NaNoRHINO day 2: Prompt 2

Hi folks,

Yesterday was not an awesome writing day due to a migraine. I hate those things. I think the weather has settled a little bit so I may be able to get a better start going. Today's prompt is two for the price of one. (I'm debating doing an increasing number of prompts for each day. I haven't decided yet.)

Prompt 2.1 - What scares you?

Prompt 2.2 - Pretend your Batman for a minute. Do you have a plan?

(Why Batman? Because you can be you, but Batman ALWAYS has a plan.)

And, obviously, Batman is property of DC Comics and I'm NOT taking ANY credit for ANYTHING of theirs. NOPE, NOT TODAY, SATAN!

NaNoWriMo Day 1: Prompt 1

Hi folks,

I'm going to try to post everyday here. Because I don't want to spam you with numbers and stuff, I'm going to post writing prompts. Consider it my encouragement and good will.

Prompt 1: Complete the letter following this sentence- Dear [Name], It weighs on me that I never told you ...


I'm still working on Glass House. Yesterday, in my prep for my writing today, I worked on Glass House at all stolen moments and in place of my morning pages. As a result, I wrote 3.5 k. That was by hand. Maybe I can get this thing done at the same time as I am working on my official project for this year. Both are to be done by hand. Wish me luck.

Hail Caesar, we who are about to die salute you!

T-9 days to NaNoWriMo, Thoughts.

NaNoWriMo is a big project. It is also my attempt to get back to writing books. Most years that I have participated, I was writing new content. It was a pleasurable event that I walked into bright eyed and filled with excitement. Last year, I struggled very much. At the end of the month, I was lucky if my word count was around 1k. It was the beginning of functionally a year long struggle with writing. A number of factors were in my way. The biggest was the fact that I was sick and it made getting any form of writing done very hard.

So, here I am getting ready for NaNoWriMo 2017 and I am nervous. Perhaps more nervous than I was the first year I attempted doing it. I know in the past I was able to write out a full 50k manuscript and a bit more over the course of the month. It was a regular thing when I had the opportunity and made a point of being disciplined about my working schedule. Now, I am afraid that my ongoing struggle with depression is going to shut this down before I get started. I am concerned about what ever may pop up over the month putting me in a position where I simply am unable to finish what I am working on. And I have all of the usual 'imposter syndrome' coming up again like mushrooms after a rainstorm.

Still, I'm going to make the attempt. If anything, to hopefully prove to myself that I actually can still do this stuff.

Novel writing progress report: NaNoWriMo prep

Hi there,

I have started the process of collecting all of my notes together in preparation for NaNoWriMo this year. To be honest, I am somewhat intimidated by it this year. Last few years, it was a fun time where even if I had some writer's block, I was still getting things done. I had a couple of years where I managed to write double the target word count. It was exciting and I was quite proud of it.

Then last year happened. I was sick and I was severely depressed. As a result, I didn't get even halfway through my word count goals. I had adjusted them down because I was writing by hand. I knew that I was slower writing by hand. I thought, however, that the notebook's portability would counterbalance my slowness. I didn't realize how much of an influence being sick was going to have on it all. I still have the manuscript unfinished. (One of my goals for this month is to finish the manuscript. I have about two weeks worth of work left to get done in a week and a half. Think happy thoughts for me on this one.)

Since all of that frustration and trouble last year, I have been having a hard time writing. I sit down to work and my anxiety slams into me like a truck. This year, I'm not writing something new. I'm going to attempt to finish book seven of the Umbriel Chronicles. It's been languishing three chapters in because I wrote myself into a corner. A big and difficult one that I can't just skip a head in the plot and come back to fix later. It is one of those problems that could change one of the major characters of the story and completely alter the trajectory of not only one book but the whole series.

Frustrating and intimidating doesn't feel quite strong enough to describe the feelings I'm dealing with right now. Wish me luck.

♥

Serial Stories - An Update.

Hi folks,

If you are looking for the latest installment of The Iron Lily or of Dacia's War, I must inform you that they are going to be on hiatus for a while. I am presently working on getting ready for NaNoWriMo. As such, the next few weeks are going to be full of my going over notes and working on plot outlines. I want to avoid the disaster of last year where I tried to just wing it when I was really, really sick. It made it just this side of impossible to work on it.

Strong pain medication makes it hard to remember things. Being in lots of pain also made it hard to remember things. I was very sick this time last year and things didn't start getting resolved until the end of December. Having learned from that experience, I am working on planning out everything for NaNoWriMo, this way if I am having health problems, I don't completely lose the plot of what I was working on.

When I have free time, I will be slowly adding to those serial stories. I'm just not sure how much free time I am going to have. Because I also have Yule gifts to finish up. I am trying to avoid paying tons of money for presents. As a result, I am quite busy crafting things and I'm just going to get busier as it gets closer to the end of December.

I will try to post on here about more than just the frustrations of NaNoWriMo. Daily word counts are not going to be a thing on here. It is going to be a weekly thing. It is my plan to keep my daily word counts in my bullet journal and then total them up for the weekly ones to be posted on Fridays. I will be posting some of my organization stuff for NaNoWriMo next week. You may find it a little interesting. I was inspired by Neil Gaiman's notebooks.

Flora et Fauna: Herbal/Beastiary Project

Hi there,

I'm sorry this post is a day late. I wasn't feeling well at all yesterday. I have the supplies. I have begun practice sketches in a separate notebook (this one was done at the park up the road, it is ornamental grasses at a fountain). Now I'm having a hard time where to begin.

A part of me says I should attempt alphabetic order. Another part says NOPE and I should do it in the order it got put up on here. Any requests or ideas?

(I am thinking about pushing to get 3 sketches done a day until I'm all caught up for the Inktober thing that's going on right now. Does it count if I'm using pencils?)

Craft of Writing: Schedules and goals.

Hi folks,

It's a day late, but here's my craft of writing post for this week. It's been hard to organize my different projects against the stuff happening in my life. As a result, my day planner is changing and my bullet journal is in the process of changes. My goal is to get both to where I can use them together to get my stuff working better. If I can pull this off by November, that'd be great. It would make finishing book seven a lot easier (which is what I'm slating for this year's project).

My day planner started out as just a page with times written down for a given day and a note as to
what day it was. Then I started adding notes about what I was making for dinner that night and reminders. Somehow, it has gone from a one page affair to a two page one with a couple of trackers and note sections on the second page as well as my To Do list for the day.

It now also has colored blocks for things I have ideally booked for that time slot. I am trying to keep my colored blocks in the same scheme as the writing projects I have. And I am also trying to pick out alternate colors for stuff like social events and school related stuff for the kids. This is because I am basically the person who manages the scheduling for everyone. That was where I got started with multiple calendars.

The writing bullet journal was an outgrowth from this work. My most recent entries in the bullet journal are not half as organized as I wanted them to be, to be honest. As a result, I started work on revising the process.

My first step was figuring out what projects were past due and when the other major projects were coming up due. This is still something I'm sifting and sorting out as I go through piles of papers here.

My second step was figuring out my goals for the remainder of the month. The third logical step is figuring out how I am going to keep my log of work. I'm thinking about transitioning to a process that is a combination of how I keep my mental health bullet journal and my daily planner. I'd start out with a page for the month with deadlines and such noted. Also, a 'habit tracker' to help me stay on top of blog posts and journal writing.

I may even also include something along the lines of tracking what I am reading at a given time. (I'm currently working on finishing up Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. It's a really pleasant read about complex physics. Yes, I am a nerd. If you haven't figured it out yet, I apologize for not being more obvious.) After the monthly page with it's trackers, I would do a weekly page. It gives greater detail to what is planned for the week. In this, I would put down details about events that happen during the week, like if my eldest has a band recital or if I have a scheduled appointment. After the weekly page, there would be daily pages for each day of that week. The next group of pages would be the next week at a glance followed by daily pages. At the end of the month, I'd restart the whole cycle again for the next month.

That's the plan for keeping my log of work. I am also thinking that I need to keep some kind of page for tracking progress on projects. I have three different things I'm working on getting ready to self-publish and I'm at various points in the process. I got a bit confused as to how far along I was on different ones. Thus, I have to make something I can look at and be able to tell what I need to do next for a given project. I'm not quite sure how to do that one though. I've come to realize, however, that the bullet journal layouts that I have been looking at through Pinterest are not really doing a good job of fitting what I need. Good thing I'm crafty.