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NaNo and more.
Nov. 3rd, 2010 07:08 pmSo, for those who haven't noticed, I'm doing NaNo this year. The results are being posted daily in the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ae_stories community. I hadn't been planning on doing it until a few days before the turn of the month... it was a matter of realizing that I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to do something with and wasn't. As I mentioned when I talked about officially mothballing my other serials*, there were other ideas that excited me more... but I wasn't sure what to do with them, how to get moving on them.
Trying to run so many ongoing serials was not the most sustainable idea in the world, but I tried it and tried to stick with it for so long because I find it an easier structure to work with than a novel. Easier to self-motivate, easier to gain and keep momentum.
Taking the NaNo approach (just under 2,000 words a day within a set amount of time) seems like a good recipe for combining what makes serials work for me with projects that are more finite and limited in scope. And so far so, good... though I'm not sure their stat tracking is going to have the desired effect on me.
For the three days of November so far, I've sat down for an hour and written about the right number of words (1,667ish). I haven't pushed myself to reach exactly that number, especially as their word counter and mine never add up to the same. Right now if I look at my stats, it says I'm at 4,842 of an expected 5,000 words. I look at that and think "Awesome! I'm in the right neighborhood. I am totally on track to be finished on time." But then I look further down and it says "Days behind schedule: 3". That's discouraging.
I could string together 58 more words to hit the target, but I don't really want to. There's already so much arbitrariness and artificiality behind this schedule. I think having a daily benchmark is a lot more useful than just having the goal of "50,000 words in 30 days"... that's too big and too distant to be a useful motivation tool... but if I focus on how many days I do or don't hit the target exactly, I'm apt to be dispirited.
I'm probably going to end up being ahead a bit in a little while, because I've been aiming at the benchmark and not trying to overshoot it, and because I've been getting the introductory bits out of the way. The actual story excites me even more. But these days of being "behind schedule" are going to stay there...
Aaaaaaaanyway, I decided to officially participate in NaNo this year because it was upon us at a time when I was looking to start something new, but if the rest of the month goes well I think I might keep up this approach. When I quit my day job, I'd meant to develop some stand-alone or finite-length novels that I never actually did... and I've got a good start on a novel right now (expanded on an idea from a Fantasy In Miniature story) that I'd like to do more on. Part of that was my dedication to developing serials. Part of it was that I never found a way to go about actually writing them. Actually, I think those two parts are strongly related.
Aaaaaaaaaanyway part 2, I'm going to be keeping this up. I like the infinite serial format. It has its strengths. But the world has room for stories that are longer than five hundred words and shorter than infinity ones.
Aaaaaaaaaaanyway part 3, I'm going to have a post sometime in the near future (by which I mean anywhere from tomorrow to next month) about exactly what I'm going to be doing with my canceled serials, because I've found that when I stop thinking of them as serials that need to be constantly updated I see some possibilities in the universes/stories again.
And that's really all I can say about anything right now without going into a full-fledged ramble.
Oh, and I just realized I haven't been doing task lists this week. Bad AE. No biscuit. In addition to what I've done so far:
ae_stories community. I hadn't been planning on doing it until a few days before the turn of the month... it was a matter of realizing that I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to do something with and wasn't. As I mentioned when I talked about officially mothballing my other serials*, there were other ideas that excited me more... but I wasn't sure what to do with them, how to get moving on them. Trying to run so many ongoing serials was not the most sustainable idea in the world, but I tried it and tried to stick with it for so long because I find it an easier structure to work with than a novel. Easier to self-motivate, easier to gain and keep momentum.
Taking the NaNo approach (just under 2,000 words a day within a set amount of time) seems like a good recipe for combining what makes serials work for me with projects that are more finite and limited in scope. And so far so, good... though I'm not sure their stat tracking is going to have the desired effect on me.
For the three days of November so far, I've sat down for an hour and written about the right number of words (1,667ish). I haven't pushed myself to reach exactly that number, especially as their word counter and mine never add up to the same. Right now if I look at my stats, it says I'm at 4,842 of an expected 5,000 words. I look at that and think "Awesome! I'm in the right neighborhood. I am totally on track to be finished on time." But then I look further down and it says "Days behind schedule: 3". That's discouraging.
I could string together 58 more words to hit the target, but I don't really want to. There's already so much arbitrariness and artificiality behind this schedule. I think having a daily benchmark is a lot more useful than just having the goal of "50,000 words in 30 days"... that's too big and too distant to be a useful motivation tool... but if I focus on how many days I do or don't hit the target exactly, I'm apt to be dispirited.
I'm probably going to end up being ahead a bit in a little while, because I've been aiming at the benchmark and not trying to overshoot it, and because I've been getting the introductory bits out of the way. The actual story excites me even more. But these days of being "behind schedule" are going to stay there...
Aaaaaaaanyway, I decided to officially participate in NaNo this year because it was upon us at a time when I was looking to start something new, but if the rest of the month goes well I think I might keep up this approach. When I quit my day job, I'd meant to develop some stand-alone or finite-length novels that I never actually did... and I've got a good start on a novel right now (expanded on an idea from a Fantasy In Miniature story) that I'd like to do more on. Part of that was my dedication to developing serials. Part of it was that I never found a way to go about actually writing them. Actually, I think those two parts are strongly related.
Aaaaaaaaaanyway part 2, I'm going to be keeping this up. I like the infinite serial format. It has its strengths. But the world has room for stories that are longer than five hundred words and shorter than infinity ones.
Aaaaaaaaaaanyway part 3, I'm going to have a post sometime in the near future (by which I mean anywhere from tomorrow to next month) about exactly what I'm going to be doing with my canceled serials, because I've found that when I stop thinking of them as serials that need to be constantly updated I see some possibilities in the universes/stories again.
And that's really all I can say about anything right now without going into a full-fledged ramble.
Oh, and I just realized I haven't been doing task lists this week. Bad AE. No biscuit. In addition to what I've done so far:
One hour of TOMU 466.One other hour of TOMU 466.One hour of writing archetypes for AWW.Select three to clean up and post as samples in the next few days.
