NoNaNo 2020

I’ve been thinking about this off and on over the last couple of weeks, and now, the first day of NaNoWriMo 2020, I’ve officially made the decision to blow off doing NaNo this year.

Oh, I’ll still be writing. Or at least, I will be if I can resist the lure that is getting distracted by social media. I’ll just be prioritizing content over word count–for instance, I’m only two chapters away from finishing the original timeline in my Legends of Tomorrow fanfic “What Could Have Been” (the same two chapters I had left come the end of last year’s NaNo), and dagnabbit I need to get that done!

 

Writing stories is not the only project that lurking on social media has distracted me from. There is also:

• my primary blog, Side Quest Publications, and the book reviews and Bookcrossing drop-offs that I intend to upload
• my travel blog, Tamie’s Travels, and the posts I wish to write comparing some of my recording options,
• the two sites’ related YouTube channels (also called Side Quest Publications and Tamie’s Travels),
• other writing projects such as my decade-in-progress original fantasy pirate novel,
• and simply getting off my butt and exercising and hopefully losing weight–not to mention fat content, I’ve got a BF reader that says I’m so fat it can’t even measure it–with the added “bonus” that certain workouts, game-related that they are, should eventually appear on my gaming YouTube channel currently titled Unfashionably Late Gaming. Speaking of which, I have plenty of indie games to choose from to start uploading to that channel, I just need to start playing it so I can record content worth uploading.

And all of that doesn’t even include things I want to do for the sake of doing them, without any intent to publish. I have several games that I’ve put off playing simply for working five days a week and spending too much time idly browsing social media the other two.

 

I might change my mind and decide to join NaNo as a latecomer, but for the time being, these other projects that I should have been working on all year long are simply higher priority. Feel free to follow me on any of these other sites if you’d like to see my progress… or my attempt at pulling myself away from social media long enough to make any.

NaNo 2019 Day ….17

Well, I’ve been slacking off in more ways than one. At first I just missed updating my website one day. Then another. Then for more than a week.

And then my word count started to drop. And then I missed a few days of writing. (I’d just read during my lunch breaks over the weekend. I shamelessly blame the fact that the current chapter is done and I hadn’t mentally prepared myself to begin the next.) Oh, I haven’t fallen behind, not yet. I still have a buffer of (checks spreadsheet) two days, and I managed to get the “badge” for updating on the official site for 14 days in a row (though I’d really rather have the calendar on my site like I had in years past), though slacking off over the weekend lost me the chance at the one for 21 days in a row. Honestly I don’t think I’ve managed a single year in which I updated every single day, so par for the course?

But the problem with that buffer? Like many a NaNo in my past, some of that word count is rebelling, the inclusion of pre-existing notes for the purpose of keeping “what’s supposed to happen when” all together in one place so I don’t have to keep referring to other documents as I go. And since I try to upload my fanfics as I write them, editing as I went was a necessity (and with that, the latest chapter is finally done, or at least as done as it’s going to be without me dithering over it forever), which means that my word count also includes several version of the same scenes… and not just random phrases here and there, but entire paragraphs. I might chip away at some of the excess duplicate content, so as to make my word count better reflect my true progress, but even that’s going to be slow going as I’ll still aim for an add/remove balance that at least meets the daily goal of 1667 words.

So… my “progress” in terms of word count:
Daily goal: 1667 words
Daily count (we’ll go with the most recent update of Nov 15th for this one): 1935
Total goal: 28333
Total count: 32215
Report card reports: At this rate, you will finish on Nov 27.

Fellow NaNoers, how goes the word count?

NaNo 2019 Day 4-5

And somehow I forgot to update my blog for Day 4. Shame on me. 😉 But I did update my word count on the official NaNo site, so at least I won’t (yet) miss out on badges for updating so many days in a row.

Anyway, content-wise, I’m just about done with that trial along with whatever other scenes my brain keeps wanting to jump to, and poor Len is trying not to have a panic attack over the prospect of wearing an ankle monitor (he’s considering the possibility of the Santinis hacking into the system and tracking him down that way, never mind that that requires them to learn that he survived the encounter with Frank’s favorite hitman). Once he’s been ordered to work off his sentence, it will be time for him to work out living arrangements, what with having to stay in Starling City until the Reverse Flash comes along to screw everything up.

The story, as previously mentioned, is available on Archive of our Own (linked above), fanfiction.net, and deviantArt…
And once again I warn new readers, the story begins with Len working for the Santinis themselves, not as a common thug as he might have preferred, but as a honey-pot, one whose job is to seduce and most likely sleep with his marks. In addition to his discomfort at being forced to work for them in that capacity, there is also the matter that this leads to a (mutually) non-consensual scene between himself and Tess Morgan; while the previous two sites have the story rated as “Teen” due to my efforts to keep things vague, three chapters are marked as “Mature” over on deviantArt.

Word-count-wise, I finally have a single day’s buffer… though of course editing so I can post that chapter will make the buffer completely invisible to readers.

Daily goal (as always): 1667 words
Daily count: 3148
Total goal: 8333
Total count: 11465
Report card reports: At this rate, you will finish on Nov 22.

We’ll see, report card. We’ll see.

Fellow NaNoers, how goes the word count?

NaNo 2019 Day 3

As is typical on my work days, I didn’t get nearly as much completed as I would have hoped, word-count or content-wise.

Content-wise, I began expanding on the trial. The original version, which I retained for word count, was as an info-dump and “anticlimactically short” as mentioned in the post for Day 2. Despite the decision to add to the scene and show how it happened instead of merely telling it, writing during my lunch break didn’t get me much farther than explaining the beginning of the trial… namely, the fact that he requested a bench trial rather than a jury at the DA’s suggestion.

I still need to write the actual trial to get a proper scene in there. 😉

One of the results of this expansion, in addition to adding word count for NaNo, is that the posted chapter will be quite a bit longer than planned. The original idea was that Chapter 15 would be a “slice of life” with quite a few time skips, starting with the meeting with the DA and ending sometime in December (the current scene in progress is still in April) when “Mr. Absent-Minded Professor” (as Lisa refers to Doctor Wells in a later chapter) loses track of time and accidentally forces Len to break his legally-enforced curfew. An ironic choice given that the story description focuses on the time Len worked for Tess and Harry (as well as the consequences of that history being changed vis a vis the Reverse Flash), but that timeframe would only take place during chapters 15 and 16 before the timeline changes.

The new version, courtesy of the expanded trial, would most likely have the trial finishing off chapter 15, with chapter 16 dealing with the slice-of-life aspect of Len’s job, chapter 17 finishing off the relevant portion of the timeline a few years later… and then chapter 18 resetting everything back to the middle of March when the Reverse Flash first showed up. That all assumes that I don’t come up with more content as I go.

The story, as previously mentioned, is available on Archive of our Own (linked above), fanfiction.net, and deviantArt…
And once again I warn new readers, the story begins with Len working for the Santinis themselves, not as a common thug as he might have preferred, but as a honey-pot, one whose job is to seduce and most likely sleep with his marks. In addition to his discomfort at being forced to work for them in that capacity, there is also the matter that this leads to a (mutually) non-consensual scene between himself and Tess Morgan; while the previous two sites have the story rated as “Teen” due to my efforts to keep things vague, three chapters are marked as “Mature” over on deviantArt.

Word-count-wise, I made quite a bit more progress but not enough for a buffer.

Daily goal (as always): 1667 words
Daily count: 1833
Total goal: 5000
Total count: 6352
Report card reports: At this rate, you will finish on Nov 24.

Fellow NaNoers, how goes the word count?

NaNo 2019 Day 2

Chapter 15 of the prequel fanfic What Could Have Been is still in progress. Content-wise I’ve finished up the meeting with the DA and moved on to the (anticlimactically short) trial, and soon it will be time for him to pick out a place to live while he is legally confined to an unfamiliar city and to begin work at STAR Labs.

Hmmm…. I might want to add a bit to the trial just so that the DA’s actually involved.

The story, as previously mentioned, is available on Archive of our Own (linked above), fanfiction.net, and deviantArt…
And once again I warn new readers, the story begins with Len working for the Santinis themselves, not as a common thug as he might have preferred, but as a honey-pot, one whose job is to seduce and most likely sleep with his marks. In addition to his discomfort at being forced to work for them in that capacity, there is also the matter that this leads to a (mutually) non-consensual scene between himself and Tess Morgan; while the previous two sites have the story rated as “Teen” due to my efforts to keep things vague, three chapters are marked as “Mature” over on deviantArt.

Word-count-wise, I made quite a bit more progress but not enough for a buffer.

Daily goal (as always): 1667 words
Daily count: 2771
Total goal: 3333
Total count: 4519
Report card reports: At this rate, you will finish on Nov 23.

NaNo 2019 Day 1

And we’re off! Chapter 14, the latest chapter posted thus far of the fanfic What Could Have Been, saw its way through a twenty-something Leonard Snart breaking into the Starling City university, being arrested for said break-in, and finally being offered the opportunity to work off his sentence–in the form of working at the brand-new Star Labs–instead of returning to prison where he’d be a virtual sitting duck for the Santinis.

In the current chapter-in-progress, we have Len and assorted representatives presenting the idea to the Starling City District Attorney in the hopes that she would be willing and able to persuade the judge that this is the best course of action.

The story is available on Archive of our Own (linked above), fanfiction.net, and deviantArt…
though I must warn new readers, the story begins with Len working for the Santinis themselves, not as a common thug as he might have preferred, but as a honey-pot, one whose job is to seduce and most likely sleep with his marks. In addition to his discomfort at being forced to work for them in that capacity, there is also the matter that this leads to a (mutually) non-consensual scene between himself and Tess Morgan; while the previous two sites have the story rated as “Teen” due to my efforts to keep things vague, three chapters are marked as “Mature” over on deviantArt.

Word-count-wise, I didn’t make a whole lot of progress for the first day, though I hope to get a bit of a buffer in there at some point.

Daily goal (as always): 1667 words
Daily count: 1748
Report card reports: At this rate, you will finish on Nov 29.

NaNo 2019 Day 0

Between my work schedule and getting over a cold, I’d nearly forgotten, but now it’s time for another round of National Novel Writing Month!

Since I have not planned out what I’m going to write for NaNo this year, I think I’m just going to try to finish the fanfic I’m currently working on: the Flash Sideways prequel fic, What Could Have Been. The fic takes place in 2000 both before and after the Reverse Flash changes things and shows both timelines from Leonard Snart’s (and his fellow Rogues’ where needed) perspective. At this point of writing I should be nearly done with Timeline 1.0 and will soon be ready to show off how the Reverse Flash’s assault on Barry Allen changes things for the Rogues; once that’s done, then we’ll see what story grabs me next.

As for the project’s status on the official NaNo site, I’m listing it with the details of the primary Flash Sideways fic or “series” rather than specifically the prequel’s details. Those details are, as copied directly from the series on AO3:

 

What if someone with an eidetic memory could remember other timelines? How would those memories look to such a person… or to the people around them? How would it feel to have history changing around them?
What happens when such a person remembers dying?

Fellow NaNo-ers, old and new, welcome to a new NaNo and good luck with your projects!

 

NaNo 2018 Day 29

I won! I won! I won the NaNo!

On the content front, I’ve done some work on the Handcuffs segment of What If, ironically focusing on scenes that I most likely will not include when I finally upload the darn thing.
Though given how much Len is flirting with every lady he talks to–seriously, does he think he’s Jack Harkness or something?–before they even head to Russia and the intended point of the ficlet, maybe I should include it… it will make Ray’s misunderstanding all the more likely, and might make it all the funnier, when the story leads to that point. 😁 Though if I do that I’d almost certainly need to upload it as a separate fic like I did with Necropolis; each “story” I’ve uploaded directly to the What If document has lasted for only one chapter and I kinda want to keep it that way.

And on the word count front….
Daily goal: 1667 words
Day’s count: 3649
Total goal: 48333
Total count: 53051
NaNo Word Count Validator: 52924

Think next year I’ll get a similar count without all the notes…? 🤞 Or that I’ll finally finish a draft of my novel-in-progress?

Fellow NaNoers, how goes the word count?

NaNo 2018 Day 28

Oh, geez, which fic did I spend most of my time on for Day 28? There were so many clamoring for my attention….

Well, I do recall I added a bit to Catalyst. Still not done with the “my work” section within Nanda Parbat before I need to pick up again with the “recreated-from-canon” scenes back on the Waverider, but I think I’ve picked a halfway decent point to cut off the current chapter so I can edit and upload to the various fanfic sites.

And speaking of scenes recreated from canon, I’m rewatching White Knights so I can (finally!) get to work on the What If ficlet Handcuffs… in which I explore what might have happened if Len had decided to accept Vostok’s invitation to go to her apartment. (*cough, cough*)
Question is, do I upload to the main What If document (and potentially change the rating, though the original plot doesn’t require anything, shall we say… steamy), or upload on its own (which, despite the lack of blatant steaminess, would also allow me to include it in the Since When Do I Write Sex Scenes “series”)? I will point out, however, that the Handcuffs ficlet was created long before most of my headcanon existed, particularly the headcanon suggested in the first few chapters of What Could Have Been and the mature-rated Confessions ficlet.

And on the word count front….
Daily goal: 1667 words
Day’s count: 1892
Total goal: 46667
Total count: 49402
Report card reports: At this rate, you will finish on Nov 29.

Fellow NaNoers, how goes the word count?

NaNo 2018 Day 27

I have once again added content to the Legends fanfic Catalyst. Not enough to upload a new chapter, I’m afraid, but I have finished one segment of scenes recreated from the episode Left Behind, leading up to Len’s appearance within Nanda Parbat, and am currently working on Ra’s al Ghul’s reaction to our favorite thief’s presence. Once that’s done I’ll have one more scene to recreate, then the unexpected results of his in-canon regeneration, and that part of the story will be done! And then I can move on to connecting the fic to the events of Infantano Street.

In the meantime there are still plenty of other works in progress in the various storyverses, some which I can (theoretically) continue wherever I’ve left off, and some that still require recreated scenes from the show.
Case in point, Tracing Time, the final Changes story (at this point in time) will require rewatching Fellowship of the Spear before I can even begin to write the more “original” content that takes place within the Doomworld timeline (and then the events of Aruba, which will almost all be recreated from canon but interpreted with the context of my headcanon), whereas the likes of Phoenix and my two remaining Flash Sideways fics have never required recreated scenes at all.

And on the word count front….
Daily goal: 1667 words
Day’s count: 1723
Total goal: 45000
Total count: 47510
Report card reports: At this rate, you will finish on Nov 29.

Fellow NaNoers, how goes the word count?