's just that in our case "spending time with the family" tends to be "I go over to my parents' house and we all watch TV together," so that's kinda...a different thing than what most people mean when they say "spending time with the family.")

    But!

    I did manage to write over the daily 1,667 words!

    Admittedly, most of it was me jotting down the plot idea for yet another MDZS fanfic (which I may or may not actually get around to writing), but...hey, words are words, right?  And at least I did add another 812 words to the VN script, taking me to the end of the scene (which turned out really pretty good for a first draft, because instead of the MC and the dragon cheerfully working together, they started squabbling viciously as soon as the tense situation was resolved, which is way more fun), so that's something...except that now I feel like it needs a new scene in between that one and the next one on the outline. 😅 I'll have to talk to my collaborator and see if they have any ideas for what to put in there.

    Anyway, today's stats:

    Words written:  2,694

    Total in November to date:  10,857

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 4: Fighting on

     "Fighting on" because a large chunk of today's writing involved a fight scene. 😂  (The combatants varied as the scene progressed, but the good side had a minor god and a dragon, and the evil side had a ghost and a woman the ghost had possessed.  Which makes it sound way more exciting than it actually was...😅)

    Anyway, not the greatest day's work, overall, but at least I got through my word count just on the visual novel script.  XD  (And in real world news, I finally got my water meter replaced like the water company's been pestering me to do for about two months now.  Or rather I let the service tech they sent to my house into my basement so they could replace it.  Not like I did anything other than make an appointment and open a door.)

    Anyway, my NotNaNo totals!

    Words written today:  1,906

    Words written in November up to this point:  8,163

    (And, just for the record, if I was on the NaNo website looking at their graphs, their suggested word count by today would be 6,668, so I'm pretty much a day ahead, despite how slowly I write when I'm working with VN scripts.  So that seems like a win.  😁)

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 3: Sorta progress?

     It's like, progress but not progress at the same time.

    I got some good progress on the script, then sort of smashed into a wall and couldn't really move further, even though I know exactly what has to happen next.  It's a confrontation scene, so I guess that's why it was more difficult to write.  (Violent type of confrontation, that is to say, between the hero and the villain.  Uh, if either of those terms properly can be said to apply.)

    I tried to move forward on the fanfic to fill in my word count for the day and managed to write one whole word!  Wheee!

    (Actually, it wasn't even a word, but...Word counts it as one, so...)

    On the other hand, last night, after I posted my progress, I'd had an idea for a really interesting AU fanfic (an idea which is so obvious that there's probably already at least 15-20 on the same theme on AO3 alone) and writing out the plot idea took more than a thousand words, so I figure I can count those, 'cause that was too many words to just throw away.  (If I get desperate to reach 50k, I will absolutely be adding in all these blog posts, needless to say. 😅)

    Anyhow, today's stats!

    Yesterday's total: 3,905

    Today's total (counting the plot idea from last night): 2,352

    Total words written in November to date: 6,257

IWSG: NaNo Rebel '22, Day 2

   

        So, this month's question/suggested post topic is about whether or not you (have) participate(d) in NaNoWriMo.  And my answer is "Yeah, I used to, but I hate what they did to their website when they changed it over a few years back, and I'm not going to officially participate again unless they change it back to something less ugly and that's more respectful of our projects."

    But I still kinda participate in the form of being a NaNoWriMo Rebel, meeting the challenge of writing 50,000 words in the month of November, just without officially entering on the NaNo website, or using it to keep track of my words.  (Blogs are useful for the latter, though I have no way to make a chart graphing my progress.  At least, none I know of.)

    However, that'd be a short and boring post, so I want to talk about my main project for NotNaNo. XD

    I mentioned in an earlier post that I was really struggling with the visual novel script I was working on.  That continued to be the case until I started chatting in Discord about the format I was planning on using for the routes (for the dateable characters), asking some more experienced visual novel writers about if that format sounded like it was going to work.  (I have loads of experience as a writer of standard fiction, but am still pretty new to interactive versions, only a little over a year.)  The more I talked it over with them, the more I realized that not only was the format I had planned (which was designed to make the branching easier to write) problematic, the whole thing just felt off.

    The plot of the game, you see, was that you were playing an immortal being in ancient China, one who had once been mortal.  When the Jade Emperor's son runs away from home, abandoning his duties in the heavens, you're sent down to the mortal realm to find him and bring him back.  Of course, you don't know what he looks like (and he can shapeshift anyway), so you have to go undercover at the location where you know he's been residing.  It's...well, the original idea was for it to be a school, but since schoolwork at that time would have been solid memorization and recitation (thus simultaneously super-boring and something we couldn't show, because all the good translations for the classic texts are too recent to be public domain), we opted for a handful of disciples following a rather eccentric philosopher.  The idea was for the game to be a mystery, and you're trying to figure out which of the disciples is the runaway, while simultaneously potentially romancing one of them.  (With the rather awkward situation that if you choose to go down the runaway's route, you're screwed, because it's a trap route, and you can never win his heart, because the whole reason he ran away was because he'd fallen in love with one of the philosopher's disciples.)  On top of the fact that the structure I picked was mostly going to be easier to write but would make for very boring replay there was the fact that my collaborator (project lead, the other writer, etc) seemed to view the runaway's love interest as "the" love interest, rather than any of the characters the player could romance.

    So I approached my collaborator and explained my concerns about the structure, and everything that the others had said in the chat, and suggested that we change our plans--someone, either my collaborator or one of the other devs in the earlier chat, used the term "pivot" for it, and it's really the perfect term--and instead of writing about the immortal who's trying to bring the runaway home (forcing the player into an unpleasant situation, making them choose between the runaway's happiness and his extremely important heavenly duties), we should make the game about the runaway instead.  I had hoped that would mean my collaborator wouldn't have to pay for so many sprites, but they'd already promised to buy a certain number, so apparently I didn't manage to save them any money on that score. 😓  The important thing, though, was that as soon as we made that decision, a lot of stuff just fell into place, and by the time we were done brainstorming the new version, we were both feeling like it was going to be so much better than the original would have been.  (And the MC I had so much fun making up a crazy backstory for isn't gone for good; we're planning to do two games, and he'll be the lead of the second one, which will still feature him being sent down to recover the runaway, only the runaway will just be like "nope, not going!" and it's actually something else keeping the MC on earth long enough to court one of the philosopher's disciples. 😁 )

    The script is still coming along more slowly than I'd like--VN scripts always do that for some reason--but it's flowing much more naturally than before, and I think it's actually coming out better, too.

    I'm hoping the NaNo boost will let me finish the script this month.  Well, the first draft, anyway.  My part of the first draft, that is.  (My collaborator is writing the really romantic parts, and a few other bits.)  Then I'll be able to go back to my novels, as I have one that I actually realized needed another subplot after I put it out there, so it's been sitting there with a "hey, FYI, I'm going to change some of this as soon as I have a break in my writing schedule" since like February.  And the next book in the series has been waiting for its next draft for just as long. 😭  This VN project has really taken way longer than I originally intended...

NaNo Rebel '22, Day 1: The Saga Starts to Begin Again (Or Something)

     Sooooo....it's November.

    And the NaNoWriMo site still thinks that its randomly assigned cover art is more deserving of attention on our past writing projects than our words, so I am doing what I've done every year since they destroyed their own website, and officially participating only in an unofficial way.

    Which is to say, I'm just gonna write 50,000+ words in November and use my blog to keep track of how many words I've written, and there's absolutely nothing that NaNoWriMo can do to stop me, so there! 😛

    (Why is there no emoji of the Hitchhiker's Guide planet?  I totally needed one of those right there...)

    Anyhoo, since I'm bein' a rebel and all, I'm going all-out on my evil scheme, and writing something that (gasp!) isn't a novel, and which I already started, and I am even (brace yourselves!) working on more than one project!!

    Yes, you heard me right.

    For this month of November, I am officially evil incarnate as far as NaNoWriMo goes.

    Uh, okay...

    ...so that's sorta an exaggeration.

    I mean, it's not like I'm plagiarizing or anything.  Or lying about my word count.  Or writing anything, you know, evil.  (Though there are some evil characters, if that counts?)  One of the projects is fan-fictions, though, so that's sorta evil...only NaNo actually has a whole category for that, so not particularly, I guess.

    Anyway, two projects at the start of this year's NaNo rebel exercise, which may spread to three or more after I finish one of them.  (Ideally, I'll finish both, but...not gonna count on that.)

    The main project is the script for the still-untitled visual novel I'm co-writing.  It's set in ancient China and doesn't particularly feature any branching in the new version (technically, it's more like a prequel to the previously planned game, but in such a way as to prevent several aspects of the old plan when we finally get to that point, thus making it much simpler both to write and code), but does feature a sweet romance between a son of the Jade Emperor and the nephew of a Daoist philosopher.  Also some ghost-fighting.  :D

    The secondary project is a 1980s AU fan-fiction of The Untamed, which I had watched for research purposes to help me get acquainted with the ancient China setting, and now I'm totally obsessed with. 💖  The fan-fiction is set in the 1980s (and in New York's Chinatown) partially because that made it so much easier for me to write, and partially because that's a setting where it's easy to tell all sorts of stories with no one dying.  (Not to say you can't write a story in that setting where loads of people die, 'cause obviously you can.  But it's much easier to avoid than in the original's magical ancient setting.)

    I got off to a late writing start today because I had errands to run this morning (grocery shopping and a super-important trip to the bookstore to pick up the final volume of The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System), but I still managed to eke out a tolerable first day total of 1,791 words, of which 1,262 were on the VN script and the other 529 were fan-fiction.  I will probably finish the latter pretty soon, 'cause I'm on the last scene already. XD

    Anyway, I had a pretty quiet Halloween.  (I just feel like sharing this info.)  I followed my usual procedure of fleeing my house long before any trick-or-treaters might end up in the neighborhood.  (Look, I have serious social phobia issues.  And I can't handle kids, 'cause I can't even understand what they're saying half the time, and then I'd have to talk and say things and like compliment their costumes but without accidentally saying anything creepy?  Gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it!)  As usual, went to my parents' house for dinner and to watch a vaguely Halloween-related movie.  Then, on returning home, I decided to round out the evening by revisiting the Yi City arc of The Untamed...which would have been a lot easier if its episodes had been more neatly contained:  there's two episodes' worth of content there, but instead of two episodes, it's the last fifteen minutes of one episode, all of the next, and the first half hour of a third.  Very awkward.  (And of course I had to watch all of that first episode, because it contained the big "drunk Lan Wangji" sequence, in which he steals chickens as an utterly unexplained love gift for the very, very, very confused Wei Wuxian. 💕💗💕 I love that moment so much!  (Especially as a Greek mythology fangirl, 'cause roosters were the primary courtship gift men gave to youths they were courting.  And the show actively calls attention to the fact that they're roosters.))

My Nendoroid Doll rendition of the "get drunk and steal a chicken" scene :D

    That probably sounds like a strange thing to watch, but that arc has lots of very Halloween-appropriate things:  walking corpses (of both the intelligent and brainless variety), super-creepy paper effigies (which in the book the hero brought to life to fight the walking corpses, but the show kinda skipped over that, which makes sense considering how hard that would be to do well), a regular corpse, and kinda a ghost sort of?  (There's one character who's a ghost in the book, but in the show is...either an intelligent walking corpse or just an infected live person.  It's not totally clear which...)  Admittedly, the brainless walking corpses have a much bigger role in some other parts of the show--and had a bigger role in the Yi City arc in the book--but I guess they sort of cut a few corners on it because it was much less relevant to the overall plot?  (And yet, you'd think they wouldn't have wanted to cut corners on it, given how they cast someone extra-sexy as that arc's villain.)

    But I'm totally off topic now, so I guess I'll stop. XD