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.