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