IWSG: I want to make a "May" pun but I can't think of a good one

 

    Yet another post without a decent title.  :<

    Well.  Anyway.  I don't have anything to say about this month's suggested question, so...

    Hmm.

    I have to admit that I kind of feel like I'm spinning my wheels a bit lately.  My "top priority" is still supposed to be the Atalanta and Ariadne series, since I've been working on getting it released since 2021.  (And I wrote the first drafts of all seven novels back in 2014!)  But that is sort of...both frustrating and slow?

    I'm currently working on the next draft of book four, but as soon as I finish it, I have to go back in and fix up book two.  I did, at least, get version 2.0 of the first book released during the past month!  That was a big milestone, as I made some epic upgrades to the text, as well as changing the engine the interactive version was released in.  Ooh, actually, I can share a sample of the upgraded text!  Here's the old version, as released in TWINE:

(Comparison is just the two paragraphs from "The interior of the cave" onward.)

    And here's the new version, which is in Ren'py:

    Not all of the text was changed that radically, but...yeah, it was a pretty drastic change.  I don't know if the second and third books will get that much alteration (and they won't get more than a text change in the interactive versions, since they're already in Ren'py), but...I still want to get those changes made.  In between working on drafts of book four.  It's exciting to be able to point to something like this and be like "my style has improved so much in the past five years!" but it's also depressing to think I released something that badly written, plus the new version is still only mid at best, and it's generally a draining process having to do this.  So...yeah, it leaves me in a weird place mentally, I guess?

    In other news(?), in between releasing version 2.0 of the first book and getting to work on the next draft of book four, I told myself I could have one fun little fanfic project.  All my standing ideas for fanfics were guaranteed to be long, though, so I had to come up with a new one that I hoped would be short.  (It ended up being somewhere in the neighborhood of 45k, so...not really short, but at least it's well under 100k?)  I wanted to experiment to see if I was capable of writing a murder mystery, since I've read a few of them lately.  (I joined a Discord book club, and the first book we read was The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie (and then during the book club meeting, people who had looked into it talked about just how garbage the Netflix adaptation was, including changing who the killer was!), and on learning that the heroine, Bundle, had been introduced in an earlier book, I hunted up a copy of it and read that, too!)

    So, I ended up trying my hand at a murder mystery fanfic.  Naturally using the cast of Mo Dao Zu Shi (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, aka The Untamed in its live-action adaptation)) for the story, because I've been obsessed for years now.  😅  (Ugh, these Windows 11 emoji are so ugly! 😭  Eew, especially that one...)

    Anyway, it's not really much of a murder mystery, I fear.  Especially not for anyone who knows the fandom, because there's pretty much only three possible suspects, since most of the cast would never commit a murder unless they're acting direly out of character.  But I think my story's biggest problem as a murder mystery is that everyone the investigating character talks to is being honest.  Usually, suspects lie even when they're not the murderer.  (Don't they?)  But again, that's partially a limitation of the fanfic situation, since most of those characters are typically honest.  I did, at least, manage to get a lot of inconsistencies between different characters describing the same events, since their perspectives are different and their opinions alter how they think of things, but...

    Well, for a first attempt, it's at least decent?  I'll certainly be posting it on AO3 eventually (there's a lot of other fics waiting their turn to be edited and released first, though, so it'll take a while), in any case.

    Sometime, I'd like to write a more proper mystery, though.  (Maybe not a murder one?)  Either something original (in which case it'd probably be a visual novel) or something with a fandom that's a little more flexible so there would actually be some genuine mystery to it.  (Because really, "was it Jin Guangyao, Su Minshan or Xue Yang who murdered Jin Zixun?" is not much of a mystery...though I guess not making Su Minshan the killer would at least surprise people a little?)

    ...hmm.

    Disjointed as always.

    *sigh*

    Maybe I can chalk that up to the pain-killers I'm on because of the dental surgery I went through a few days ago.  (My cheek is still swollen, and it hurts to touch it!  It sucks so bad!)

IWSG Last Minute Post

    I normally pre-write these up to a week in advance, but for some reason I thought tomorrow was Wednesday?

🤷🏻‍♀️

Anyway.  Thankfully I can for once lean on the monthly question...

April 1 question - If you have a playlist (or could put one together) that either gets you in the groove to write or fits with one of your books, what is it? What type of music or what songs? 

Well, I sort of can lean on it.  I don't have any playlists that fit what I write (unless I'm working on a fanfic and listen to the soundtrack of whatever it's a fanfic of), but I do have a lot of playlists I listen to while I write.

They're pretty much all soundtracks, though.  Mostly video game soundtracks, with a few anime soundtracks as well.  Lately I've been listening to various Shin Megami Tensei (and spin-off) soundtracks, in part because I haven't put as much of my music collection on the computer I now use to write.  I ought to put more Final Fantasy soundtracks on there, since this is an anniversary year for the series.  (I do have to be careful about some game soundtracks, because sometimes listening to them makes me want to replay the game, and I don't have time to drop everything and play a 40-80 hour RPG just because the music puts a hanker in me.  😅)

The main thing is that since they're usually not vocals (and if there are vocals, they're typically not in a language I speak) they don't distract me from my writing.  (I remember one time, many years ago, since I was starting work on a book set in the '80s, I made a playlist of all my '80s music...and I spent more time singing along than writing.  😭  Not gonna make that mistake again!)

IWSG: March '26

    Another winner of a post title.  😅

I just can't title things, evidently.  Been struggling with that a lot lately, actually.

Anyway, I'm still in a phase that's heavier on editing than writing, sadly, which doesn't leave me with much to say...

...except at least to be able to crow that I have finally finished the rewrite of book four of my Greek mythology series!  Well, the heavy-duty rewrite of the 2014 draft, that is.  I've been working on the rewrite (more a restructuring, really) for almost a year at this point, so being done with it is exciting!

Except...

Except that as I was preparing for it, I had to reread the first three to take notes on various particulars and details...and I saw so much wrong with them.  So now I'm mired in trying to fix them.  About halfway through book one now.

I realize that's a potentially endless cycle of perpetual rewrites, but hopefully this time I'll actually be getting the first three books into a properly acceptable state.

Hopefully.

Or at least less cringe-inducing, anyway.

(Book one especially needed it, because for its interactive version, I used TWINE instead of Ren'py, which means that the text is smaller, and the way I messed around with various settings to increase the amount of the screen that held the text had somehow disabled the ability to go back...which is especially agonizing considering that in the interactive version of book one I had for some reason thought it would be a good idea to insert all these choices where you could see one scene or another but not both, even though the reader of the plain text version of course gets both.  (Spoiler:  it was not a good idea.  Not at all.)  So the updated interactive version is going to be in Ren'py same as the others, and it will have properly working rollback and absolutely no evil "you can only see one of the scenes ha ha ha!" choices.  Also the text should be bigger, which will hopefully make it easier to read.  And the glossary will be better.  Also the horrifically-bad, exceedingly-boring, unnecessary backstory-dump that took up four or five massive paragraphs at the start of the prologue is now gone, and good riddance to it!)

IWSG Feb '26

    So post titles are still not my thing.  😅

More relevantly, or not so relevantly maybe, I am still in a sort of "muddling through it" phase in my writing.  I alternate between being full of enthusiasm and being completely unsure how to continue or what to write.  Frustrating, but it just sort of moves along at its own pace, so I guess it's fine?  (Frustrating in a different sense is my ever-growing realization of how much I use "just" as a crutch word in my writing.  I try to notice as I'm writing and replace it with "only" or "merely" or "simply," but I fear that's treating the symptom rather than the disease...)

On the plus side, I did just yesterday finally get past a scene in my current massive rewrite project that had been blocking me for weeks.  So that's at least something?  (Better still, there's very little between where I am and the climactic showdown with the remarkably undeveloped villain of the week.  😅  So at least the end is in sight, I suppose?)

I feel like I don't ever have much to say that would even interest anyone, let alone potentially help them get through any of their own problems.  😰  But if I didn't have the IWSG posts to write, I might go six months or more without making any blog posts at all, so... 😰

Looking back on the last few months

    So, things have been.

    Ahem.

    Yes, I know that's not proper grammar.  Or rather, it's very weird grammar.  (Technically, it's not totally wrong?  Things have indeed existed, which is basically what that means?  But's not phraseology that people would normally use.  Nor is the word "phraseology," but that's beside the point.  Actually, I'm not positive it's even a word, but this one character uses it in The Music Man, so...anyway.  Irrelevant.)

    My life has lately felt even weirder and more stagnant than ever.  Partially because I more than ever feel the need to hide in my house from the world, but it's definitely not just that.

    I had to buy a new computer because of the end of support for Windows 10.  And, as I believe I posted before, I absolutely HATE Windows 11.  To the extent that I've been putting off even turning on this computer so much so that one of my utility bills will be paid a day late and it took me a week to look at the results of the MRI I had done.  Also that this computer's battery emptied itself in the time between when I last turned it on and when I turned it on this morning.  (Though it also seems to have turned itself on at some point without my permission to download updates, which 100% should not be possible, but as soon as I plugged it back in and turned it on, it started installing updates.  I looked over all its settings as soon as it finally turned on (after it was done updating the stupid thing turned itself off again!) and didn't see anything authorizing it to turn on at random intervals to check for and download updates, but it apparently did so anyway.  (I think I'll put it on airplane mode before I turn it off, which will hopefully prevent it from doing that again.  Might not stop it from turning on and exhausting its battery, but it should prevent it from downloading anything when it's supposed to be off.))

    So, because of my new aversion to going online due to it requiring this overpriced hunk of junk (I didn't realize that the computer was named the Latin word for "conquered" because I was being targeted to be conquered by Microsoft!), I've been doing my writing on my old computer in airplane mode, because unsupported OS don't matter if the Internet can't touch ya! 🤣  (Ugh, those Windows 11 emojis are so ugly!  Why would they even make the emojis worse for the new OS?  Why would they even change them in the first place, for that matter!?)  Which means, of course, that getting any of what I've written onto the internet to, say, quote a passage in my blog, is suddenly somewhat tricky.  Unnecessarily tricky, in fact, considering that one of the changes to the way Blogger adds pictures to a post means that I can't add them on my phone anymore.  Also there's the fact that for some reason this computer has decided that I should not be allowed to access my own pictures on Blogger, nor even to upload new ones!  Thankfully, it turns out I can still add pictures by dragging and dropping (for the moment!) so I can still add pictures, but it's even more awkward than ever before.

    Anyway.

    What I've been writing lately has been (surprise, surprise!) another Mo Dao Zu Shi fanfic.  Though I did at least get a little writing done on the rewrite of The Tablet of Destinies, but...ugh, it's such a mess.  It's actually really hard to rewrite it just because the current draft is such garbage.  It's much easier to just focus on writing pointless fanfic.

    I want to talk about this current fic now, blathering meaninglessly, as usual, but I think I'll put in a blocker line so the whole post won't go on the front page of the blog.

IWSG: Last (IWSG) post of 2025

    So, I've figured out how to add pictures to blog posts on my phone, as long as they're pictures I've used before.  😅

Uh.

More pertinently.

Once again, the suggested question for this month's post doesn't speak to me, so I'll be posting about something else instead...

But my writing life has been pretty stagnant lately, so I guess I'll write about that stagnancy?  (Wait, is that a word?)

I'm not totally sure what the problem is that's making it hard for me to write lately.  Lack of motivation, definitely lack of ideas (except for fanfic ideas), those are factors for sure, but are they the only factors?

I don't even know, nor am I sure how to figure it out.

It's making me feel like more of a failure than usual, though.

Without knowing quite what the problem is, it's hard to fix it.

In looking over my posts for the year, I realize I've been failing to get any significant progress made on the rewrite of book four of the Atalanta and Ariadne books for the entire year.  😭  I really need to get off my backside and get that rewrite finished.  If I can just power through into the climactic confrontation, it should be...um...possible?  I dunno.  I don't even know if anyone would care about it even being released.  I had one comment on one of the AO3 versions of the earlier books in the series that indicated someone had genuinely read it all the way through and liked it, but... 🤷🏻‍♀️

November writing challenge over

 So.

Yup.

It's December 1st, and my not-NaNoWriMo is over for another year.

It felt like a big old mess, if I'm being honest.  (Well, that's perhaps the most suitable-to-be-said-in-public version of an honest summation, anyway.)

As much as I want to blame having a tooth break off, leading to many hours lost to pain and dental work, that didn't realistically cause most of the problems.

The main thing was just that my main project petered out into insanity that was not really feasible to continue working on...or, not that exactly, more that it meandered off into a direction that does not appeal to me so that even though I had a solid outline of the next chunk of the story, I just didn't feel any appeal in continuing to work on it.  😭  Not sure how that will play out in the long run.  Maybe a short while off from writing will recharge me to keep plowing ahead on it?

Anyway.

Final numbers!

Words written in November previously:  86,535 (or 91,430)

Thursday's word count:  1,851

Friday's word count:  1,450

Saturday's word count:  856 (or 2,402)

Sunday's word count:  104

Total word count in November:  90,796 (or 97,237)

Projects, with starting and final word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Word count as of previous post:  98,194

Thursday's word count:  98,534

Friday's word count:  98,604

Saturday's word count:  99,460

Sunday's word count:  99,564

Words added to the planning document:  4,796

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Ended up untouched.  😭

Untitled sci-fi VN

Total word count previously: 8,649

Thursday's word count:  9,555

Friday's word count:  10,935

Opening section of a future MDZS fanfic (NHS-centric, canon compliant) that I'm nowhere near ready to write:

Thursday word count:  605

Words added to the planning document for a My Time in Sandrock fanfic that who knows when I'll actually write it:

Saturday word count:  1,546

(In my own defense here, I just finished replaying My Time in Portia, the first game in the series, so the sequel (which is the better game) has been on my mind a lot lately.)

November writing challenge, day 26

 Well.  I still don't seem able to post in a timely manner.

Oh well.

Current numbers!

Words written in November previously:  75,824 (or 80,142)

Saturday's word count:  1,570

Sunday's word count:  2,500

Monday's word count:  2,048

Tuesday's word count:  1,775

Today's word count:  2,818 (or 3,395)

Total word count to date in November:  86,535 (or 91,430)

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Word count as of previous post:  91,606

Saturday's word count:  91,693

Sunday's word count:  94,193

Monday's word count:  96,241

Tuesday's word count:  98,016

Today's word count:  98,194

Words previously added to the planning document:  4,219

Words added to the planning document today:  577

Total words added to the planning document:  4,796

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN

Total word count previously: 4,526

Word count on Saturday:  6,009

Word count today:  8,649

November writing challenge, day 21

 I'm gonna keep blaming this dental emergency for my ongoing inability to post my word count daily.  (Not necessarily correct, but not necessarily wrong, either.  It was definitely the reason I accomplished almost nothing yesterday, anyway.)

So.

Yeah.

Word count is fluctuating weirdly and badly.

Partially may be caused slightly by hitting a blank spot in my outline for the fanfic where it was like...time needed to pass before the next event, but just saying "time passed" was not going to cut it.  😰

Anyway.

Current numbers!

Words written in November previously:  68,372 (or 71,477)

Tuesday's word count:  2,352 (or 3,113)

Wednesday's word count:  1,945 (or 2,397)

Thursday's word count:  511

Today's word count:  2,644

Total word count to date in November:  75,824 (or 80,142)

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Word count as of previous post:  84,157

Tuesday's word count:  86,509

Wednesday's word count:  88,451

Thursday's word count:  88,962

Today's word count:  91,606

Words previously added to the planning document:  3,106

Words added to the planning document Tuesday:  761

Words added to the planning document Wednesday:  352

Total words added to the planning document:  4,219

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN

Total word count previously: 4,523

Word count as of Wednesday:  4,526

(Yes, only three words.  I was rereading what I had written in preparation to write more, and added a few changes as I went, but then I was called out of the house before I could start actually writing.  😭)

November writing challenge, day 17

 I'm glad I already broke 50k, because my word count has been pitiful for the past few days, and will continue to be pitiful tomorrow.  Possibly longer, depending on how tomorrow goes.

Word of advice:  do not suffer a dental emergency late on a Friday that means you can't eat again until you've been to the dentist.  Especially not while trying to do a writing challenge, but it's good advice overall, if you ask me.

Anyway.

Current numbers!

Words written in November previously:  58,645 (or 61,750)

Saturday's word count:  6,256

Yesterday's word count:  1,342

Today's word count:  2,129

Total word count to date in November:  68,372 (or 71,477)

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Word count as of previous post:  74,430

Saturday's word count:  80,686

Yesterday's word count:  82,028

Today's word count:  84,157

Words added to the planning document:  3,106

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN

Total word count: 4,523

November writing challenge, day 14

 Ugh, today has sucked.

I don't even want to talk about it.

Two days of numbers, 'cause I didn't feel like posting yesterday.  Again.

Current numbers!

Words written in November previously:  50,213 (or 53,319)

Yesterday's word count:  2,632

Today's word count:  5,799

Total word count to date in November:  58,644 (or 61,750)

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Word count as of previous post:  65,999

Yesterday's word count:  68,631

Today's word count:  74,430

Words added to the planning document:  3,106

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN

Total word count: 4,523

November writing challenge, day 12

 Aaaaand I ended up not posting yesterday, due to the day spiraling out of my control shortly before lunch, not to return to my control until around 8pm, at which time I was too exhausted by the day to return to writing.

I got in a better day's writing today, but I am again stymied by the fact that I've slammed into a wall of "I'm not sure what the heck else to put in here to show the shifting currents of popular opinion and various characters' hidden actions before the murder that is the next major plot point."

*sigh*

Anyway.  Two days' worth of numbers today...

Current numbers!

Words written in November previously:  43,193 (or 46,299)

Yesterday's word count:  2,800

Today's word count:  4,220

Total word count to date in November:  50,213 (or 53,319)

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Word count as of previous post:  58,979

Yesterday's word count:  61,779

Today's word count:  65,999

Words added to the planning document:  3,106

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN

Total word count: 4,523

Welp, at least I broke 50k!   (Whether I'm gonna count the words added to the outline, it happened today either way.)

November writing challenge, day 10

 Well, today was much better than the last few days!

So much so that I got to an "oopsie!" point in my outline, in that I really need something to go in between the last scene I wrote today and the next scene on my outline.  There is--at minimum!--six months between the two scenes.  And, perhaps more importantly, the next scene (which is less a "scene" than a "plot point") is a murder.  A murder for which the hero must be falsely blamed, at least by a few stupid loud-mouths.  At present, there is basically zero reason anyone would ever suspect him of involvement, especially since he lives somewhere that is several days' journey away, and no one would have seen him anywhere near the scene of the crime.  (Though this is a fantasy with magical fast-travel, so that's not an insurmountable thing.)  So I need quite a few scenes in between there to establish some reason for people to blame him, something to set him up as an enemy of the about-to-be-murdered man.  Which shouldn't be too difficult to accomplish, but it's frustrating to have to put aside the actual story for it.  😰  Probably I need to start by putting in some more animosity from the soon-to-be murdered man towards the hero, since a few scenes back, the hero was visiting the victim's son and daughter-in-law.  If I insert a scene there with the victim being himself and verbally mistreating the hero, that will help, but I still need to invent some scenes to go in the current gap, too...

Anyway.

Current numbers!

Words written in November previously:  35,946 (or 39,052)

Today's word count:  7,247

Total word count to date in November:  43,193 (or 46,299)

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Word count yesterday:  51,685

Today's word count:  58,979

Words added to the planning document:  3,106

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN

Total word count: 4,523

November writing challenge, day 9

 Welp, ended up not posting yesterday.  Or actually getting much writing done, due mostly to a really bad night's sleep.

Today was better, but not as much so as I would have liked.  Anyway, just gonna post the numbers for both days.

Current numbers!

Words written in November as of Friday:  30,875 (or 32,549)

Yesterday's word count:  828 (or 1,830)

Today's word count:  4,243 (or 4,673)

Total word count to date in November:  35,946 (or 39,052)

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Word count on Friday:  47,452

Yesterday's word count:  48,280

Today's word count:  51,695

Words added to the planning document as of Friday:  1,674

Words added to the planning document yesterday:  1,002

Words added to the planning document today:  430

Words added to the planning document in total:  3,106

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN

Total word count: 4,523

November writing challenge, day 7

 Not a heck of a lot to say, really?  Just gonna get on with it.

Current numbers!

Words written in November so far:  26,452 (or 28,126)

Today's word count:  4,423

Total word count to date in November: 30,875 (or 32,549)

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Yesterday's word count:  44,261

Today's word count:  47,452

Words added to the planning document:  1,674

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN

Yesterday's word count:  3,291

Today's word count: 4,523

November writing challenge, day 6

 Well.  Didn't end up adding any numbers to yesterday's post after all.  😅  It's not that I didn't get any writing done, it's just that I lacked the something-or-other to add the numbers to the blog.  😰  Also, I got more words written in my planning document than in the actual work I was writing, and I never know if I ought to count those words.

Anyway.  Today went much better!

Current numbers!

Words written up to the 4th:  19,059

Yesterday's word count:  1,654 (or 3,328)

Today's word count:  5,739

Total word count to date in November: 26,452 (or 28,126)

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Word count as of the 4th:  40,159

Yesterday's word count:  41,813

Today's word count:  44,261

Words added to the planning document:  1,674

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN

Today's word count:  3,291

IWSG: dunno what to call the post, as usual

    So, once again, I don't really have a lot to say.  The month's question doesn't really speak to me much, but my writing life is pretty stagnant right now, so I don't have a lot to say.

    Unless I want to complain about my new laptop and how much I hate Windows 11, and how annoying it is to switch back to a two-laptop system where my internet access and my writing are on separate machines, but that's both very much a "me" problem and also distressingly bourgeoisie.

    Anyway.

    Uh...what can I talk about instead?

    Apparently, NaNoWriMo is no more?  Not sure what happened--but the last news I heard, they had aligned themselves with AI-bros on top of the scandal from I guess two years ago(?), so that's probably not too surprising--but I've been doing my own independent November writing challenge for so many years now that it doesn't really impact me much.  I'm just doing my usual thing anyway, regardless of the absence of an official version.

    I wonder if the collapse of the official NaNoWriMo is negatively impacting anyone else's November writing journey, though?

    I've seen a lot of people on Discord asking around after tracking sites to keep track of their progress as they try to write independently.  Haven't looked into any of them myself, though; I'm fine with just using my blog to track my word count.

    Hmm.

    Nope, I really don't have much to say this month.  (Or maybe I'm just using all my words on my writing challenge progress and don't have any to spare for blogging?)

    Anyway, after I do today's writing, I'll be adding my daily numbers to the end of the post below.

November writing challenge, day 4

Nothing much to say today, so...

 Current numbers!

Words written previously this November:  14,590

Today's word count:  4,469

Total word count to date in November:  19,059

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Yesterday's word count:  35,690

Today's word count:  40,159

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN, not yet started.

November writing challenge, day 3

     Today's word count may be lesser than usual, since I had to come online and post a chapter to AO3 first, meaning that my computer time has been divided and the new laptop unfairly got a share of it.

    I guess since I'm on a computer, though, I'll talk briefly about the videos I didn't end up talking about yesterday.  Two Youtube videos in a row, both about 45 minutes long, and both on the subject of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo.  The first was Overly Sarcastic Productions' summary of the novel, which Red said was 300k words long!  (Or was that in the other video?  Hmm...no, it was Red who said that.  The other talked about page count, not word count.)  Wow, though!  Despite now knowing the whole plot, I kind of want to read it now, despite that revenge stories are not really my cup of tea.  (Neither is tea; maybe I should say "not my glass of soda" instead?)  Of course, the fact that the overall message of the novel is anti-revenge rather than pro-revenge helps that, naturally.  But mostly it's because of how amazingly convoluted the hero's plans are, really.

    Among other things, it gives me an idea of how I want to approach one of the fanfic ideas I have, specifically one that's supposed to be canon-compliant but focusing on Nie Huaisang's long, drawn out revenge plot (and his coincidental saving of Wen Qing in the process, of course).  MDZS set him up as a brilliant schemer, even beyond the schemer that is the novel's villain (he'd have to be if he's going to out-think the villain, after all!), so the idea of giving his personal tale of revenge as many schemes and twists and disguises and alter-egos as the one in The Count of Monte Cristo is decidedly tempting!  (Might lessen the canon-compliant angle a bit, but...)

    Anyway, the second video I watched was of course the Lost in Adaptation on the same novel, which went up within 24 hours of the OSP one.  (And in fact started with a plug for the OSP summary, since it would be more comprehensive!)  He covered three different adaptations of the novel, and wow, watching those would be woefully insufficient to experience the story.  Especially the most recent one in the video.  Yikes.  However, that video gave some context to the novel that Red didn't, specifically that the hero's initial suffering was inspired by something Dumas' father went through.  (Neither video mentioned that Dumas wrote a similar novel prior to The Count of Monte Cristo that featured a hero who, like Dumas himself, was of mixed ancestry, the only novel he wrote that didn't feature exclusively white people in the leading roles.  That one must have been even more inspired by his father's ordeal.)

    However, that also prompted me to check and see if the anime adaptation was available to stream on Crunchyroll, and it turns out it is.  It's got a bit of a sci-fi setting instead of the novel's early 19th century setting, and I seem to recall it was praised at the time it came out.  I think I had turned up my nose at it because at the time I thought anime adapting a 19th century novel was an absurdity or inappropriate or whatever else I thought, but now I'm thinking I want to give it a try.  If nothing else, a 24 episode anime would have enough time to do that lengthy story justice (or to come closer to doing it justice, at least), unlike a two hour movie! 😅

    But enough of that.  Let's move on to my independent November writing challenge!  (I'm not even sure if I should consider hitting 50k to be "succeeding" since that's a pretty easy task for me.  But I feel like I'll be setting myself up for failure if I make finishing a project the goal.  My MDZS fanfic often get ludicrously long (once even longer than the original novel!), making finishing my current fic this month not necessarily physically possible.  And I doubt I'll have the willpower to set it aside long enough to finish the rewrite of Tablet of Destinies...and who knows if I'll even start my new VN script, let alone finish it...)

Current numbers!

Words written previously this November:  8,778

Today's word count:  5,812

Total word count to date in November:  14,590

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Yesterday's word count:  29,878

Today's word count:  35,690

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN, not yet started.

November writing challenge, day 2

 So, last night I watched some videos that I was going to talk about right now, but then I went on one errand that ended up being like five of them, so I no longer have the strength.  Maybe I can talk about them tomorrow.

Current numbers!

Words written previously this November:  3,420

Today's word count:  5,358

Total word count to date in November:  8,778

Projects, with starting and current word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements

Starting word count:  21,100

Yesterday's word count:  24,520

Today's word count:  29,878

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4

Starting word count:  26,418

(Not touched yet, aside from opening the file to get its current word count.)

Untitled sci-fi VN, not yet started.