MaeradCase Posted April 25 Author Report Share Posted April 25 3 hours ago, Rhovaniel said: I can't wait to read the re-draft! Sounds like some great changes are happening! A few changes have happened, at least! I think it'll be good to enjoy two months away from what I've written before facing the challenge of reading what I've got and finding a way to bring the two drafts together. I might still present it in summary fashion to beta readers again since I might need help straightening up my pacing now that I have more scenes. 😅 3 hours ago, Silmarilliane said: That sounds a lot to get done at the weekend (and I do a LOT!) but sounds generally good, except the poor mac (I assume mac and cheese?) There's no excuse for poor mac and cheese! Yes, it was macaroni and cheese. I will never trust them again. 😆 3 hours ago, Silmarilliane said: Sorry the wedding was a bit isolate-y. I usually just go and dance with anyone who's on the dancefloor, but sometimes I've been actively shunned from joining, where they all turn to phase you out of the group, and it SUCKS. I can be a person who finds a way to dance with a crowd, but either I wasn't feeling up to it (possibly still drained from Saturday) or the atmosphere wasn't welcoming (no blame on the bride, though - she invited anybody to attend because she is the warmest person I know). I wouldn't have been able to resist any of my favorite party dance songs (especially Cha Cha Slide and Cupid Shuffle), but none of them played on my way out. 😜 1 1 Quote Level 8 Ranger Spoiler Previous challenges: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Current challenge: 9 - to write my second draft, to keep moving, and to keep eating more freggies Link to comment
MaeradCase Posted April 25 Author Report Share Posted April 25 Good afternoon! Glad to see everybody active on the forums wrapping up the last week of the challenge. I've got five days left in this month to compose scenes for my book, and it's turning into a skim-fest. 😅 I'm becoming very prone to describing the scene, how it differs from a previous composition, or also with some piggy-backing on details I established to not have to re-elaborate as I race to get both to the 50k mark and the end of the story. I have 5k words left!!! I now have three out of the four girls, and some new and interesting dynamics to explore before the final addition to the party is made. But I still need to compose in character to have strong content to work with. 🤔 Keeping track of travel time has definitely clarified how long these girls do and and don't spend with each other in this book. With that element in mind, I look forward to exploring how to pace the book better. 😃 We did something fun last night! Cid turned on a special about Doctor Who. It's the first of a set that talks about the cast of each season of Doctor Who, as well as the fundamental truths of each iteration of the doctor. Then there's a noteworthy episode - so we watched the 4 episodes when the doctor visited the Aztecs with his two teacher companions and his granddaughter. My brain decided to make references to Road to El Dorado several times (especially because High Priest of Sacrifices was very comparable to Tzekel-Kan) and also Ratatouille ("I killed a man... with THIS thumb"). Overall, it was delightful, and I expect I'll be watching more of them soon. 😉 We've been getting rain. I hope my wildflower seeds drink it up and be happy. ❤ Have a wonderful day! 😃 4 Quote Level 8 Ranger Spoiler Previous challenges: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Current challenge: 9 - to write my second draft, to keep moving, and to keep eating more freggies Link to comment
Silmarilliane Posted April 26 Report Share Posted April 26 Sad times on the mac and cheese as it's one of the greatest things, and SURELY so easy to do well?! With the writing challenge, what do you do with the story at the end? Is there a separate editing/rewrite process and that kinda thing - just sounds like the type of things you want to focus on would be reviewed in the 'second draft' or editing stage and so is less of a worry. I'm finding it really interesting hearing all the tips and tricks people are following for their writing though - the closest I've come to writing a story was when I was a kid I started 'Dragon Maze' which I started, got a few pages, stopped, found it and rewrote the same section + a bit, stopped and the repeated this a bunch of times over the years I think basically when I was a kid I wanted to find a secret maze accessed from a cave which had a dragon in the middle... 2 Quote Level 33 Rogue Ranger Welcome to the Dungeons of Doom; locate the Amulet of Yendor ♀ on Level 26 Challenges: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 Link to comment
MaeradCase Posted April 26 Author Report Share Posted April 26 10 hours ago, Silmarilliane said: With the writing challenge, what do you do with the story at the end? Well, the point of standard National Novel Writing Month is to get a 50k word drafted from start to finish (paying no heed to quality control or consistency of story - just getting it slammed out by the end of the month). They have advice they call "Now What?" on how a new author might approach the first draft of a novel they've just finished. 10 hours ago, Silmarilliane said: Is there a separate editing/rewrite process and that kinda thing - just sounds like the type of things you want to focus on would be reviewed in the 'second draft' or editing stage and so is less of a worry. I wrote the first draft in November, put it down for all of December, printed it and read it the first weekend of January, spent two weeks reading through it again trimming off everything but the outline of the story so that I could get outside opinions without sharing the messy thing I'd composed in November. 😉 This month I've put to use the insights I got from 4 beta readers, slashing out confusing changes of perspectives that I was using more for myself than for my story, minimizing violence/maximizing consequences, and trying to put a lot more scenes in that develop the image of the world. A lot of that last bit is about to go through the same ordeal as the perspective changes, getting cut from the screen, but they'll get their part in the outline since I want to read them, consider how well I connected them to the story, and if necessary acquire outside opinion about which ones don't seem relevant to the story. 10 hours ago, Silmarilliane said: I'm finding it really interesting hearing all the tips and tricks people are following for their writing though - the closest I've come to writing a story was when I was a kid I started 'Dragon Maze' which I started, got a few pages, stopped, found it and rewrote the same section + a bit, stopped and the repeated this a bunch of times over the years I think basically when I was a kid I wanted to find a secret maze accessed from a cave which had a dragon in the middle... That sounds a lot like my childhood experience of rewriting several times the story of a princess raised by potters, discovered by the local prince (who had been betrothed to the baby princess before her parents were murdered and she was hidden away!), and then she falls ill and is taken to an angry hermit for healing, but in trying to turn the prince into a centaur, he changes the princess (obviously because the horse was a mare, and the magic insisted). And that's pretty much what I never got past. 😅😆😂🤣 NaNoWriMo can be summed up as: You can't edit what isn't on the page Life is so busy, you won't write unless you make time for it Writing like a coffee-crazed madman is more fun when you have other people doing it with you They have set up two "Camp NaNo" months for people to have nonstandard goals of lower word counts, edited-page counts, time-spent-editing counts, etc. I used this month's for drafting my book a second time, but my struggle is that most of the NaNo advice is for writing the first draft start to finish and doesn't necessarily give advice for writing into the spaces in between what you've already written. 🤔 So I'm playing it by ear, and I'll get into the editing mode like January again come July Camp NaNo. Until then I get to have a two month holiday from my book in which I can be satisfied with having completed the challenge, and not contemplate the work ahead of reducing it to sharable size for the second time. 😆 3 1 Quote Level 8 Ranger Spoiler Previous challenges: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Current challenge: 9 - to write my second draft, to keep moving, and to keep eating more freggies Link to comment
Silmarilliane Posted April 27 Report Share Posted April 27 Thanks for explaining and summarising! Sounds like a really good 'community thing to get you to do stuff' which I guess is what these forums are also for! I have pretty much zero imagination (I can copy really well and take other people's ideas and run with them though!) but I've found that the Inktober I've done the last few years is zero-community, so it's hard to keep motivated other than to tick off the daily reminder on my phone... 2 Quote Level 33 Rogue Ranger Welcome to the Dungeons of Doom; locate the Amulet of Yendor ♀ on Level 26 Challenges: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 Link to comment
Sovalis Posted April 27 Report Share Posted April 27 45 minutes ago, Silmarilliane said: Thanks for explaining and summarising! Sounds like a really good 'community thing to get you to do stuff' which I guess is what these forums are also for! I have pretty much zero imagination (I can copy really well and take other people's ideas and run with them though!) but I've found that the Inktober I've done the last few years is zero-community, so it's hard to keep motivated other than to tick off the daily reminder on my phone... There’s a thread for Inktober here, I think. @Everstorm posts to it regularly with her awesome work! 1 1 1 Quote Past Challenges: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9 Current Challenge: #10 Link to comment
Everstorm Posted April 27 Report Share Posted April 27 Yes! Shameless plug for the Inktober thread on Maerad's, but I would love to see more contributors and conversation there. I'm glad to hear you survived the busy weekend, even if the wedding was a little flat. That is a lot of peopling in a short amount of time; I would have been burned out, too. How many words do you have left to meet the goal? Or are you past it and just trying to reach the end of the story? 1 Quote Life before Death Strength before Weakness Journey before Destination Link to comment
MaeradCase Posted April 27 Author Report Share Posted April 27 3 hours ago, Silmarilliane said: Thanks for explaining and summarising! Sounds like a really good 'community thing to get you to do stuff' which I guess is what these forums are also for! I think that overlap is why Team NF NaNo was a success last year. XD There's definitely a strong go-get-'em attitude here that motivates me to overcome resistance and do things. ❤ 3 hours ago, Silmarilliane said: I have pretty much zero imagination (I can copy really well and take other people's ideas and run with them though!) but I've found that the Inktober I've done the last few years is zero-community, so it's hard to keep motivated other than to tick off the daily reminder on my phone... I've never had success in doing Inktober, though I have three times used 30-day prompts to draw new things over the course of a year. 2 hours ago, Sovalis said: There’s a thread for Inktober here, I think. @Everstorm posts to it regularly with her awesome work! Love this. 😍 1 hour ago, Everstorm said: Yes! Shameless plug for the Inktober thread on Maerad's, but I would love to see more contributors and conversation there. I have zero problem with the shameless plug! 😆 Inktober always feels too big for me, but if we're doing it together, I don't mind coming on board. ☺ 1 hour ago, Everstorm said: I'm glad to hear you survived the busy weekend, even if the wedding was a little flat. That is a lot of peopling in a short amount of time; I would have been burned out, too. Thank you for the affirmation. 😍 1 hour ago, Everstorm said: How many words do you have left to meet the goal? Or are you past it and just trying to reach the end of the story? This morning I hit 48,000 exactly! I have 2,000 words left! 🎊🎉 I'm skimming past cities en route to the third tower, and haven't dipped much into Paige interacting with Elli and Varsha. 😥 But I got myself to the third tower so that Paige has a chance to shine by helping Elli when there's no hope of her fixing it in a week. 😲 Soon Katya will be introduced and I'll take this group to the finale with a couple more skimming jumps through the narrative. 😆 It seems like I won't get as much past 50k as I did in November, but I seem to have cancelled my weekend plans, so I may blast through to the best of my ability until the book's second draft is done with more details by the end of Sunday. 😲😃 3 1 Quote Level 8 Ranger Spoiler Previous challenges: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Current challenge: 9 - to write my second draft, to keep moving, and to keep eating more freggies Link to comment
Silmarilliane Posted April 28 Report Share Posted April 28 16 hours ago, Everstorm said: Yes! Shameless plug for the Inktober thread on Maerad's, but I would love to see more contributors and conversation there. Ooo, there's some beautiful stuff in there! I tend to just do a daily drawing in October, and have a theme for the month and draw what I see when I'm out and about (eg shelves, chairs, and in lockdown, the view from the same window every day ) This one you're is one a week with that particular prompt ya? I'm not sure I have the capacity (time or mentally!) to add it to my todo's every week, but will follow along and post some things in October 3 Quote Level 33 Rogue Ranger Welcome to the Dungeons of Doom; locate the Amulet of Yendor ♀ on Level 26 Challenges: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 Link to comment
shaar Posted April 28 Report Share Posted April 28 OMG only 2.000 words left! You are KILLING IT!!!! Eeee good luck!! 1 Quote i am not waiting for a hero. i saved myself long ago. Level 58 Bard & Monk of the Furious Heart STR.55 DEX.43 STA.48 CON.51 WIS.53 CHA.65 "Well...in the end, it boils down to two simple choices. Either you do or you don't. You'd think with all the problems in this world, there'd be more answers. It's not fair... ...But that's the way things are. The choice is yours." Link to comment
MaeradCase Posted April 28 Author Report Share Posted April 28 1 hour ago, shaar said: OMG only 2.000 words left! You are KILLING IT!!!! Eeee good luck!! Thank you! 😃 I got another 900 in this morning. I will definitely be hitting 50k. ❤ The big challenge now is to get to the end of the story, too, before I go to bed Sunday evening. 😆 2 1 Quote Level 8 Ranger Spoiler Previous challenges: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Current challenge: 9 - to write my second draft, to keep moving, and to keep eating more freggies Link to comment
MaeradCase Posted April 30 Author Report Share Posted April 30 Good morning, everyone! Happy end of challenge! What fun that it was also at the end of the month! I have excellent news regarding my Camp NaNo writing challenge: Not only that, but I also sat down in my writing chair this morning to push past the 50k I managed to hit yesterday in order to get to the key final words: Woohoo! It may have been a terrible skim-fest at the end, but I have wrapped up the story and fiddled with it in fun ways. Cid and I actually spent a couple of hours last night discussing aspects of my story - portals, realms, and character motivations. He's not exactly a beta reader because I'm worried that I wouldn't be able to withstand his level of criticism, but I don't deny him access to read the story if he were to choose to do so. Alright, the best news are out of the way, so let's talk about the goals I set for this month's five week challenge: On 3/21/2023 at 8:07 AM, MaeradCase said: 1. Write 1667 words every day (starts April 1) I didn't technically hit this goal, but because I did write every day for the minimum requirement, I still made it to 50k and beyond to the final word count of 52,700 words. I had acquired enough of a lead by April 22nd that I relied on the adjusted word goal to get by to 50k when I was running out of energy and mental capacity for what changes I tried making in my story. Before the 22nd, I maintained 1670 as the lowest, but never had a double-down day like in November when I wrote 3k words multiple times early on for a much more significant head start on the word count. 😅 Overall, the fact that what I was writing was primarily between the significant scenes of the first draft definitely made it harder on me because I was resistant to write again what was already written, and I was also fighting against the resistance that sometimes I'd write something knowing that it might not even be important enough to stay in the story. Come July it'll get a read-through, get reduced to an outline, and merged together with the first draft's outline into a modified combo draft to share with beta readers to evaluate if the changes I made make sense, and if the story still works, but until then... I shall let it rest. And my brain need not dwell on it any longer. 😆 On 3/21/2023 at 8:07 AM, MaeradCase said: 2. Do a mobility exercise every day (bonus points for biking and/or DDR) I did keep track of bonus points and my daily exercise on the chart inspired by the style @Sovalis uses. There were a couple days I skipped any exercise, but I kept getting back on track somehow instead of giving up. I didn't do a lot of extra things, but when I did, it was nice making notation for scoring purposes. I think I'll come back to share that chart and tally it later since this post is being typed at the computer. On 3/21/2023 at 8:07 AM, MaeradCase said: 3. Eat a fruit, a veggie, and a portion of mixed nuts every day (bonus points for ones that I don't already eat on regular basis) This also got tracked, and since I didn't rely on just apples, and ate lots of various veggies, and kept on eating mixed nuts for my work snack, I hit these and the bonus points pretty consistently. The tracker will be shown off soon. I wish to run off and do other things for a while. Thank you, everyone for your support! I'm so glad I could get this second draft written while also maintaining some semblance of healthy patterns. 😉 Sincerely, Maerad 2 2 Quote Level 8 Ranger Spoiler Previous challenges: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Current challenge: 9 - to write my second draft, to keep moving, and to keep eating more freggies Link to comment
Snarkyfishguts Posted April 30 Report Share Posted April 30 Congrats on making your Camp Nano Challenge and also on your overall challenge!! 1 Quote Link to comment
MaeradCase Posted April 30 Author Report Share Posted April 30 6 hours ago, MaeradCase said: On 3/21/2023 at 8:07 AM, MaeradCase said: 3. Eat a fruit, a veggie, and a portion of mixed nuts every day (bonus points for ones that I don't already eat on regular basis) This also got tracked, and since I didn't rely on just apples, and ate lots of various veggies, and kept on eating mixed nuts for my work snack, I hit these and the bonus points pretty consistently. The tracker will be shown off soon. I wish to run off and do other things for a while. Spoiler Tucked away in the spoiler above is my bookmark tracking of staying active, writing consistently, and eating good things. Spoiler And in this spoiler is my calendar stickers. I used Pusheen stickers to continue keeping track of social events on my calendar, and Aggretsuko to express my writing moods when Pusheen wasn't applicable. I didn't garden or bike all that much, and my yard could use some focused grass pulling. After a week of rain I'm hoping the flower seeds I planted on the 20th will sprout soon. Also I have an interesting thing for my next challenge. I'm excited to share it with you soon. 😉 Thanks again for being here. ☺ 3 Quote Level 8 Ranger Spoiler Previous challenges: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Current challenge: 9 - to write my second draft, to keep moving, and to keep eating more freggies Link to comment
Sovalis Posted April 30 Report Share Posted April 30 Seeing your chart and stickers makes me wildly happy. Good job!!! 1 Quote Past Challenges: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9 Current Challenge: #10 Link to comment
MaeradCase Posted April 30 Author Report Share Posted April 30 4 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said: Congrats on making your Camp Nano Challenge and also on your overall challenge!! 1 minute ago, Sovalis said: Seeing your chart and stickers makes me wildly happy. Good job!!! Thank you both! ❤❤❤ 1 Quote Level 8 Ranger Spoiler Previous challenges: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Current challenge: 9 - to write my second draft, to keep moving, and to keep eating more freggies Link to comment
KB Girl Posted May 2 Report Share Posted May 2 Congrats on all the writing! It is very impressive to me 1 Quote KB Quest: becoming a decent kettlebell lifter and an excellent coach 2023 goals tracker; cycling: 1047,7/5000km & reading to my kids: 58/365 days (updated may 1st) my instagram - my gym's instagram Link to comment
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