Chronicles of a Sleepy Rabite

I’m a little surprised at how badly I’m handling NaNo this year:

- I’m allowing myself to get behind (but not too behind)
- I’m not making daily posts
- I don’t have an outline (no, seriously)

I really don’t know why. Lack of enthusiasm? Who knows! All I know is that I’m struggling with it this year, big time.

I’ve posted some more of the story over here (or if that doesn’t work, try this link). If you’re nitpicking and counting the words, it won’t match up — I’ve cut out all the junk that I’ve crossed out but that I’m keeping in my word count.

The story has three parts to it:

Part 1: Adelheid and Nicolaus’ escape
Part 2: Erlene’s rescue
Part 3: The Near East

I’m about 90% done Part 1, 50% Part 2, and 0% Part 3.

Astute readers will note that I’m over halfway done my word count and I’m nowhere near being done.

Descriptions are still killing me. Ever since my mother said my descriptions have been improving and that I’m doing better at setting the mood, I’ve been terrified at screwing things up (sorry, mom) — the antithesis of NaNo itself. I think I’ve finally gotten over that… now my big enemy is fatigue, which has been taking me over lately.

Tonight will be a challenge since I’m 600 or so word behind from yesterday (which I’m hoping to write over lunch), and then I have to write another 1667 words tonight before Dynamis. Sky, on his part, is about 1000 words behind from yesterday, and he probably won’t have time to write before Dynamis.

I’m not actually worried about falling too much behind, since everything is recoverable so far; it’s finding the motivation to continue. I need something to motivate me, a carrot at the end of a stick, something like that… but what?

Sorry I haven’t been posting status updates; it seems like no too many people are reading this, so I’m disinclined to post further out of fear of boring people. But anyways!

First, I’m going to stop reporting my wordcount, because there’s a handy little widget to your right that says it all in real-time (or close to it.)

I fell behind on Tuesday night; Tuesday is when I do Dynamis (an end-game activity that gets you shiny things and lots of death), and though I usually have the time to write before it’s time to go, I didn’t have that opportunity this week and I only got 300 words before I kissed dirt in Dynamis-Windurst.

That left me with a whole lot of words to write on Wednesday.

Let me tell you about Write or Die. I’d sugar-coat it and say that it’s not as bad as it sounds, but it is. It’s basically a text box in which you write words (you can set it to go up to a certain wordcount or by time). That sounds pretty banal, but there are three settings to this little instrument of pain: gentle, normal, and kamikaze. Gentle fades the screen to red if you stop typing for too long and brings up a box telling you to keep writing. Normal does the same, except instead of bringing up a text box, it begins playing horrible sounds like babies crying, alarm clock buzzers or whatnot, until you start typing again. And Kamikaze mode does neither of those; it lets you type on your merry way, but if you stop? It starts deleting your words. I am not kidding.

Anyways, on Gentle mode (I refuse to use the two others), it really lets me focus and just keep writing, writing, writing. I can pound out 350 words/10 minutes on that thing. With that, I managed to catch up, and I’m back on track so far.

That said, I’m having some trouble writing. See, I had a few scenes in mind when I started this little adventure, and I’ve written them for the most part. However, I need to figure out what happens in between… and I actually have no clue how to go about that. As a result, nothing is sequential at the moment, so I can’t even post something to entertain you all.

I’m sure I’ll get around it; Sky and Myrna are great sounding boards, so I can bounce ideas off them and see if they stick. I’m also not too worried about wordcount — if I can get to the last part of the story with 20,000 words remaining, I won’t have to worry about running out of words to write before I reach the end of the story.