I won Nanowrimo!

I won Nanowrimo! I hit 50,000 words last night!

I realize I just posted my Blogmas schedule yesterday, and that today was supposed to be ‘Update 3’, next week ‘Update 4’ and then December 1st the results, but I was also planning on like… not finishing until then. But I ended up finishing early, so today is results! The other two planned nano posts will be subbed to something else, I’ll figure it out.

But yeah, I won! And honestly, after fifty thousand words, I barely got through act 1. So my novel is not complete, I just beat Nano. I’m going to give myself some time off and come back to it, because man am I burnt out.

Here are some stats!

So as you can see, my daily word count was all over the place – I was never consistent, except in that I was over the goal word count every day, no matter how much or little I wrote.

When Nano first started, I took November 1-3 off from work so I could get a good boost. I knew that this month was gonna be busy so I wanted a cushion. Lucky me though (or unlucky?) my month cleared up shortly after that, and I was able to maintain a nice lead.

Honestly, I really owe it to my buddy, who did writing sprints with me almost every day. She’s doing Nano too and is gonna win any day now, I can feel it!

So that’s it! Nanowrimo 2020, at least for me, is over. I really like what I made, though it needs some serious revision. But I definitely think it’s got potential.

Yay!

Nanowrimo week 2 update!

We’ve reached the half way point in Nanowrimo, and this is my progress so far, as of last night!

As you can see, I’m killing it if I do say so myself. Is it any good? No! But it’s words. I’ll make it good later. This is the third book I’ve written set in the same world and while I liked the other two a lot I think this one is by far my favorite, so I’m happy about it.

Today my plan is to write 5k words, putting me at 45k. Then I plan on finishing up the last 5k during this week so I can be done before the 21st, which is when I’m starting blogmas this year. My goal is to only have one time consuming project going at a time. Pbtbt.

If you’re participating, lemme know how you’re doing! Happy writing!

Nanowrimo week 1 update!

It’s one week into Nanowrimo, and this is my progress so far, as of last night!

 

I am currently at 21712 words, meaning I’m almost half way there in a quarter of the time. I am so pumped about it. In the second image, ignore the ‘no word for Nov 8’ thing, because I haven’t written anything yet today!

My goal today is to hit 25k, the half way mark, if not 26k.

So, so far I’m doing pretty well. My story has already kind left the outline I created, but that’s ok. I’ll compare it during the second draft and try to merge the two.

If you’re doing Nanowrimo, do let me know. Happy writing!

Nanoplanmo 2020 Update 1!

Hi! It’s been thirteen days since I started my planning for my Nanowrimo novel. If you remember from my announcement post, you’ll have noticed that I didn’t go into detail as to what I’d be writing, aside from that it was going to be set in the world my previous two nano novels were set in.

Well, that was because I had no idea what I was going to write. But hooray, now I know, more or less.

This year’s novel is indeed going to be set in the same world. It’s a fantasy, and it’ll happen on a continent that hasn’t gotten a novel yet, meaning I’m currently doing a deep dive into the development of culture, civilization, history, species, magic, and you name it for that continent. Some themes I’m going to utilize within the novel include relations between species with different technology levels, the use of magic, and the misuse of life to fuel that magic. I’m not really gonna go deeper at this point, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

So for that past ten days, I’ve been drawing maps and detailing out which areas I wanna focus on. I’ve also been on the lookout for map creators and town creators and stuff in video game form or web browser form that’ll let me actually build my cities so I can have a clear picture of what goes where. I’ve found a few things, but nothing has really stuck out to me as the perfect product yet. So if you have any suggestions, do let me know, particularly if they have a free demo I can try out first.

I’ve also been really trying to get a system in place for my world building. It’s a bit all over the place right now. I toyed with Campfire for a bit but my trial ran out before it had sold me. My husband, who’s also doing nano this year, has basically made the equivalent of a campfire set up within his evernote, so I might try doing that as well. We’ll see.

If you’ve done nano, or if you’re a writer that does a lot of world building, where do you organize it? What’s your system? I mean I have a “system” but it’s basically just a bunch of unorganized word documents.

Anyways, I’m really pumped about this year’s project. For the first few days of October, I was iffy, just because I had a premise but didn’t have a plot. Now I have a plot as well and I really like it. I’m itching to start writing now, but I’m forcing myself to hold off. No cheating!

Guys I’m so pumped!

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If you’re also participating in Nanowrimo, do let me know!

Fantasy Bingo 2020-21 | Update 2

It’s August now! Back in June, I made an update 1 to a post I originally made in April when r/Fantasy’s Fantasy Bingo began.

If you’re interested in participating and want to know the full details, here is the 2020 announcement thread about it. And here is the list of recommendations, crowd sourced by all the participants!

New additions:

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom – Obviously filling the ‘number in the title’ prompt, I thought this book was decent. I think the hype of it got to me though so it was a tad underwhelming. My mother in law loves this book though so now I can tell her I’ve read it too, haha.

Pestilence by Laura Thalassa – Self-published! Doesn’t qualify for hard mode though, as this serious is a rather popular one. This book was… decent, I think. I still don’t know how I feel about it. Part of me is super frustrated at it and another part wants to read book two. Hm hm.

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So I’ve read a good twenty books since last update, but only two of them were novels that were also spec-fic by unique authors. I know the graphic/audio novel spot is still open and I have a million choices for that, so I’m probably going to save it for last and just fill it in with whatever I want.

Until next update!

Reading Goals 2020! | Mid-year check-in

It’s officially the time of year where does their mid-year posts: check-ins, best/work books so far, etc, and I’m rather pumped for it. I love these kinds of posts, I get so many good recommendations! (PS so if you post these kinds of these and you don’t see me in there in your posts already, please link them and I’ll go lookie)

So, January 2nd of this year, I posted a bunch Reading Goals. This is my progress on them so far:

• Read 50 books

I’ve actually increased this to 100 books, since I hit it really fast. I’ve been on a manga kick and that really helped. Currently I’m at 132 books read (the majority manga) so I can say both this goal and the updated one are complete.

• Maintain a consistent posting schedule

At the time of posting, my schedule was Saturday-Sunday-Wednesday. Right now it’s Saturday-Sunday-Tuesday, and I keep it up most of the time. I tend to miss one or two posts per month, but overall I think I’m doing okay, mostly consistent. So considering I still have six months to crash and burn, I’ll say this one is in progress.

• Keep track of reading statistics

So… I’ve noticed a trend. My goal was to keep track of statistics as I read the books, but I tend to just binge-add fifty or sixty books at a time. So right now, it’s been a while since I’ve updated my stats. But I will do so by the time I post about them. So this also gets a solid in progress.

• Reduce physical TBR to 200

This one took a bit of an interesting turn: When I made this goal, I had 252 books on my physical TBR. That included fiction and nonfiction. The problem is, I read nonfiction…. sometimes. So I decided to split my nonfiction books to its own TBR. So remaining, I have 236 unread fiction books. Nonfiction honestly I’m not too worried about, because I own so little of it and I read it so seldom. So from this point I’m going to focus on getting my unread fiction down to under 200 books. Cheating? Yes. Pbtbtbt. In progress

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And that’s it! So far I haven’t horrendously failed any so I’m doing pretty well I think. Lemme know how you’re doing! And like I said if you post mid-year-y posts, do link me, I wanna see.

Happy reading!

Fantasy Bingo 2020-21 | Update 1

It’s June now! Back in April, Fantasy Bingo 2020 began. It’s a year-long reading bingo hosted by reddit’s r/Fantasy. If you’re interested in participating (You can start whenever and retroactively add books read after April 1st of this year) check out the details here.

This is the progress I’ve made so far. Books are subject to move around if I find a better book to go there.

So I’ve read six fantasy novels since April 1st, and luckily all of them counted for at least one category! So far, so good!

If you’re participating in Fantasy Bingo, do let me know! Happy reading!

Camp Nanowrimo – Week 3

So this is gonna be my last update. There will be no wrap up for Camp Nanowrimo this month. Why?

Because I haven’t written since the last time I made one of these posts, whoops.

For some reason, my heart just isn’t in it. And I know if I force myself to write, it’ll be sucky, so I’m going to admit defeat for this month and try again in July. I do like what I’ve made so far, but I don’t want to push myself further and end up not liking what I’d make next.

So until July, that’s in for Nano for me.

Whoopsie doops.

Camp Nanowrimo – Week 2

I’m telling ya, all the days are blending together. I feel like I just wrote week one’s post yesterday and it’s already been another seven days. Where has my mind been.

My goals:

• Create a second draft of Basil – In Progress
  
• Rename Basil to an actual title – Complete
• Revise for a total of 30 hours – In Progress
  

This week wasn’t great for writing. I’m sitting at 14.75 hours as of writing this (Friday night) when I should be around 17. The quarantine mentality is setting in and I’m afraid it’s really killing my motivation.

But while I’m being hours-wise, I did meet some milestones:

• I finished reading and leaving notes on my original draft of my 2018 project
• I did some world building surrounding areas that I found lacking
• I started actually writing the second draft
• I moved my original prologue. It’s going to be in either book two or three, haven’t decided.
• I wrote a brand new, original prologue for this book.

As we speak, I’m in the middle of writing chapter one. Seventeen days into this, I’m realizing I’m not going to finish draft two, not by a long shot. But, I do plan on getting a good chunk of it, and if I have the motivation I’ll continue it into May, but if I decide I need a break, I’ll pick it up again in July during the next Camp Nano.

And that’s it for this week! If you’re doing Nano, lemme know how you’re doing!

Camp Nanowrimo – Week 1

Well more like ‘first ten days’ but you get it.

As I mentioned in my announcement post, I’ve been working on a second draft of my 2018 Nanowrimo project, which up until yesterday had a temporary title – the main character’s first name. But I’ll get to that.

So the goals I originally listed were:

• Create a second draft of Basil
• Rename Basil to an actual title.
• Revise for a total of 30 hours

Second draft is… obviously in progress.

The renaming is complete. I actually came up with a title that I think fits really well and I actually have tentative titles for the following books in the series. At this point I don’t think I wanna reveal much, at least not until I’m at a point where I feel comfortable having others read what I’ve written. And that’s a while off still, I think.

For revising, what I’ve done up through April 9th (I’m writing this on the 10th and as of right now haven’t written today. I’ll do that later tonight) is a total of 9 hours of revision. So so far, I’m right on the money. This weekend I hope to get ahead. I find myself a bit dreary after working from home on a computer all day and getting back on a computer sometimes is the last thing I wanna do.

So this weekend, I hope to get it at least 4 hours, not including tonight’s time!

Wish me luck!