Ahh!

Tomorrow is time to start writing, and I still have a cold! Started on Saturday, and by Monday it was terrible. I think I spent all day Sunday sleeping, and Monday being miserable. Today I’m coughing up a lung, so much so that my abs hurt. But writing starts tomorrow, so I’m doing last minute prep while sipping on some ginger tea hoping I’ll be better soon.

Also, today is our 9 year wedding anniversary, and Halloween. So crap time to get sick.

I thought I’d share what I’ve done so far, though, for my NaNo bullet journal. I’ve made a lot to keep me on track, since the more stuff like this I have to do, the more likely I am not to overlook it or find an excuse not to work on it.

Add me as a writing buddy – SamInJapanland

Total Word Count by Day

Because nothing makes you feel better than seeing how far something has progressed in a positive way. So, each day, I’ll grab the total word count and make a line graph to see how it’s going. Hopefully, if I do NaNo again, I can compare this year with that one, too.

Since there was some room on the far right, I tried to think of silly events that I could make note of as I go along. Nothing really major, just things off the top of my head – I’d love ideas for more, and I bet I’ll think of some as I go along.

I also have a feeling the “Finally just named that thing on ____” is going to have a crapload of days after it. I suck at naming things. Hopefully the story isn’t littered with (evil organization) — that’s the one that’s killing me right now!

33 Ways to Write Strong Characters

I found this one on Pinterest, and thought it might be a handy reference. Here’s the link to the blog that these came from.

I thought I should keep it on hand, for when I’m stuck with even minor characters, to help give them some more dynamic…. ness…

I especially like the “give them a…” category. If I feel better today, I’m going to go through all of my characters – major and minor – and answer these for them all. I think it’ll help when I have to write an interaction between a housekeeper and a main character to know at least some of these things.

Daily Word Count

I like charts. I seriously do. Like, I’ll probably generate pretty ones in Excel because I like charts so much.

Don’t judge!

You’re probably thinking “wait… isn’t that what you already did?!” And the answer is… kind of.

The first one is a running total chart, to see how close I am to that goal of 50,000 words. This one, however, is day to day how much I’ve written. I’m doing this because I’m curious what days are going to look like. The peach line is the half-way point (and the minimum I’d like to write each day) while the pink one is the ultimate “goal” every day. I also thought it might be fun to have a “story event” column, just to see what those characters are up to each day, be it amazing or mundane.

I also want to be able to compare it to next year if I do this again, because again, I like charts.

Story Outline

This is the one I’m going to have open constantly.

When I originally started on this story like a decade ago, I didn’t have an end point in mind. I just had up to about the midway, and then it was just “huh, no idea.” Endings seem to be the worst.

And the last time I did NaNo, man. Don’t even get me started on my re-telling of the same event over. And over. And over. Never progressing more than a bit. Note to self: I suck at flashbacks, don’t write them.

This year, I’m going in with a plan. Here is my story outline – I honestly don’t care if you see this, since no one will ever see my story anyways probably.

Since I have what amounts to eventually a pair of main characters, I thought I’d make sure to make note of who is part of the story at what time. I made a mistake that I just saw, too 🙁 But, it’s a rough outline so I can keep my characters on track to the end goal, although the first third of the story is probably going to be 30,000 words anyways because I actually prefer to write silly interactions versus legit story. Too many years of playing video games, I think.

There’s some terminology in there that doesn’t matter to you, but I need to remember it happens there. But, hopefully I can follow the rising and falling actions throughout this.

Weekly Spread

I actually don’t do weekly spreads any more, day by day, since I don’t work a regular schedule (hooray for making things!) but what I do have is weekly or biweekly spreads for stuff. I tried doing a double-page for all of October, but ran out of room too fast. So here is November 1st thru 12th, since I wanted to keep track of NaNo stuff separately.

Down at the bottom are my habit tracker things, like taking my meds, going for a walk, did I take a nap that day? things like that. And writing is on there now (and the blank space below is now for Japanese practice, since I really need to get better with this language!)

So there’s everything I have to prep for this month of writing! Maybe some of it is useful to you, I certainly hope so.

Bonus cat picture and update:

Bean is settling in surprisingly well. Sugar really is annoyed by her incessant need to play – Sugar just wants to groom her and teach her to be a cat, but Bean really just wants to kill things. Spice is loving it, though, even if he does play cranky uncle sometimes.