December Story Month Update 12/11/17

My December Story Month is not going quite as well as I would have liked.  I went into the end of last week hoping to finish up Transformation Story (and give it a better title) and also one other shorter story.  By Sunday I hadn't really worked much on either, but I managed to complete a third scene for Transformation Story, so that's something.  I envision it being 5 or 6 scenes in total, so it's at least half written.

Monday I got to work on a story called Silent Spectre which I had listed as my story for day 2, and I managed to finish it.  Very short story, 718 words.  I renamed it Silence Is Golden.  I also did a bit more work on Transformation Story, and that led to a new story idea which I've currently titled My Little Catgirl.  I'm not sure I have a good ending/punchline for that one yet, but I wrote a bit on it.

I also was toying with the idea that my current sidekick raised the money to be transformed into a catgirl (Black Dahlia can do things such as this via magic, but charges a million dollars to keep the number of applicants down) via crowdfunding on the web.  That's the central idea in my new story, actually -- that you could actually raise that kind of money because of the number of fanboys (and fangirls) out there who would enjoy seeing an actual catgirl in action.  So I'm trying to work up what kind of prizes she would offer at various pledge levels, and I also was trying to decide whether I should mention a real/existing crowdfunding site, or make one up that is more superhero related.  I'd done something similar in the past, so I tracked down that story, Startup, and discovered that what I'd previously proposed was a villain-themed site called Lairbuildr that exists on the darkweb.

While that wasn't really helpful to my current story, I read through the story and realized I liked it quite a bit, so I decided to post it as my story of the week.  It's definitely one of those that is short and sweet and works really well in my opinion -- it has a good punchline.

I still want to finish up Transformation Story, and rewrite the ending of Enigma, but this week I need to work on my Christmas ghost story, which for now is the story I thought up last week called The Library of Dreams.  I also dug up another old story idea and called it my story idea for yesterday... I didn't write down any stories for Friday or Saturday and I'm not sure I'll go back and do that after the fact, so for now here's my list for the month:

December Story Month 2017

Day 1:  Arachnope
Day 2:  The Silent Spectre / Silence Is Golden(finished)
Day 3:  Enigma (finished, needs rewrite)
Day 4:  The Library of Dreams
Day 5:  Transformation Story  (half written)
Day 6:  The Tremors of the Earth
Day 7:  The Deal
Day 8:  
Day 9:
Day 10:  Top Hats and Bustiers
Day 11:  My Little Catgirl

Story Month Update Dec 6 2017

Today is Day 6 of my "December Story Month 2017" which is where I try to do a lot more writing than I managed for NaNoWriMo.  My plan is to work on a new story each day, but also to finish at least some of these stories.  I'm being hampered a bit in that goal by the fact that I keep coming up with longer-than-normal stories, but I figure I'll just keep plugging away at them and see what I can accomplish.

So far here's what I've come up with:

Day 1:  Arachnope  This is an old story idea that I pulled up and started writing on.  I didn't get too far but I have an idea of how I want the story to go, if I can find the time to finish it.

Day 2:  The Silent Spectre  I didn't actually write Saturday but I've listed this story as my story for that day.  It's just a two-line idea right now about a villain who never speaks.

Day 3:  Enigma (finished, needs rewrite)  I sort of finished this story Sunday but I've already come up with two ideas for better endings.  One of them I saved to a file called The Deal since it seemed to better work as a separate story.  I still need to rewrite this so that it works better.

Day 4:  The Library of Dreams  This is a Christmas ghost story that I came up with Monday after watching an anime Sunday.  It's only about 1/4 written.

Day 5:  Transformation Story.  This is another old story idea which ultimately has nothing to do with the title.  I may rename it One of the Girls.  This introduces the niece of demonic lawyer Mal.  I've written part of this one in the last 24 hours, and I'm working on it today, but it's nowhere near finished.

Day 6:  The Tremors of the Earth.  This is also an old story, this and Enigma and Transformation Story are sort of a trilogy about a certain group of characters.  I have ideas about how this story will work, but not very much of it is written down.  I'm also writing them in reverse order, for some reason.

I will probably wind up listing The Deal as my story for tomorrow.  It's something I've worked on a bit this week already.

So basically I have six or seven stories partially written, one of them "complete" except that I immediately began tearing it apart again.  A reasonable goal would be to finish my rewrite of Enigma, and maybe also finish up Transformation Story and at least one other by the end of the week.  I do need to be working on the Christmas Ghost story.

Post NaNo 2017 Report

Last month I planned to jump into NaNoWriMo, and I posted to my blog on the 2nd day with plans to chronicle my journey throughout the month.  This would mean more writing on top of trying to write 50,000 words, but I didn't see a problem with it.  I wrote that I was working on a novella-length story called The Companions:  Body Snatchers of Ator (Io, Yan, the title has changed a few times).

Well... I didn't finish that story, and I didn't write any more blog posts.  I ultimately failed my NaNoWriMo goals.  I didn't really keep track but I may have written 10,000 to 12,000 words during the month.  I finished four stories -- which has been about my average over the last year plus.

The more detailed rundown is this:  I worked on Body Snatchers of Ator, but I got bogged down and wasn't feeling inspired.  After several days of this I started working on a different Kid Anarchy story called The Companions:  All In Good Time, about Kid Anarchy's first meeting with Happy Jack.  In theory this was going to be a shorter story, but once I got into it it transformed into a longer one and I got bogged down again.

I switched up and wrote a short story, Gadda Da Vida.  (I may also have written As High As the Falcon in early November -- at this point I can't remember.)  After another week I managed to turn out Return of the Holy Terror and Edgewise, and over Thanksgiving weekend I wrote Black Friday.

That was it for my month -- four completed short stories, work done on two longer stories.

I decided for December that I was going to at least start a new story each day, but so far that hasn't really gone well.  On Friday Dec 1st, I began work on an old story idea called Arachnope, but I didn't really get that far on it.  I was still thinking about it on Saturday when I began working on another old story idea called Enigma.  I actually wrote quite a bit on Enigma Sunday night -- really my first writing of the month -- but what I got was a story with little conflict.  But I think I know how to fix it, and sometimes you have to write a bad story before you know how to write a good one.

That's been it so far.  I have potentially one or two other stories that are connected to the ideas in Enigma, so I may get at least two stories out of that, but so far I've only "began" two stories this month and neither are complete yet.  But at least I'm writing.

I'm supposed to write a Christmas ghost story as well, and I had some ideas for one this morning based on an anime I was watching over the weekend.