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