It Begins Monday

I'm grumpy today, I dunno why, for sure. I'll have to just get over it, yeah?

Monday I'm gonna start Crystal Glare. I think typically I start with the start of a month, just for the fun of it, but I looked at the calendar and saw that the first was a Friday, which means only two days before the day off, and it makes unloading it a little awkward. Anyway, Monday. I need to clean my room and organize everything, finish up my plot, things like that, I guess. I have all weekend to do that. Or only the weekend. Something like that.

I need a project again; I feel awkward without it. It'd help if there was sunshine, though. It's been gray lately. Is annoying.

I Wonder If I'll Get It Right This Time?

I'm actually a little nervous about writing Crystal Glare again. This is a bad thing, since being nervous is not something for the drafting stage. Not that being aware of it is ever very helpful for me, that I know. It's like the ACT: I was nervous, knew it was stupid and unhelpful to be nervous, but it hardly helps, it just makes me frustrated at my nervousness. I do wonder if I managed to check it at all, though. Anyway, I guess I just don't want to have to draft this thing again. I don't know for sure why I've kept poking at it for so long. I guess 'cause it's a worthwhile idea, and a chapter of Yavn's history that should be written, but written right. It's a cool plot now. Really! I think. I plotted out the timeline of events, it came to 10 chapters -- which appears to be my new magic number or something. Crystal Science was 10 chapters, too. Well, I suppose it might be ten sections, or something. The definition of chapter is fuzzy for me, just a little.

Anyway! I was just writing out my plot as if I was explaining it to someone -- like I usually do -- and things were looking pretty impressive. I had character backstories, subplots, everyone had something to do, never really just tagging along like those annoying characters can. Then I put it into a timeline, and I wonder if I scared myself with over-simplification or somethin', cause now I feel like my plot stinks. It doesn't stink, dangit! I like this plot! I'll get over it. And I think I'll start writing it in April, so I have a little time yet to think about it and modify the plot -- though I don't think I will, at this point -- and generally prepare for the project. Today I have a cold. I'm not starting today.

The Difficult Questions of Weird Names...

So I was thinking how I hardly ever get last names written into my stories. Do you know why? To be honest it's too much trouble to come up with not one but TWO unique names per person. I mean, come on. But I was thinking that I probably should start having these dang last names or something similar if Yavn is going to progress much father. The question is, how do I make it work?

So last names probably first came from your father's name, or in some cases your profession (like Smith and plenty of others I'm sure). But what do I do with Yavn? I have the possessive prefix vu-, so maybe I can use that, but how is the name determined? Father, mother, some older ancestor? By city, perhaps? By founder of the city? Do last names vary by Element?

Well, probably not the last. I'm thinking most likely some important ancestor or something, much like they're done here on earth. Maybe it only matters if you're of the Nobility. Low Nobles and newer Nobles therefore command less respect, since their last name will be the same as their first, for a generation at least. That's where genealogy tends to matter, anyway. But then how do I identify families? I mean, that kind of thing can matter to people, you know? Ach, such a puzzle. I suppose it could've originally been held by the nobles, but in a hundred years or so it trickled down to the common man or sommat. And now I have to have enough names for everyone -.- great. Nice work, Rena. Give yourself a little more work, why don'tcha?

Oh, and I just got my hours for NaNoEdMo. I call Crystal Frontier about as done as I want it to be, so THERE. I cross it off the list. I move on to my next goal, focusing on Italian, maybe some Ganyi work, things like that. The summer hastens toward me, and then will hasten away.

Plotting!

I decided to bend the rules a little, since I so very much wanted to be done with Crystal Frontier, and I'm waiting for feedback from my readers. I still have five or six hours left, so I'm bending the rules a bit and plotting for Crystal Glare and counting it as editing time. I don't think it's actually breaking them, just bending them. After all, I've written Crystal Glare twice already, and I'm keeping careful track of what I did the last two times in order to fix everything -- or at least most things -- I did wrong. Eh, whatever. I don't care a whole lot.

The only problem is that I don't like to rush or push myself on plotting. Drafting, yes, get the words written regardless of the quality. But plotting... I have a general idea of what happens, but it needs to ferment. I've only edited for about an hour today, working on character profiles and the like. I just hate to... You know, I don't know what any more. Oh well. If I draw a map of Yavn as of Crystal Frontier, that counts as editing, right? Yeah, I think so.

Can I Be Done Now?

They say works of art (if I may be so presumptuous as to call my story "art") are never completed, only abandoned. Well, I feel about ready to abandon this thing. I finished typing it up, read through it again for flow and such-like, sent it off to a few readers who wanted to read, read through again in order to write chapter summaries (that actually took almost exactly my two hours today), but what next? I don't want to line-edit through it again, that might kill me. But I have to have 6 hours and 51 minutes more before I can win stinking NaNoEdMo. Three or four more days of doing... something. I'll run it through EditMinion, which means reading through it again. Sigh. That might take me a day or two. It's lacking in description, but I don't really want to go through it and put stuff like that in. I probably could line-edit again, but I just really really don't want to. The answer is no, I can't be done now, I have to get my hours. You know, if I had just waited until March to edit the thing at all, I wouldn't be having this problem. I'd probably only be barely done scribbling on it with my red pen, or maybe halfway through typing it at most. I'd not have to worry about this whole time thing.

Tomorrow: EditMinion. After that... hope I got some input back from someone I guess. I'm about to go crazy here.

To Cut, or Not to Cut...

...That is the question.
Whether tis better to labor through the unsavory scene
and make do with what is there,
or to take scissors to the page
and oppose my draft ramblings, to cut...

I ended up cutting it mostly, but not before I wasted most of my editing time reading ahead. That's ok. I needed... uh, a better look at what was coming ahead. Yeah, that's it. And since I cut, I went ahead about 20 pages anyway. I worry my novel isn't exciting enough, but "così è la vita," I suppose.

Yes, I do feel a little bad for doing yet another parody of the most famous Shakespeare lines ever. I couldn't resist. Probably won't happen again... for a while.

Sundays Make Me Lazy

And it loves to bleed into Monday. Anyway, my brother was home for the weekend, so instead of doing much editing I decided to hang around with him instead. As a result, I got an hour and twelve minutes done, which isn't I guess a huge deal, I was plenty ahead -- I'm still ahead, as a matter of fact -- it's just the lapse in routine. I have 28 or so hours, and I only have to be at 22 or so hours today. I'll be ok. I just have to make sure I don't let myself keep slacking off. I'm nearing the end of the manuscript, though I think it may need more editing toward the end. Here I am, with battle looming, and people are just wandering around talking and discovering things. I'm not sure that's appropriate. Well, maybe I just need to tidy things up to make it more succinct and maybe more focused on what's actually coming. I have a few lines of "it wouldn't be long now until they went off to battle" or whatever, but maybe there should be more anxiety, or something. I have great worldbuilding notes in here, but the reader doesn't so much care about all of that, do they? They want to see if the good guys win, not every thought that passes through their little skulls, right? This is supposed to be an adventure novel, I think. I don't know what else I would call it. Fantasy, yes, but that's just my basic term. I could say "Speculative Fiction," which I probably will start saying once my world advances to more mechanical ages, where it may start looking like Sci-fi. Anyway! There are fantasy-romances, fantasy-adventures, fantasy-horror, fantasy-political-thrillers, the list goes on. Fantasy is largely the setting, I hear, and actually agree with. Some themes may come up more often in fantasy and/or sci-fi, but there are all kinds of stories in the genre. Historical fiction is that way too, I think. The story is whatever you like, but the setting turns it into that kind of genre. That's probably why I can be happy reading basically only fantasy and sci-fi. There are a lot of other stories inside those, it's not as if I read only romance or something like that, where there are I'm sure plenty of variations on the theme, but it's still all one theme, or mostly anyway. Not that I usually spend a lot of time reading romances anyway, but you know what I mean, right? Maybe not.

... Dang that's a long paragraph. Sorry about that. With all the thoughts rambling around, I should split that, shouldn't I? I'm not gonna, though. I'll save my editing juice for my novel.

As I predicted, the Italian Pokémon movie didn't get watched. Maybe tomorrow. Not today. Too much going on today.

Sigh...

I hit page 112/212 today, passing the halfway mark. I'm at about 42% of my hours I think... I'm still not sure what to do after I get those last 100 pages done. I've reached a new echelon of worldbuilding though -- I know have my own wiki! It's actually on the internet, though there's virtually nothing there. It's mostly just to keep my stuff organized. I feel all fancy, though.

I've been playing Pokémon White the past few days, but so far I've managed to go slowly enough and get all my school done. Even reading, since it's "A Tale of Two Cities" for now. Interesting book, so far. Anyway, the game is interesting. It's actually a little difficult since I don't know any of the Pokémon. N very nearly nailed me last time I fought him. I find I like this set of baddies. They have the most plausible goal I've seen so far. What was Team Galactic after, anyway? I don't even remember.

Anyway, I guess that's it. Italian starts Monday. Editing and worldbuilding goes on.

Oh Hey, Stuff Happens This Week!

I mean, Big Fun Scary Goal stuff. Stuff always happens during the week. School, video games, sleeping, etc. but this week I also get to finish up my Latin book, hallelujah, and next Monday I start my Italian book. Yay! Speaking of, I took my Italian Bible to church yesterday, and followed along in the verses. It was slow, but I did manage to understand it, I think. It helped that it was a fairly well-known passage to me. Wow, I sound pathetic now.

My grammar isn't awful, I think, I still don't have an idea for the more complicated tenses, but I can figure those out I think. What kills me is my vocabulary. I have virtually none. It's just that there are so many words, and there's thinking of finding it, then remembering it, and then continuing to remember it. Grar. I guess I need more interactive stuff or something, to keep me going and using words. I downloaded a copy of a Pokémon movie in Italian, but I've not yet set aside the time to watch it. Maybe I'll do that later this week or this weekend or something. I'll need to get some time for it when there's nothing going on in English that I need to pay attention to (Ha! Ended a sentence with a preposition, didn't I? I hate that rule anyway. Is stupid).

Oh wait, Pokémon Black and White came out yesterday. I should get it... tomorrow. So much for getting anything done this week or the next. Well, I'll discipline myself to get editing done, probably only by bribing myself with said game. School might get done. Watching an Italian Pokémon movie? Don't think so. Not paying close attention. I'll be playing White while it goes at least, which means I'll understand approximately... nothing of what's said.

I'm up to 14 hours of editing today, by the way. I could take a day off and not be behind. Not that I will, of course, but it's nice to know. I'm on page 81 of 212 after day 7. Numbers still contradict my bored head. I should get a plan on paper for after I line-edit. Read through it again of course, check to make sure all of my structure is ok, maybe go chapter by chapter and actually make notes. Kick myself for not doing it before. That all counts as editing time, yes? I'll make a note to myself, eventually.

Is school time, methinks.

I'm a Bad Person...

'Cause I didn't get up early this morning. My alarm started up, and I went to turn it off, but accidentally snoozed it. I took my five minutes, and then when it went off again I actually did turn it off. I was lying there a bit, telling myself that I was getting up, but I guess lying to myself the past few days that I could go back to bed after editing finally caught up with me, and combined with staying up later than intended last night left me with a head that didn't want to take any more sleep procrastination. Sheesh. And it turns out my mom got up late too, so tea was ready late. If I'd gotten up in time I'd be done editing and in bed therefore with a happy head and finished editing by the time tea was ready. Alas, for the roads not taken. Oh well. I got it done from something like 9 to 11.

I typed into OpenOffice today and copy/pasted to Google, which made me a little happier of a camper. I hate lag when I type, don't you? I also got to track how many words I ended up typing in those two hours. I think it was about... 5k? I forgot now. I've got about 25k up in the cloud now, which is approximately 1/4 of the whole thing. Yikes. I have almost 10 1/2 hours now, and about 43 pages, at an average rate of about 4 pages/hour. I'm 1/5 done, hour-wise! I have 150 pages to go, though. Somewhere around 75k. 37.5 hours of work, if I keep my average page count up. Somewhere around 19 days of work left for me, I guess. But what's after that? I guess reading it again counts as editing, that'll take some time. I have one little part that'll need to be rewritten, I know. A tidbit that needs putting in... I didn't think of these until recently, or else I wouldn't have line-edited first. Oh well. I'll just have to spiff them a few times. Um... If I really need time after that I guess I'll think through Crystal Glare again and focus on what I did wrong, and maybe start plotting. It's not breaking too many rules...

Sometimes this stuff feels so slow that I can't imagine that I'll even get through this dang story before month's end, but my numbers all add up to say I'll need to do additional work afterward if I want to win. It's so curious, how the human brain can perceive things to be so totally skewed.

The new Pokémon game comes out Sunday. I don't get it until the 9th. It's for the best, I think. The more days before I have it suck my time and attention away from anything else the better. I have piano practice too, you know.

And Another Spark.

The timing hasn't really improved. This one concerns Yavn's neighbor, Shorion. I have a little insight into their magic system now, which will be helpful during Crystal Glare, I suppose. Now I have more ideas with that, and I'm not supposed to be plotting that either, dangit!

Editing goes yet slowly. I have 20k typed up now, not much of it done this month, of a 100k novel. This isn't going to be done this month, methinks. The chapters get really long from here on out, so maybe I need a better method of doing this. Google Docs types slowly, probably because of it's live updating thing. It's not the only reason things are going slow, but waiting for it to catch up to my fingers is annoying. I might type it somewhere else or something and then upload or copy/paste it into Google Docs. I'd like to at least get this whole thing typed up before the month's out. I have over eight hours logged and only a few thousand words written. Oh, turns out more than I thought. I can't remember exactly where I left off, but I've typed up somewhere between 12,000 and 14,000 words. I guess that's more than a fraction of 20k. Well, technically it is, since any number smaller than 20,000 is a fraction of 20,000, but we're speaking of- ok, stopping.

I guess the point is editing feels tedious today. I have the plotting bug. I will not allow this bug to make me sick and quit editing, because this story must be edited. I don't typically want to give up in the middle of a novel, but editing is different. I guess. I dunno. I'll get over it, carry on, wotwot?

A Plot Sparks...

At the worst possible time. This isn't even Crystal Glare work, the project coming in April/May. No, this is something either late summer or November. I'm thinkin' November. Late summer, if noveling is finished, should probably be devoted to linguistics. And school starts early, so...

Anyway! Plot idea should be written down before I forget it, yeah? Problem is, the magic system for this place was gonna be chanting I think, but what am I gonna do if I don't have my language for the country figured out yet. It's gonna be an isolating language (for example, Mandarin), but I know next to nothing about them, and I was gonna try and pick up a little Mandarin before I created a language like that. Not to mention Ganyi still isn't really operational. Grar. So what do I do for the chants? They'd probably be in a different syntax or something (if that's even possible with an isolating language?) from regular speech, but I can't exactly do any of that if I don't have the regular speech. Double grar.

Editing still goes on, but it's getting harder and harder to get up each morning. Must be fixed. I could also draw another map draft or sommat. That might help. Or, the other day I heard about this thing called "school," and a lot of kinds spend most of their week doing school. Kinda weird. Maybe I should try it out sometime.

Statistics

Two days doesn't really get me enough data for much predictive stuff, but I can't help it. I wrote for 2.15 hours both days so far (or 2 hours 9 minutes, or 129 minutes), which is kinda funny, but totally accidental. Yesterday I got through 10 pages, today only 8. That makes for a 9-page-per-day average so far, and about 4 pages an hour. 4 pages an hour or so, times 50 makes for about 200 pages or so. The problem is, I don't have that many pages left in my manuscript to type up. I have... 176 pages left, and 45.7 hours left, but at the end of those hours I'll have 18 pages-worth of time left to work, which, assuming a constant rate (which all of these are), leaves me with about 4 hours. right. How long does it take for me to read through and format that again, I wonder? It's at least a good two hours... and I remember I have a section that needs rewriting, so that will take me a while, i guess.

Anyway! I'm in chapter uh... 5 I think. Exciting stuff. I'm not satisfied with the way one formatting came out, though. It's very confusing to read I think. I'll fix it later. I have to do some school first methinks. This month I finish up my Latin and get to start my next Italian book, and... huh. That's maybe about it. NaNoEdMo takes up my project juice quite nicely, honestly.

I definitely need to save some project juice for piano practice though. I mean seriously. That whole NaPiPraMo thing is sounding better all the time. Maybe that's next month. I might need a quick break before writing a novel, or something. April NaPiPraMo and plotting, and then May starts a summer novel. Yeah. I like this plan.

What I Really Need...

... is more NaNoWriMo-style months. I haven't gotten up early for weeks or months or sommat. Today, I get up, read my Bible a bit, and do two hours of editing. Got a little boring toward the end there, but I got it done. Finished just before tea. Read webcomics while I waited. Drink tea, read the paper. Go down, do school, watch recorded TV shows. Take shower. By ten o'clock, I've done just about everything I can outside of schedule today. I can just feel so dang productive when I get up early. I get my projects done and it even kinda helps with everything else I gotta do. If I could get up early more often maybe I'd get more piano practice in.

Wait, I've tried that. I end up playing video games. That's right... or I just don't get up at all. It stinks. I need a project to get up early. Project defined as "something I can psych myself up to excitement about." February was National Album Writing Month. You write like 14 songs in 28 days. Ouch. I didn't participate, in case you didn't know. But maybe I should get myself more of those. I have a recital coming up in June. Maybe April or May should be "National Piano Practice Month," or NaPiPraMo. I get up and practice piano for two hours in the morning. Or something. I would probably define it as 50 hours of piano practice in a month. Music majors typically do that in a week, by the way. I guess it could be NaInPraMo, for any instrument, but that's kind of hard to say. What about Python Month? Code a program in a month. You can figure out what program you want to write, but any flowcharts or whatever you want to do has to be done in the month. Or... Origami month? An origami model a day, preferably a new one. That'd be handy next time I want to sell them or something. I'd end up with 30 or so models on hand, which is plenty. The possibilities are endless, really.

The problem remains that one needs a support group. Extra people to at least cheer me on, preferably join in the madness. Code-a-website Month, Learn C++ month... I could find people to help me out with that, right? Right? Maybe not. But it's handy to have a spreadsheet. But how does keeping track of hours or programs really track my progress? I don't honestly know. How does keeping track of words show how good of books I've written? Doesn't really, I guess, but they do get written. Some of them aren't even vomitous masses. So we keep track of something fairly arbitrary to what we actually want done -- we track words, not chapters or reviews -- and yet the rest of it turns out ok. I guess tracking reviews on a first draft it too far into the future, but that's still what people try to do. They read through, they imagine what people think, but they're tracking the wrong thing. I'm not honestly sure what the right thing is. I do know that measuring the words of a novel doesn't tell you how good it is or how long it took to write (no seriously, it doesn't. People write 800,000 words in November sometimes. That's like 26,000 words a day), or even what it'll look like when it's edited and done. But I suppose at the stage of drafting that's about the best you can measure by. You could also measure in chapters, I suppose, but then when you have a bad day, instead of ending up with fluff that has to be removed later, you end up with scenes that are just barely there and have to be filled out later. I dislike going through and adding in things later. I can't keep straight what I've added and what I just thought about adding and whether it should be here or there or- yeah. I suppose that's a matter of preference, though.

Editing is going well, anyway, and so I'm hyper enough to write a rambly blog post. Yay. I should sometime start thinking about who, if anyone, gets to read this once I've decided it's at least a little fit for human consumption. I should get a list going I guess, and ask them. Yes. That'd be the thing to do.

Yoiks and away!