So.
I haven't done the official NaNoWriMo in a very long time, but I do love the whole "write 50k in a month" challenge. (Though that's never been much of a challenge for me, because when I write I am often verbose. Despite that I am quite the opposite IRL.) From what some others were saying in one of the game dev Discord servers I'm in, it sounds like the official NaNoWriMo no longer even exists, so my unofficial thing is now the only way for me to continue. (Unless I seek out others doing their own replacement for NaNo, but that sounds like a lot of hassle for no benefit.)
In the past few years, since I stopped entering the official NaNo, it hasn't been a problem to use my blog to keep my results posted. Or rather to use the blog to keep track of them in a public manner so as to keep myself from fudging. (Equivalent to the accountability of posting one's daily numbers to the NaNo site back when that was actually a good idea.)
This year, though.
See, with the end of support for Windows 10, and knowing that my laptop would likely be bricked by Windows 11, I decided to grit my teeth and buy a new, more powerful laptop, which would be good for my game dev hobby as well as being more secure than using a no-longer-supported OS online.
And so I did. I even bought an (on sale) gaming laptop so that it would have the power to last a while. Also to run Unreal Engine to use pre-made locations from the UE store in order to make visual novel BGs, something a few other devs already do with fantastic results. (I have yet to actually try this out, who knows if I'll be able to do it myself.)
This has. Um. Not been a great experience. (But I have gotten a few laughs out of the fact that the people who named this laptop's model apparently do not speak Latin, and thus do not realize that they named their gaming laptop "Conquered." It conjures up images of people attempting to play competitive online games only to lose every single time no matter how skilled they are. Which is admittedly a satisfying image. Anything to discourage the scourge that is competitive online gaming.)
I cordially hate Windows 11. Everything about it annoys me. It's even worse than Windows 10. (TBH, I have not actually liked any version of Windows since, like, Millennium Edition, and I'm not sure I'd even say that I truly "liked" that one, either.) Everything about it is bad, from the idiotic way that it puts the taskbar icons in the center instead of at the side, to the way you can no longer get an uncluttered glance at your desktop wallpaper by putting your cursor in the corner of the taskbar, to the way the start menu is now this hideous wide lump that you mostly cannot control instead of an entirely orderly menu, to the gross new version of File Explorer, to the cursors not looking right. Heck, even the emojis look bad now.
Consequently, I have been doing all my writing on my old laptop in airplane mode, and I've only even turned on the new one like four times since I bought it. (In fact, I didn't even take it out of the box for nearly a week after I bought it, because I was dreading the change-over process so much!)
That's not a problem as far as the writing challenge aspect goes--in fact, I am having so much trouble with the keyboard on this new laptop that I can see that attempting to write 50k on this thing would quickly drive me crazy, as the keys are not spaced the way my fingers prefer--but it is a problem for the blogging aspect of my unofficial version of the challenge.
In the last few years, I was making charts in Word to post on the blog, a way to recapture the fun of watching the chart develop on the NaNo site when you posted your daily numbers. I can still make those charts, of course, but posting them would require booting up this new computer solely for the purpose of posting those charts. (I can't even make them on some website on my phone and then transfer the charts over via the phone, because changes to the way Blogger handles images have meant that I cannot add pictures to a post when I'm on my phone. Which sucks, because until that happened, it was a fast and easy way to transfer pictures from my phone to my computer. Now I guess I'll have to depend on Discord for that. Especially since I still haven't set up Dropbox on the new computer yet. Haven't gotten Word installed, either. I've been really dragging my feet on the whole "finish setting up the new computer" thing...)
Anyway.
I just felt like for this first post, I should explain (to no one) why most of November's posts are going to be excessively bare bones. If I do end up bothering to make a chart, I'll probably only post it on December 1st as a "looking back at November's progress" kind of a thing.
As to what I'll be writing...
Well. It's going to be a mixed bag. I'll be counting anything I write in November, as usual, and my current list of projects is:
- Rewrite of book 4 of the Atalanta and Ariadne novels; this rewrite has been ongoing for quite a while, but in October I did finally get past one of the first major stumbling blocks, so hopefully I can put quite a dent in it over the course of November.
- A new fanfic I started in the last week or so of October. A MDZS fanfic with some time-travel elements, which will eventually go so far off the rails that demons get involved. 😅
- The new VN I've been working on planning out. I'm hoping to get started on the script at some point this month.
Those are the planned projects at the moment, but knowing me something new could enter the field at any time.
And I have used up my "communicating with others" energy for the day, so I'll leave off pre-writing this post. On November 1st, after I've done my writing, I'll come back and fill in the numbers for the first day's writing, and then finally hit "publish" on this post.
Words written today: 3,420
Projects, with starting and current word counts:
Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements
Starting word count: 21,100
Today's word count: 24,520
The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4
Starting word count: 26,418
(Not touched today, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)
Untitled sci-fi VN, not yet started.
