#camp nanwum

[duhragonball]

Camp Nanwum Update: 9969

My goal was 25,000 words for this month, and I’m not even halfway there, with only eleven days to go.  But I’m actually a little ahead of schedule.   

The plan was to write 500 words a day for 28 days, and then make up the balance on the other two.   Tomorrow is one of the catch-up days, and my objective is to try to hit 6,000 words.   I’d like to break my one-day word-count record, which I think is a little north of 6k, but I’ll be satisifed if I end up with a number that starts with a 6.  

If I fail, I’ll just use Sunday to pick up the split.    The goal, though, is to be at 17,000 words by Monday morning.   Then I’ll do something similar next Saturday, and I’ll be in good shape. 

What I’ve been finding is that by forcing myself to write 500 words every day, I’ve ended up writing separate scenes more than complete chapters.    I’m concerned that I won’t be able to assemble all of these pieces into the actual fic.   Some of them may be redundant, or they just won’t fit together.   It may be for the best, though, because writing throwaway dialogue can at least help me refine what I actually end up doing.    But the theme this month is that I’m just sort of flying by the seat of my pants.   I haven’t even edited all of last November’s word count, so there’s no way I can plot chapters the way I’m used to doing.  I’m trying to take solace in the word count.    I got stuff on the page, and I can fix it up later, and that’s all that matters. 

The advantage of this is that I can use all of these eighteen story fragments as prompts for this marathon run I’m doing tomorrow.   With that in mind, I’m going to list the word counts or each, so I can better keep track of how much I’ll have added to any of them.

890

645

530

513

520

550

530

593

544

528

549

521

521

524

515

556

522

518

Uh, I still gotta write my 500 words for today.  

???????

That’s somewhat encouraging, now that I’ve got this laid out in front of me.   I should be able to expand a few of those, and boost my count tomorrow.   

[duhragonball]

Camp Nanwum Strats

I was kind of stressing out over doing Camp Nano in April, but I’m getting caught up on stuff I wanted to finish in March, so I’m starting to feel more confident.

My goal is the same as the last time I did Camp Nano: 25,000 words.   But this time I’m trying to get the Namek Saga liveblogged while I do it.   I think I can do both, but I struggled a bit getting the Piccolo Saga’s done in February, so I was a little concerned.   As it is, I’ve already gotten some Namek episodes written up, so I’m a little ahead.   The point is that I’m out to prove to myself that I don’t have to take an all-or-none approach to these projects.   I can write fanfic and do other things at the same time.    

I’m also trying to shake up my approach.   In the past, I took the deadline for these things as a challenge to finish quickly before my motivation wore off.   Then in November 2018, I decided I should try to score that badge for adding to my word count 30 days in a row.    I had already reached 50k by day 20, but by forcing myself to add a little more for the next ten days, I managed to clear 60,000 words.  The only drawback was that it really, really sucked.     I hated it.    So I want to see if I can do that again, and maybe get to the point where it doesn’t feel so awful. 

So I’m shooting for 25,000 words in April, and I’m going to try to write at least 500 words per day, every day.   That alone would bring me up to 15,000 words.   I’ll probably go a little higher than that, because honestly, 500 shouldn’t be that tough for me to handle.  If I can make this work I might raise the bar in the next Camp Nano in July.   Maybe do 800-words-per-day there, and then in November see if I can swing 1000-words-per-day.   We’ll see. 

To make up the balance, I’m planning to repeat something else I did last November, which was to try to write about 6000 words in one day.   I found the NaNoWriMo website to be extremely useful on the second go-round, because I could compare my 2017 progress with my 2018 progress, and challenge myself to write more that way.   I forget what my all-time record for one-day-word count is, but I broke it last year, and I bet I can do it again.   So some Saturday in April, I’m gonna try to do that.   

That would still only bring me up to 21000 words, so I’ll have to work out how to polish off the last 4,000, but I’ve demonstrated that I can tackle that without much trouble.   I could knock it out in one day or spread it out over two or three, but that doesn’t worry me much.   

I’m a little bummed out, because the last time I did Camp Nano, I was trying to finish that Bardock fic I started last year, and I never finished it.   So doing Camp Nano again is a reminder that I have unfinished business.    If anyone was waiting for that, I’m sorry, but it’ll have to wait a little longer.    On the other hand, my liveblog has me scheduled to re-watch Father of Goku in a few weeks, and the Broly movie comes out on home video on April 13, so I’ll probably have plenty of motivation to revisit the project soon.  I don’t want to make a bunch of promises I can’t keep, though. 

I will say, though, that what locked me up with Bardock was pretty much the same problem that locked me up with Luffa in December.    In both cases, I had all this stuff written, and I liked the way it looked, but I was struggling with how to organize the later parts, which makes writing more tough because it feels like I’m skipping ahead and compounding the problem.   This past week, I’ve finally forced myself to go through Luffa #101-104, and plan out what I want to do beyond #111, so I feel like I’ve got a better handle on how to fix #105-110.    So I need to re-read what I’ve done on Bardock and try to apply the same approach.    I’m feeling optimistic about it, anyway.

[duhragonball]

WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

[duhragonball]

Camp Nunwum Update: Almost There

I’ve got three days left after today, and 3305 words to go.  I figure I can knock out a few hundy this afternoon, then 2,000 words for Sunday, and then I can coast over the finish line on July 30.    It’s a good feeling, because I stopped writing for about four or five days in a row last week, and I was starting to wonder if I’d finish on time.  

I’ve learned two things this month.   The first is that it’s much easier to write when I have a firm idea where the scenes are going.  Sometimes it’s more fun to meander, but it can be tough to rack up a word count that way.   I did really well on Nano 2017, and I think that owes largely to how well I had that chunk of Luffa planned out ahead of time.   I mean, some of that material was stuff I’d been thinking about two years ago, and then I slapped together an outline to help keep myself on track.   On the other hand, this Bardock thing I’m working on is turning into a real quagmire.   I thought I’d be done a long time ago, but I seem to have a novella on my hands.   The only real plan I came up with was just to duct tape “Father of Goku” and “Dragon Ball Minus” together, but it’s not going to be that quick or simple.  I think it’s coming along well, but it keeps getting longer, and I need to do more stuff before I can finish it.  If I had set a 50k goal for Camp Nano, I think I’d be in serious trouble.  

Here’s the thing about that Bardock story.    I did my own private 25k writing goal for May of this year, and I got about 8k into the Bardock story then.   I figured I could wrap it up in July and that would be a nice little dent in  the 25k goal for this month.  Instead, it’s been three-quarters of my productivity for July.   I keep treating it like a quick little side-dealie, like the fics I wrote about the U6 guys and Launch, but it’s turning into Luffa Junior, and that blows because I haven’t updated Luffa Senior in like three months.  

Anyway, I need to spend some time in August figuring out an exit strategy for that.   And I need to actually post some of the stuff I’ve done.   Maybe I’ll have Bardock ready to roll this summer, or maybe not.    But I definitely can’t horse around with a project like that for November, when there’s 50k on the line.  

The second thing I learned is that I really get more motivated to write while I’m bored at work.   Last November worked well for me, because I had tons and tons of downtime on my hands.   That’s not going to work out for me again anytime soon, which is why I’ve been doing these 25k runs as practice.   But yesterday I found myself boiling volatiles off a sample, and wouldn’t you know it, I managed to knock out 1500 words without even trying very hard.   It was great, but it also irritates me that I can’t replicate that ease on my day off.  My plan is to use some vacation days in November to stay on top of things, but I’m worried that it won’t help me as much as I need it to.  

So my best bet is to plot those 50,000 words very carefully in October.  And I’d better make sure I have that Bardock story done before then, or it’ll drive me nuts...

[duhragonball]

ApNoWriMo Update: 00,036

Yeah, we’re just gonna steer clear of that today.

So it’s April 1, and that means Mania weekend and Camp Nano.  I am watching GCW shows all weekend, and I am also starting a quest to write 30,000 words by the 30th.  

Right now, I’m finishing Planet Death, which came on last night at midnight, but I’m an old man, so I went to bed before it ended.  Glad I finished watching, because the main event featured a Mexican wrestler named Sadika, and she comes out to the ring to “Ultimate Battle” the Ultra Instinct Goku theme from DBS.  So that fuckin’ rules.  Nick Gage was getting into it on commentary, so you know he knows what’s up.  Fortunately, Sadika won, so we got to hear more of the song to close out the show, but now I gotta get ready for this next GCW show that starts in a couple of minutes.

Somewhere in the midst of this chaos, I’m gonna try to knock out 1000 words today, and then again on Saturday.   I was concerned about tackling another 30k challenge after I struggled to finish in January, but I’m feeling pretty good right now.  Everything has mostly gone according to plan in February and March, and I think I’m where I need to be.  

I like April Fools Day less and less each year.  I’m not knocking anyone doing gags and pranks for the occasion, but I find the whole thing exhausting, like I’m supposed to do a thing like “Actually I hate Dragon Ball now!” and stick to that gimmick for 24 hours.   Can’t do it. Besides, I got too much stuff to do right now.

[duhragonball]

Aprum Update: 26,074

Very productive Easter weekend.  I managed to hit a 5k goal for Sunday, and that brings my three-day total up to 11,817.  So of my entire 30k goal for the month, I just polished off about 40% in these past three days.  Nice. 

One of these days, I really need to figure out why the April writing session always seems to go better than the January one, but like I was saying before, I think I’m going to rethink which months I use next year.  So maybe it doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that I’m in the home stretch for this month.   I just need to take care of another 3926 words, and then I can do whatever the fuck I want for the rest of the month.  

Well, I probably should do some editing, but one thing at a time...

[duhragonball]

Camp Nanwum Update: 18,304

I keep forgetting what I’m calling these April/July things.  The “Janwum” thing is so great, but I find the whole “camp Nano” branding pointless.  Time was, you could only use the the NNWM website in November, April, and July, and the latter two months were given the whole camp business.  Now, you can make a project whenever you want, any time of year, so April and July are just the months where they put all the campground stuff on the site.  

Really, I’m thinking of just ditching April and July altogether for this stuff.  I mean, I only used those months before because I had to, but now I’ve got the whole calendar to work with, so it seems silly.  June and August, maybe.  Or just one of those two.  Maybe I should scale back.

I had a good session yesterday.  Last year I had to work on Good Friday AND Easter, which was a huge pain in the ass, so I’m grateful that things have settled down enough for me to actually use this time for leisure.  I actually wrote 4k yesterday, and I needed that, because I was starting to wonder if I still had it in me.  And I still had time to watch some long-ish YouTube videos and an AEW show.   Yesterday went very well for me. 

Today, I’m kind of at a crossroads, so I want to take a moment to unpack the penultimate stage in the story mode of Xenoverse 1.   I’ve begun calling it “The Battle of West City”, but it’s basically the last Time Patrol mission before your character comes back to base to find Demigra has taken over.   This whole thing is a mess, and while I’m not quite there yet in my fic, the off-ramp is getting closer, so I’m going to have to start thinking about it.  Let’s do that together, shall we?

All right, so what happens in the game is you convince Beerus that the Time Patrol can defeat Demigra for him, and so he leaves.   Then Chronoa warns you that the final battle with Demigra is imminent, although it’s not clear if she actually knows that for certain. 

Actually, now that I think about it, I need to clarify that in my story.   Up to a point in the game, everyone acts like Demigra’s plan is a mystery, but then Chronoa explains it to Whis and he surmises that all of these time-incursions are designed to weaken the seal of Demigra’s prison.  Like it’s obvious or something.   I wrote that conversation a few days ago, and I had Chronoa just go “yeah, we think so too.” Because I didn’t want Whis to understand the nature of the crisis better than she does.  But doing that means Chronoa figured it out a while ago and just hasn’t shared that with Trunks or Luffa yet, so I need a scene where she explains it to them.

Anyway, in the game, there’s a scene where they all stand around in the Time Vault, and Trunks can sense Demigra’s power, and even he knows shit’s about to go down.  Chronoa confirms that he’s finally escaped from the Crack of Time, so I guess Demigra’s just sort of cruising around, making no secret of his presence in the universe.  I guess this is like that Simpsons where Sideshow Bob kept threatening to kill Bart.

As a side note, I find it strange how a lot of Japanese fantasy stories like this one will sort of conflate “sealed away” with “killed”.   Like, Trunks refers to Demigra’s escape as “the revival of the Demon God”, but Demigra isn’t coming back to life, he’s just breaking the seal that kept him confined.  This sort of thing came up a lot when I watched the Babidi Saga in Japanese, and the subtitles constantly spoke of Majin Buu as if he were dead, and Babidi needed the energy to “resurrect”.  The word “revive” sort of works, because that can imply a rejuvenation instead of a literal raising of the dead, but when it’s used interchangeably with “resurrect” then it sounds like we’re talking about the dead coming back to life.   And that’s cool and all, I have no problem with the concept, but I don’t think that was the authors’ intent for these characters.  I think it has something to do with Japanese mythology and folklore, where there’s a blurry line between killing a demon and trapping it with a seal.  Maybe there’s a language thing to this that gets lost in translation. Anyway...

So then they sense something else that makes them worried, like I guess Demigra is using even more power than before, so they know it’s about to get bad.  Chronoa asks Trunks to take care of Toki Toki (the bird, not the city), and she leaves to do something else. 

Then we see Chronoa outside the Time Vault, preparing to summon Shenron.  I’ve always assumed this was how Goku got involved with this part of the story, but I’m not sure if this is stated outright.

Then it just goes straight into the mission.   Your character is in West City, faced with Frieza, Cell, and Kid Buu, all under Demigra’s spell.  This is never explained.   Cell speculates that someone must have brought them back to life with the Dragon Balls, but he doesn’t actually know that for a fact, and he has no idea who Demigra is.  But that’s all the game gives me.

So you fight them for a while, and then Goku shows up, and he says the Supreme Kai of Time explained the whole situation to him, so he’s here to help.  Fair enough, but why wouldn’t Goku have come to this battle on his own?  Surely he would have sensed three major villains causing trouble in West City, where all his pals live.  

After you beat Frieza, Cell, and Buu, three more enemies show up, and it’s Gohan, Gotenks, and Vegeta, also under Demigra’s spell.  I’m thinking that in my version, it should be Luffa and Goku against all six of them, like just a big-ass rumble.  But we’ll see.  

Anyway, after you win, Goku says “Don’t worry about us, I’ll get the bad guys, no sweat.  And I’ll make everything right with the Namekian Dragon Balls.”   He leaves Demigra to your character, but promises to catch up with you later.  Okay, but what bad guys is he talking about?   The dialogue makes it sound like there are still enemies to fight on Earth, but who?  And what is Goku going to “make right” with the Namekian Dragon Balls?  I think he’s only specifying the Namekian set because of the implication that Demigra used the Earth’s Dragon Balls to bring back Frieza and the others.  

Back in Toki Toki City, Demigra enters the town by smashing his way out of the giant hourglass in the center.  I’m not sure if that’s supposed to mean something or if he was just looking to make a dramatic entrance.   He spies Tokitoki flying nearby and eats him.   No other characters appear in this cutscene, which is weird, because you’d think the other Time Patrollers would react to this.   But by the time your character returns to the City, Demigra has mind controlled Trunks, so maybe he already took over the Time Patrollers before he ate the bird?  I’m not trying to nitpick this part, but there’s a lot of details that get glossed over, and I’ll have to settle on some these things myself to make it work in my version.

So far, I’ve been leaning towards having this all be a two-pronged assault by Demigra.  He attacks West City in the past, forcing the Time Patrol to sent Luffa to defend it, which leaves Toki Toki City vulnerable to invasion.  No one thought Demigra could control that many people all at once so it never occurred to anyone to prepare for such a thing... except Chronoa, who used the Dragon Balls to deputize Goku, who has the power to turn the tide on both fronts.  

But I still need to sort out just what Chronoa wished for, and how Goku was able to just teleport into Toki Toki City the way he does during the final battle, and how Demigra could bring Frieza back without all the same hassles Sorbet ran into in Resurrection F.  But now that I’ve written all this out, I feel like I have a better handle on the problem.

[duhragonball]

Aprwum Update: 8,624

I’ve been on a pretty decent run so far. I thought the first three days would go poorly because I was watching all these GCW shows during WrestleMania weekend, but I actually found time to keep up with writing.  The goal is 30k, so as long as I keep averaging 1k a day, I should be fine.��

I need to focus on that positive, because I had hoped to pull ahead over these past three days, and that hasn’t materialized.   So I can either write 5k words over the weekend, or just accept a steady pace across all thirty days.   That second option is probably more advisable, but I always worry that I’ll fall behind and regret not writing ahead early.   Then again, that’s basically what I did in January, so I don’t know why I’m so concerned about it.   I mean, it wasn’t a good time, but it’s already happened.   And I’m already in a better position this time than I was then.  

But I use that to keep me motivated. I haven’t missed a NanoWriMo goal since 2017, and now I feel like there’s some incentive to keep the streak going.  One of these years, I may crash and burn, or decide to withdraw from the event, or just decide I’ve written enough words even if it’s short of the posted goal.   But not this time.  

My goal for the year is to update the fic to one million words.   Currently I’m about 110,000 shy, but I should have the bulk of it sorted out by November 30.  I tried extrapolating where that would put me in terms of the plot, and it sure looks like I’ll have wrapped up this whole “Xenoverse 1″ leg of the story.  I mean, I’m working on the Beerus stage of the story mode now, and after that is just the part where Demigra makes his move and the player defeats him to save the day.   It’s hard for me to know exactly how long that will take, but if I don’t get there by 11/30, I’ll probably be very close, which is surreal to me.  I’ve been aiming for that milestone for so long that it’s strange to think of it being so close. 

That won’t be the end of the fic, though.   I have some stuff planned beyond Demigra, but it’s all pretty raw and nebulous.  I resolved not to get too deep in those weeds until I needed to be.   The point is that I could end the story with the Demigra arc.  It’s a natural place to stop, like the end of the Cell Games in DBZ, where I could add more but not feel like there was no closure.  So it’s always been very important to me to make it this far.  

But I haven’t made it yet, so I gotta stick with this.   I started writing this post because I had to look up the land snail article on Wikipedia to choose a name for a Namekian and now it’s like three hours later and I still haven’t picked one, so I should really get back to work.   Later.

[duhragonball]

Camp Nanwum Update: 15,486

Yeah, it feels that..............................................................way.

[duhragonball]

Camp Nanwum Update: 7,760

I thought that I would start out strong and knock out 10k by July 4, but that hasn't happened. I'm still satisfied with my progress, since I'm only a little bit under par for the month. If I keep averaging about 1k per day, I'll be fine, and I plan to pull ahead a little this weekend. I'm definitely in a better place than I was in April or January.

What slowed me down is a process I call "bonepiling" where I write scenes for future chapters, and when I finally get to those chapters, I have to incorporate those scenes into what I'm currently doing. I let it get out of control in 2019, and I spent most of 2020 fixing it, but I still do it from time to time. It's not so bad as long as I don't do it to excess. But it really kills momentum for the opening days of a writing month like this.

For example, I was doing some plotting (read: checking the Xenoverse 1 article on the DB wiki to see what happens next in the game) and I got sorely tempted to skip ahead and do some Demigra stuff. But I can't afford to do that. That's what got me all fucked over in 2019, and I can't let that happen again. I have to keep the bonepile small. Actually, maybe I should impose a limit for that. I have the text files in a folder, and I could just say "no more than 100kb of loose scenes". Or whatever a good number would be.

I've been writing this stupid, stupid longfic for six years now. My productivity seems to be fine, but morale is low, and I want to try to capture the reasons for that.

First, I think my "bonepile" problem isn't just a folder of loose scenes on my computer. I've been mentally plotting the Time Patrol segment of this fic since 2015. At the time, I always looked forward to reaching this place I'm in now, because it would be so much easier and more fun to write. I have all the Dragon Ball characters at my disposal now! I have the story mode of XV1 to serve as my outline!

But the downside is that I've been mentally preparing for this part for so long that it feels kind of dull to actually write it. This isn't a confidence thing, because I can tell I'm putting down good material. It kicks ass; but I just don't care, because I've known a lot of the plot details for so many years. I've got to figure out how to deal with that. Maybe writing some short fics on the side might help, but I don't want to take away productivity from this thing.

Second, I've just been feeling worn down by the sheer length of this project. I knew it would be this way. Tumblr and the fandom have changed like four times since I started, and it feels like I'm still here doing the same old shit. I knew it would be like this. People were going to come and go, and I'd get older and greyer, and I'd worry that I'd lose touch with the audience if this dragged on too long. That's why I put this thing off for so many years in the first place. In 2015, I decided that if I didn't do it now, it wouldn't get done. I made my choice, and I planned to stick to that choice no matter what.

But lately, it just feels less worthwhile. I'm operating less on enjoyment of the game and more on resolve to see this through. I read somewhere that writing is like gardening, and I'm definitely tilling soil and pulling weeds this year. Been a long time since I got to enjoy a salad from my harvest. To be clear, this isn't me whining about a lack of feedback. I've gotten plenty on this story already, and I'm grateful for it. The issue is that I used to be able to get hype for this all by myself, and I'm having a harder time doing that.

Third, I may be getting desensitized to the boost I used to get from the numbers. I found word counts and Nanowrimo stats to be pretty exciting a few years ago, and I still think they're a valuable tool, but I need something more, I think. Maybe blocking out four months for writing sessions isn't the right call anymore. I'm not sure what to do instead though.

I read once that Hirohiko Araki got really disillusioned with the quality of his work while he was doing JoJo Part 6, which probably explains why he took so many drastic measures near the end, and why Part 7 is so different from the ones before it. The thing is, I liked Part 6 just fine, so I never understood what it was that made him feel like the work was getting stale. Maybe, objectively, there was never a problem, but he'd been doing the comic for about 15 years, and just needed to do something different for his own sanity. I'm starting to think I've reached my own Part 6 crisis, only I'm not sure how to resolve it. For now, I'm just going to stick to my plan, because I know it works.

[duhragonball]

Camp Nanwum Update: 30,032

And there we have it.

[duhragonball]

Camp Nanwum Update: 28,737

I slipped a little on Thursday, but I just need 1263 words to finish, and there’s still plenty of July left to knock that out.   Victory is assured, so I’m gonna slack off like the hare did when he was racing that tortoise.   Hares always seem to know what’s up.  

I don’t want to give away too much about what I’ve been writing, but I’m really glad that I wrote Luffa in chronological order, rather than trying to do the Xenoverse stuff first and flashing back to her past.   That was a tough call for me to make in 2015, because the video game was what prompted me to sit down and write the story, and I spent all those years wishing I could just skip ahead to the video game parts.   But now I’m finally here and the main drama is the character remembering her old life and the loved ones she left behind.   That works a lot better when you already have that lore laid down.    I can just refer back to stuff that I actually wrote about instead of trying to invent things from scratch.   It hasn’t always been easy doing things this way, but it’s definitely paying off.   My vision for the story is that some reader could jump in at chapter 142 and read the Xenoverse stuff as a standalone work, and maybe jump back to the Thousand-years-ago stuff if they were curious.   Sort of like the break between Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z.   But I knew I couldn’t write it like that and I’m more sure of it than ever.

I feel a lot better about going into November.   My goal for the year was to hit 850k on the fic, and I think I should be able to clear that without much trouble.   Then I move on into 2022, and... this thing may end up being one million words long.   It feels wrong that it could get that big, and I’m not sure it actually will, but at the same time it seems to be well on track for that.  I mean, either I hit 1 million or the fic ends, but one of those things is going to happen in 2022.   

I’d better get back to it.   I just remembered hares eat grass, and that sounds nasty, so maybe they don’t have all the answers after all.

[duhragonball]

Camp Nanwum Update: 18,627

I’m not that much further along than the last time I updated, but for some reason I feel better about the progress I’ve made.    Maybe it’s just because I’m well past the halfway mark.  If I flame out now, it won’t be impossible to catch up in the final week.

I still feel a lack of direction with what I’ve been doing.   Not so much that I don’t know where to take the story, or even “Should I still be working on this story?”    It’s more like I’m just doing it out of rote, or for lack of anything more important to do.  But that may subside as I get past this segment that I’ve been struggling with lately.

[duhragonball]

Camp Nanwum Update: 00,000

I keep forgetting it's July 1, even though I've written down today's date a dozen times this morning already. I wanted to write a little at 12:01am, more for morale than a head start, but I had to be up early today so that wasn't an option.

But so far, today's turning out better than I expected. Not sure if this hot streak will hold until I actually get a chance to sit down and write, but at least I won't be sitting down after a crappy day.

I had considered just going into a total lockdown--turn off asks and bar myself from watching wrestling all month-- but I don't know. Maybe I'll just fuck around and find out.

[duhragonball]

Nanwum IV toolboxkit

I have a love/hate relationship with the word “tool”.  On the one hand, tools are awesome.    I like holding a big screwdriver and thinking about all the screws I can loosen with it.    I ordered a thing at work yesterday and I can’t wait for it to arrive.   There’s a rush of power in knowing some object will solve a bunch of problems.   Look out, screws.

On the other hand, it annoys me how people use the term “tool” in a more abstract sense, like statistical “tools” or using a flow chart to figure out what to do.    I can’t hold any of that crap, so calling it a tool feels like a bait-and-switch.   But I can appreciate the power of the term.   If you can liken a thing to a power drill, then you have my attention.   

Anyway, this weekend is for making preparations for National Novel Writing Month, which starts next Sunday, so I thought it would be useful to go over the stuff that I use to get me through it.  

1) The NaNoWriMo website.

Back in 2017, I seriously considered not even bothering with the website, because I figured it had nothing to offer.    I’m the one doing all the work, right?   But tracking progress is an effective motivator, and I like being able to see a chart that shows how well I’m doing.    There’s some bugs in it.    For some reason it doesn’t show my Camp Nano April 2018 as being complete, and when I tried to fix it, it doubled the word count instead.  

It’s also useful for where I’m at today.    Now that I’ve done this thing a few times, I can measure current performance against past years.  November 2018 was my personal best, so I’m going to use that as a model for this year.    I don’t need to beat 2018-me, but I do need to remind myself that I’ve performed this well in the past.  

2) George R. R. Martin motivational desktop wallpaper.

I started doing this as a joke, but looking at this dude sitting at his computer, not writing is a much more powerful motivator than I ever thought possible.  The idea is that if I minimize the writing window to do something else, I have to look this dude in the eye before I can look up Robocop clips on YouTube.   I’ve had months where I was struggling to meet the goal, and then I went “Oh, yeah, I forgot to change my desktop pic, and it pushes me over the finish line.   It’s like Popeye eating spinach.   

Now the Tone Police will take issue with something like this, and call it arrogant.   “How dare you put down a highly successful fantasy author just to make yourself feel confident,” they’ll say as they wag their finger.   “Don’t you care that you might be making procrastinators feel bad?”  To that I say: fuck’em.  

See, I’m a world-class procrastinator in my own right.   I have to get hyped for this stuff every year, because that’s the only way I can build up enough momentum to see it through.    Like all Sith Lords, I have to call upon all of my emotions -- fear, anger, pride, fernweh -- to fuel the creative monster.  I don’t make a dime on this, so if I can’t take some bloody satisfaction out of it then what’s the point?   

I’m pretty sure George doesn’t even know I do this, but in case he’s reading this, let me address him specifically: George, I’ve cranked out three of these Nanwums and you still haven’t finished Winds of Winter, which is well on its way to becoming the Duke Nukem Forever of modern fantasy.   I don’t know if you got soft, like Rocky in Rocky IV, or maybe you’ve lost your confidence like Rocky in Rocky III, but you have to kindle a fire under your ass, even if it’s a silly fire, like fear of dying before the book goes to print, or getting it done just to spite assholes like me.   But find something and use it.  

3) Kenny Omega vs. Sonny Kiss, AEW Dynamite 10/21/2020

This was a first-round match in a tournament for the right to challenge for the AEW World title, and it was Kenny’s big return to singles action, so I guess the idea here was to make him look strong by having him crush Sonny Kiss in under 15 seconds.   I’ve seen blowouts in wrestling before, but this one speaks to me on a different level, and I’m sorely tempted to swap out my GRRM image with this shot of in-the-zone Kenny Omega.

Because I feel this right now.    This isn’t like last year or the year before, where I got behind working on stuff in October so I wasn’t fully prepared.   I got all caught up a few weeks ago, and I have eight days to get ready.    I haven’t written a thing in weeks, and I’m itching to get back to it.    I want a big Day One total to start the month off, and seeing this match makes me want to aim even higher than 7000 words.    Can I hit 10,000 in one day?    The Cleaner sure thinks so.  Clapclap-clap clap clap.   

4) Focus Writer

You can check it out for yourself at https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/

The main selling point for Focus Writer is that it can be used for “distraction free” writing, in that it’s default setting makes it tricky to minimize the window to do other stuff.   But I turned that off a while back.    For my purposes, I just need the word counter.  

One thing I learned while editing work instead of writing from scratch is that you can just set the word count goal to 100 words.    That way, the percentage displayed at the bottom of the screen will keep track of how many words you’ve written in that session.   So if you write 1275 new words, the counter will say 1275%.  

I used to set actual goals, like 3500 words for the day or whatever, but I found myself constantly trying to calculate what 53% of that is, and that ended up being a huge distraction in itself.    So now I just stick to the 100 word “goal” and use it to track my actual progress, rather than setting lofty goals that I may not need to actually hit.   The Nano website does that for me anyway.

5) The Adventures of Dumplin

I’m essentially adapting the events of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 1 into this story, so I could break out my PS3 and play it through again to remind me of all the stuff I wanted to use from 2015, but it’s a lot easier to just watch someone else play it instead.   Team FourStar’s playthrough of the Xenoverse games is some of their best material, as far as I’m concerned, and knowing this is one of my go-to references is going to make this November pretty awesome.   

I’m not sure I could, or should, work Dumplin into my fic.  If I did, he couldn’t be the same guy who saved the day in this LP series, because I’m having Luffa do all that.   Early on, I envisioned a scene where she wakes up one morning after a night of heavy drinking and finds Dumplin in bed with her, but that seemed a little too goofy to use.    But I want you to have that mental picture anyway, so I’m writing about it here.

6) Diet Pepsi

Straight Edge, Hard Core.    Stephen King’s a wuss for using cocaine to help him write.   

[duhragonball]

Janwum Update: 6087

My goal for 2021 is to write 150,000 more words onto my damn wienerfic.   I think I ended up somewhere around that number last year, but it was hard to tell since my main objective involved wrangling a bunch of words that I had already written pre-2020.   The point is, I’m pretty sure I can pull it off this year because it’s not too far off from past performance.  My breakdown for ‘21 goes like this:

January: 30,000 words

April: Camp Nano I: 30,000 words

July: Camp Nano II: 30,000 words

November: Nanwum V-The Mega Powers Explode:  60,000 words. 

I figured January would be a great time to start.    I get New Years Day off, I had all of December to rest up, and what else am I going to do while it’s cold as balls?   Well, I got tied up with something at work, that’s what.   I got that dealt with, but it cut into the first 11 days or so of my January, and then I bummed around a few more days before I finally got cracking on that 30,000 word goal.    So I’m at 6k now, but that’s like four days’ worth of progress, so it’s not as bad as it looks.  

Really, this is just like every 25k Camp Nano goal I’ve ever done.   I go in thinking it’ll be a breeze, then end up in a crunch at the last two weeks.   Maybe I should set higher word goals?    Like, just do 45k in April?  I don’t know, I’d hate to box myself in, but the irony here is that I seem to struggle more on the smaller goals than the larger ones.   

Anyway, I’m trying to do 1k-per-day through this week, and then I’ve got some time off to bust my hump and hopefully get a safe lead built up.   I look at it like this:

T 1/19: Oh shit, that’s tonight.   Reach 7000.

W 1/20: Reach 8000, AEW kind of sucks lately anyway, so maybe just skip wrestling this week.

R 1/21: Reach 9000

F 1/22: Reach 10000

S 1/23: 13000

S 1/24: 16000

M 1/25: 19000

T 1/26: 22000

W 1/27: 25000

R 1/28: 26000

F 1/29: 27000

S 1/30: 30000 finish.

And that leaves me the 31st in case anything goes wrong.

One of these days, I want to try to bust my one-day record, but I’m not sure this is a good time to try that.   Something to think about, anyway.   That’s pretty much all I’ve got, so I’ll leave you with a charming screencap of Guldo.