A BRIEF INTRODUCTION: Hello there! I’m Tess, a writer of dark urban fantasy stories, and you’re about to read an experiment of mine. The experiment is to see how long I can keep a decent log of my writing life as I write the first draft of my third book--and to see whether that log has any entertainment value. You could think of it like a captain’s log...but it’s almost definitely less exciting. Hope you enjoy!
10/27/2019
1,018
Had a follow-on talk with the little bro, and he sounded a bit better. Also, he was helping my mom get a new toilet get put in. There is a very long story behind the toilet that...is probably not interesting enough to get into. But new toilet is good toilet!
And then I wrote a thousand words.
10/29/2019
848
I actually was going to try to write on Monday, but...well, had some car trouble this weekend, and had to take it into a mechanic today. And by “take it into” I do mean “call a tow truck, wait for tow truck, help tow truck man with the insanely difficult task of getting my car out of its parking spot when it straight up won’t start at all, ride with tow truck man to the mechanic, reiterate problem to said mechanic.” It was a day. And it was long. And stressful. And I didn’t write.
Today is the day after that day, and I did write! Altho uhhh today was also a day when the mechanic told me it was going to cost up to $5,000 to fix my car, and my partner and I had to have a talk to decide if that was worth it, or whether I should say goodbye to my beloved car...only to call the mechanic back and find out that actually maybe it’s just the damn spark plugs?
Y’all I hate car shit sometimes. (Also, maybe I’m not ever going to go back to this particular mechanic.)
That hallway from the Shining, but make it fashion.
This is my doof face. I was dressed as Sasha Braus from Attack on Titan, and I carried a baked potato with me all night. It was delicious.
11/2/2019
453
So, I went out on Halloween, so I didn’t write. And I had 3 drinks when I went out. And then I lost the ENTIRE next day to sleepiness and fuzzy brain. Basically barely left the couch, for the entire day. Hangovers in your 30s are no joke.
So, two days of writing lost, and today was...also not a great day for writing. Went to a burlesque show to celebrate a friend’s birthday, which was utterly fantastic! After we went home (a bit early, which is, sadly, my preference,) my partner and I (and my roommates) ended up watching 30 Days of Night.
Apparently 2019 is the year that I got really into horror. Honestly, I could not have seen this coming.
Weekly total: 2,319
Weekly deficit: siiiiiiiiiigh
A Halloween Cordelia.
11/3/2019
1151
NaNoWriMo has begun! Which...means almost nothing to me, because there’s no way I can do that this year. Honestly, it has ALWAYS confused me that the primary, original NaNoWriMo is in November. Don’t other people (in America, anyway) also have to travel home and visit their families this month? The majority of the week of Thanksgiving is just completely untenable for me. It’s usually literally the one time all year that I go back to my hometown. I think they’d all be pretty pissed if I spent it locked in a room somewhere, writing away.
That being said...I actually wrote the bulk of the first novel during a NaNoWriMo event in April. Mind you, it wasn’t really a “traditional” NaNoWriMo. For those of you who aren’t deeply steeped in this particular section of internet culture, the “traditional” NaNo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a time when writers and aspiring writers and anybody who wants to will sit down and do their best to write 50,000 words of a novel. The idea is that you just keep pushing to put down words, even if you’re not sure they’re very good words, just so you can meet that goal. This means you need to write at least 1666 words every day in order to hit that goal. People are allowed to do it however they want, of course, but the original idea was to just grab a concept and write it, not really bother with planning or prepping in any way. And editing is 100% something you worry about after November, if at all. Plenty of the people who participate have no real plans to get their work published--they just wanna finally write that damn novel.
My approach was pretty different. I planned extensively, spent the two months leading up to April working on my outline, and even part of the first chapter, so that I could make sure that the work I did in April would be something I could really use.
(To be clear, I’m not the very first person to outline for NaNo. I’m just saying that the original spirit was more focused on breaking down people’s inhibitions and writer’s block than it was on honing the craft or producing something perfect or ready for publication. Which, in my opinion, is a great fucking goal, and I deeply approve of everyone who goes at it with that idea in mind. You can never get better if you never try. Just doing it is the most necessary step.)
As luck would have it, I had to go on a retreat for work that month, so for one week of that month, I was forcibly removed from my normal social engagements. And wouldn’t you know it, that was the week that I hit my absolute highest word counts, pretty much every day.
So, I’m not doing a “real” NaNoWriMo this year. I know that’s just not a realistic goal for me right now, especially in November, and especially this November, what with my dad getting sick, and this being the first Thanksgiving that my partner is spending with my extended family. Just not a good time for me.
But, in honor of this month, I will go ahead and give myself another stealth goal of 5K this week. Let’s see if we can hit it!
-Tess
Hey, thanks for reading! If you’re new here, and you’d like to hear updates on my writing, including these blog posts and my ongoing novel series, The Choronzon Chronicles, then click below to sign up for my email list!
Alternately, if you’ve never heard of The Choronzon Chronicles before, but you think you might check it out, you can find the first book right here: Shadow Summoner.